Training working women for life

CHENNAI: Earlier this year, the McKinsey&Company released a report saying only 25% of India’s workforce is female. The World Gender Report says while 72% men and women get equal opportunity to complete college education, only 28% of the workforce are women.
These discouraging figures prompted Ranjini Manian, co-founder of Chennai-based expatriate service company Global Adjustments, to launch an initiative in 2015. The result was Global Adjustments Foundation (GAF), a not-for-profit organisation aimed at providing free life coaching to female students and working women in order to maximize their emotional, physical and leadership potential.

The latest to complete their ‘Championwoman’ workshops on work-life balance was a batch of 100 women employees of the Secretariat who were facilitated at the Anna institute of Management on Thursday. With this batch, the number of Secretariat section officers trained by GAF reached 1,000. GAF has worked with teachers, nurses, policewomen and women working in the corporate sector all of who total to 75,000.

According to Usha Ramakrishnan, director of the foundation, while the specific challenges faced by each of these sectors varied, several core issues remained the same – low self-esteem and an inability to balance the responsibilities at home and work. “We customize our programmes based on the economic strata, educational background and nature of work. While the women at the Secretariat have job security, many of them are put up on the outskirts and are unable to deal with long working hours and lengthy commutes. They are drained out by the end of the day and that’s why our training emphasizes on how they could delegate work at home, take care of their health and adapt meditation and pranayam,” she said.

Secretariat employees who had undertaken the programme said applying these steps on a day-to-day basis increased their productivity. Police constable K Muthulakshmi said GAF’s workshop equipped her with simple ways to remain stress-free and contribute effectively at home and work. “We may be policewomen but once home, what’s expected of us is the same as with any other Indian working class woman. By allotting 20 minutes for myself every day, I am able to handle these responsibilities better,” she said.

“Over the course of our work, I have seen a repetitive pattern of women not speaking up. That’s why, thinking of ourselves as leaders has to be ingrained in our school and college curriculum, and workforce. We are planning a lot of advocacy on this and also launch a digital platform on which women trained by us can have forums and discussions,” says Manian.