Undeniable that women bring intense amount of talent to the table: Zia Mody

Zia Mody at the event. (Photo: Nirmal Harindran)

On the eve of International Women’s Day, Zia Mody, one of India’s foremost corporate attorneys, spoke about her journey from “having to wear big glasses in spite of not needing them” so that she was taken seriously as a woman to reaching the position of one of the most well-respected names in the fraternity.

Speaking at an event organised in her honour by the Baha’i community of Mumbai, Mody, founder and managing partner, AZB & Partners, spoke about the challenges she faced as one of the few women lawyers in the city when she moved to India after studying law abroad, how she had stood by women employees who have rewarded her faith with “dollops of loyalty”, and the principles that have helped her move ahead in her career.

“Today, in most professions, it is undeniable that women bring a severely intense amount of talent to the table… you can’t ignore women in any profession today..,” Mody said. Talking about one of the main challenges facing women employees, she added, “… you invest in a young woman, you train her, mentor her, guide her…..the minute she gets married or has a kid you dump her… now how dumb is that… So we believe, in the firm, that if we cannot retain good women….who hold up half the sky as Mao said…and as Abdu’l-Baha said that the world cannot be best without them… then how do you work on it in practical terms.”

She added, “Today, as a law firm, we have the highest amount of women partners in our law firm… which is different from a woman lawyer… because to be a woman partner… you probably have to go through a marriage, a mother-in-law, a husband, maybe a couple of kids, and you have to sustain yourself as a lawyer through that whole cycle to get to be a partner … it is not easy… what do most of us women do… we just drop away..we have to be home… very few are given the opportunity by the organisation to do both.. do I have a choice..does it have to be binary….that is what we try to do.”

Further explaining how her law firm works, she said, “…How do we do it… very simple, we tell our women we love them even if they have babies… I have three daughters, so everyone sees that… and we work with each one in a very bespoke way… Different women have problems on different fronts, there is no policy that can solve every problem… somebody stays very far away so commuting is a problem… for some going home to a mother-in-law and fighting every day is a problem… we try and analyse everyone’s problem..most of the times it works…”.

Talking about the advantage of being a woman leader, Mody said, “As a woman leader, I have two advantages… I can say things frankly and get away because I am a woman… secondly, I can read the room a lot better…I have more EQ and sensitivity and not because I am Zia… it is a Mars and Venus issue and I am fully Venus.”