Podcast Themes

Jennifer speaks about the context behind the first transition which is often about couples having a discussion about how they make the relationship work. She mentions that in the initial years after marriage, couples are often leading parallel tracks. The first transition is often triggered by an event (one of the spouses gets a promotion and has to relocate or you have your first child). These situations can force couples to have conversations around how they make the relationship work. The parallel model begins to break down at this stage.

Falguni speaks about how she juggled her family and her career at various points in time. She specifically speaks about the Maternity transition and says that women shouldn’t treat it as a P&L discussion where they are trading off the income with the opportunity cost of being with the child. She urges the women to look it as an investment in oneself that pays out over the future.

Roopa talks about the fact that there is a lot of commentary around women coming back to the workforce after they start a family. She mentions that support structures and corporate policies are evolving and this problem is slowly being addressed. She discusses the barrier that shows up when women are in senior management roles. She talks about the notion of self-belief which often comes in the way of women raising their hand for top jobs and for a seat at the table.

Maternity is a critical transition for women and like Anu mentions, you don’t know what you don’t know in terms of how things will play out. She talks about her lessons from that passage of play. She also talks about how she took stock of options out there when she returned to work post maternity and discusses typical mistakes women often end up making in this phase.

Zia talks about the leaky pipeline of women leaders and talks about the key inflection points where the leakage is maximum. She talks about the false glass-ceilings that women often have in their heads.

Zia talks about how there are several hidden variables that need to be taken care of for a woman to re-enter the workforce effectively after a maternity break. She outlines the small things that a spouse could do in this context.