One of the curious things about the mothers I’ve spoken with is the timing of when they quit their jobs.
Sirisha Ramanand
The first time I saw her, she had a laptop in one hand and held a little boy’s hand with the other. Her neck bent at an awkward angle cradling her phone between her ear and shoulder. With impressive dexterity, she manoeuvred her son into the swing and without pausing the conversation (or dropping her laptop) she began pushing the swing. She looked every inch a walking cliché of the corporate mother.
Fast forward a few years, she is no longer working a full-time corporate job. I asked if she would speak with me about her reasons for leaving. This is the story she has to tell. She had relocated with her family and was working remotely. Acutely aware that this was a special concession made just for her, she worked tirelessly so nobody could say she was taking advantage of her situation. She compensated physical presence with 24/7 availability, reviewed all the work, redoing a lot of it herself so no one could say that her leadership was deficient due to lack of physical presence. She never missed a deadline, went above and beyond, and even won an award for good performance. She traveled to be with her team to receive this award. The speech by her management however, was all about her remote working situation. She said she held an award in her hand, yet never felt so underappreciated.
An often-quoted datapoint states that despite there being more educated women than ever before, the number of women with two degrees or more who chose not to work was considerable[1]. A survey by manpower consultants TeamLease[2], found that about 43% women quit after they have children. That is a high number, but on the flip side, 57% do return to work encouraged by a generous maternity leave policy and other organisation policies supporting new mothers. Yet we have very few women top executives. So, at what point are these women dropping off and why?
One of the curious things about the mothers I’ve spoken with is the timing of when they quit their jobs. Many of them quit when their children were long past infancy, the stage that is supposedly the most challenging. Having made it past the hard years, why throw in the towel now?
One mum told me that before her child was born, she was a good worker. She was patient. She stayed late to finish work and attend meetings. After she had her child and resumed work, she wanted to use her time more efficiently. She didn’t stay late, she didn’t do office parties, she stopped playing games in the name of visibility and thus became invisible. After a disastrous performance appraisal discussion, she decided to quit.
Workplaces believe that because a mother chooses to work—presumably after weighing her family responsibilities—she has forfeited any right to accommodations. The choice to work is treated as a waiver of support. Families don’t make thing easier either.
A mum from a Tier II city told me that while she was not expressly forbidden to work, there was an unspoken understanding that she had chosen to work, but home and family was still her primary responsibility. A mum of two, she had found work and quit multiple times. Either the startup lost funding so they laid off employees, or managers would change their minds about agreed upon working arrangements post maternity leave. Given where she lives, good jobs in tech are scarce. Each time she quit, it made it harder to secure a job.
A marketing professional had to start maternity leave two months early due to her health. While she was away, there was a change in leadership. Unfortunately, this meant that the working arrangements she had negotiated were not honoured. Not only was her old role no longer available, she was expected to be in office full time. Living away from her family, when faced the prospect of leaving a four-month-old in day care, she resigned.
A mother working for a startup also returned to work four months postpartum, hoping this show of goodwill would allow her to negotiate flexible working arrangements. It should come as no surprise, that it did not. The founder’s schedule and requirements were as inflexible as the baby’s and so squeezed between the two, she decided to quit.
A Mumbai mother was commuting two hours each way. She said she was always tired and irritable. Realising she was giving the worst of herself to her children, she decided on a (non corporate) career pivot.
A common thread in all these conversations was mothers’ awareness that they were unable to show up for their team the way they did earlier. This too, added to their guilt. Expected to be fully present in two places at once, they belonged to neither. The mental strain of this constant splitting was unavoidable.
They gave at work and they gave at home and did it all day, every day, until one day they had nothing left to give and they had to make a choice. As one mother said, ‘I can quit my job, I can’t quit my children.’
[Sirisha Ramanand writes at the intersection of gender, labour, and contemporary motherhood, drawing on a 14-year career in corporate HR. Her work examines how women navigate ambition and care within modern institutions. She is also developing audioM, an early-stage listening-first storytelling initiative.]
[1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/careers/news/more-degrees-fewer-jobs-why-indias-educated-women-are-still-shut-out-of-the-workforce/articleshow/126409149.cms
[2] Maternity Benefits Act (revisited) Survey, FY2019-20
