Women@Google and ISB - a new beginning

The evening of September 17th, 2011 marked the creation of a nexus. Women@Google and Women in Business Club at ISB joined hands, and found a compatible partner for a cause. The team comprised of Mr. Sameer Bora - Digital Content and Commerce Lead (ISB alumnus – Class Of 2007), Ms. Pooja Srinivas - Manager, Sales Technical Operations, Meenakshi Dhingra - Manager, Adwords, Ashok Ranadive – Manager, Global Media and Platform Solutions, Sunita Mohanty – Online Sales and Operations Manager, and Ms. Shradha Negi, People Operations. 

WIB Club’s revised mission statement in year 2011-12 states sensitization of all members of the club towards gender-specific issues at the workplace as one of its goals. When the Women@Google team visited ISB on September 19th, 2011 to liaise with the WIB club at ISB, it comprised of 4 women and 2 men. It was great to see the men involved in this initiative. And, that is exactly what WIB aims at by sensitization of all members. Initially the discussion circled around how Google makes every effort to make life choices easier for its women employees. Such efforts span from nursing rooms for new mothers, and play areas and daycares for employees’ children to friendly maternity and paternity leave policy and the upcoming “Returning Mothers’ Program” to help women employees resume work smoothly after returning from their maternity leave. Google efforts to acknowledge women’s efforts and progress like “Women in Engineering Awards” and Google Women of Color Scholarship to help students attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference (2011) were also discussed. 

Next, the discussion graduated to Google’s efforts to contribute to the society it belongs to, viz. Google’s association with Prajwala (an NGO that rehabilitates and rescues women, who are sex-workers and children), and Gayglers (the LGBT community in Google workforce). The team also charted out examples from personal experiences to emphasize how Google allows both men and women the freedom and flexibility to help them lead healthy personal and professional lives. 

In the end, while candidly highlighting the gender-ratio of 60:40 with 60% women at Google, Hyderabad, the Google team left with the following message for the WIB club members - Women shouldn’t be afraid of pursuing their aspirations, given a supportive environment; and a supportive environment is exactly what Google aims to provide to all its employees. 

Shruti Thakral

Knowledge Initiatives Coordinator

Women in Business Club, ISB