Dilara Khan, Operation risk & safety Manager at Standard Chartered Bank
It is 7am in the morning, I am writing this piece because I am a working mother. I can’t afford to write this either during my office hours or when my children are awake. Being a working mother, every day my morning starts with balancing time. Kids are going to school, I have to get ready for the office, day care bag should be ready for the youngest one, and morning breakfast should be healthy & colourful for the husband & family. Trust me! I am not complaining, rather I feel good that I can maintain a balanced life. That’s my first lesson of multi tasking & maybe that’s why, many organisations are talking about diversity & gender inclusion. Research says that, women professionally look for solution that does not come in conflict of interest because motherhood journey and professional career automatically divert us towards the solution.
Now that I love to focus on both family expectation and professional grooming, which obviously is not an offence. The norms of our society believe that a woman worker who is working for bread & butter can justify her working outside home but working mothers like me cannot justify their activities as they are working only for their own identity or it is their dream. For that reason, whatever challenge we face that is expected or should be overcome by us.
I never get disappointed on this; rather they make me more firm to work with greater dedication. But the cruelest picture of this is seen when I see one working mom is judging another mom. Why we are in a competition? I do not understand and do not even want to. Motherhood journey is a challenging chapter of life for every mother. We aren’t born as mom. So we will make mistake & learn. We should be supportive to each other. At least we should stop judging each other. We must understand that even a small appreciation may give her mental peace for the day which is priceless. We may get involved in something collectively; we can arrange play dates & share our experiences. We can take little break as well- one cup of coffee can recharge you for the next phase. That’s how we may create a strong network. What I have just said is very much common in many parts of the world but yet to reach in Bangladesh!
We may have online moms group. I am the founder of a page on facebook and my one is “mom’s world”. I often see that we, the working mothers; get tired very quickly. I think that can be solved if we set our priority. Trust me; society never changes on its own. It is us who need to work to change it. When we talk about rape, I hope for the day to come when we would stop talking about how vulnerable we are. I dream for a day when girls or women will hit the rapists so hard or all women of the world would protest together. That should be our dream network!!!
I am an active member of woman’s network of an organisation but I don’t believe the network can create that much change because it is all about mind set. Most the employees of that organization think it is kitty party sort of thing and ask why only woman should have network. This is very valid point. If we say, women have certain issues which male counterpart don’t have to face then get reply – even they are not sure why we are working rather we should take of our family only. So now-a days I have learned to smile not to answer such comments. Even, our women network agenda is changing. Before, we were talking about work life balance, presently we are asking management advice for career progression. Because we know deep inside our mind, when we can lead the organisation then this voice will change automatically.
Lastly, I have one life to live. So I want to live this life with my dreams. My advice to all the mothers is that start working institutionally from today. We never get tired for physical pressure or due to time management rather we get tired when we feel that it is meaningless job at the end of the day. So set priority, work on goals, treat yourself & appreciate others.