Half of women hide plans of marriage and motherhood in interviews, report reveals

Challenges still remain for women in the workplace. Nearly 50 percent of women reported that they hide their personal plans related to marriage or motherhood during job interviews because they fear prejudice. This hesitation increases with experience. While this figure is 29 percent among freshers, it reaches 40 percent among women with 10 to 15 years of experience. This information has been revealed in the report ‘What Women Professionals Want’ released by portal Naukri.com. This report has been prepared on the basis of a survey conducted on about 50,000 women working in more than 50 industries in the country.

According to the report, bias in workplace hiring and promotion is the biggest challenge women from diverse backgrounds face. About 42 percent women considered this a major problem. The same trend was seen in metros like Chennai (44 percent) and Delhi-NCR (43 percent). Despite these challenges, 83 percent of women surveyed said they feel encouraged to pursue leadership roles, up from 66 percent last year.

What is the situation regarding salaries in workplaces?

• At the same time, 67 percent of women working in various sectors in the country believe that pay equality exists at their workplaces.
• According to the report, the majority of women (42 percent) in the real estate sector believed that there is pay equality at their workplace.
• This was followed by FMCG (38 percent), pharmaceutical and life sciences (38 percent) and automobile sector (37 percent).
• Apart from this, women from retail (35 percent), hotel and restaurant (35 percent), IT services and consulting (34 percent), telecom/ISP (34 percent), medical services/hospital (33 percent) and oil and gas (33 percent) sectors also said that there should be pay equality at the workplace.

What is the demand regarding salary audit and menstrual leave?

The report also revealed that demands for equal pay audit and menstrual leave are increasing. This type of demand has increased from 19 percent last year to 27 percent. Especially this demand was seen highest among higher paid women (48 percent). Sumeet Singh, Group CMO, Info Edge India Group, said that every figure in this report tells the story of an ambitious woman. She said that while 83 percent of women are encouraged to seek leadership is a positive sign, the fact that half of the women interviewed hid plans for marriage or motherhood shows that there is still a lot of work to be done.