Yasmina McCarty ’08, a graduate of the EMBA-Global program, was a recipient of the Cartier Women’s Initiative Award last year in recognition of GreenMango, a company she developed with business partner Nandini Pandhi.
Yesterday I suited up in my shalwar kameez and GreenMango uniform and joined my team for their daily fieldwork. As we made our way through the slow moving Hyderabad traffic, someone started a discussion on marriage. And then one of my female staff members, who often goes to temple, said, “Actually, madam, we are also praying for you that you will have a marriage!” We all had a good laugh.
When I decided to move to Hyderabad, India, I knew I would not exactly be the norm. I would be a single, Caucasian woman running an internet business for low-income clients. If anything, I figured I would stand out because I wasn’t Indian or because I wasn’t from Hyderabad.
In fact, it’s being a female entrepreneur that makes me an anomaly. Some 95 percent of the meetings I have in a given week are with businessmen, nearly all of our company investors are businessmen and my most trusted advisers are businessmen.
When my business partner (another woman) and I went for our legal incorporation in Hyderabad, our lawyers kept asking for our fathers’ and husbands’ signatures. This would not be possible, we explained. This started a long line of questioning and a lot of laughter as to why a single woman would start a business. One of my most memorable experiences in this regard came when I tried to get a wifi internet card from Tata Indicom. As I was applying, the staff kept asking me funny questions about my living situation, for example: Did I stay with someone?, Where did my family stay?, etc.
When they finally learned that I lived alone and did not have a husband, they triumphantly proclaimed, “Ma’am, you will need to fill special application. This is the spinster application!”
Of course, the irony of all of this is that women in India and Indian women around the world are incredibly accomplished. At the highest levels, you see amazing women as leaders in business, politics, law, medicine, science and academia. So, I wonder why do I not encounter these women more often? Are there too few of them? Are they only at the huge corporations, but not in the small and medium businesses that I interact with? Are they not in my sector? Are they not in my city?
Perhaps after a few more years here, I’ll understand. But at the end of the day, I’m not too bothered and recognize that all I have to do is accept the reality and move forward. Sometimes standing out disadvantages you. Sometimes it helps. At this point, my primary focus is making my business a success, regardless of the roadblocks or how I am perceived.
I devote much more energy to thinking about how to build a company that creates opportunities for my clients (both male and female business owners) to succeed. It is a task that is easier said than done, especially given the divisional realities I’ve observed: Having spent less time in the public sphere, women tend to have less local knowledge, such as where to go for certain goods, who to contact for certain services. Women and men come into GreenMango with very different salary histories, which seems only partially due to their work experience levels. As we build up our team, there are certain positions where I know a man would be more traditionally suitable. And I also know that the way I handle hiring decisions is what impacts whether or not women like me will continue to be anomalies in Hyderabad.
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Yesterday I suited up in my shalwar kameez and GreenMango uniform and joined my team for their daily fieldwork. As we made our way through the slow moving Hyderabad traffic, someone started a discussion on marriage. And then one of my female staff members, who often goes to temple, said, “Actually, madam, we are also praying for you that you will have a marriage!” We all had a good laugh.
When I decided to move to Hyderabad, India, I knew I would not exactly be the norm. I would be a single, Caucasian woman running an internet business for low-income clients. If anything, I figured I would stand out because I wasn’t Indian or because I wasn’t from Hyderabad.
In fact, it’s being a female entrepreneur that makes me an anomaly. Some 95 percent of the meetings I have in a given week are with businessmen, nearly all of our company investors are businessmen and my most trusted advisers are businessmen.
When my business partner (another woman) and I went for our legal incorporation in Hyderabad, our lawyers kept asking for our fathers’ and husbands’ signatures. This would not be possible, we explained. This started a long line of questioning and a lot of laughter as to why a single woman would start a business. One of my most memorable experiences in this regard came when I tried to get a wifi internet card from Tata Indicom. As I was applying, the staff kept asking me funny questions about my living situation, for example: Did I stay with someone?, Where did my family stay?, etc.
When they finally learned that I lived alone and did not have a husband, they triumphantly proclaimed, “Ma’am, you will need to fill special application. This is the spinster application!”
Of course, the irony of all of this is that women in India and Indian women around the world are incredibly accomplished. At the highest levels, you see amazing women as leaders in business, politics, law, medicine, science and academia. So, I wonder why do I not encounter these women more often? Are there too few of them? Are they only at the huge corporations, but not in the small and medium businesses that I interact with? Are they not in my sector? Are they not in my city?
Perhaps after a few more years here, I’ll understand. But at the end of the day, I’m not too bothered and recognize that all I have to do is accept the reality and move forward. Sometimes standing out disadvantages you. Sometimes it helps. At this point, my primary focus is making my business a success, regardless of the roadblocks or how I am perceived.
I devote much more energy to thinking about how to build a company that creates opportunities for my clients (both male and female business owners) to succeed. It is a task that is easier said than done, especially given the divisional realities I’ve observed: Having spent less time in the public sphere, women tend to have less local knowledge, such as where to go for certain goods, who to contact for certain services. Women and men come into GreenMango with very different salary histories, which seems only partially due to their work experience levels. As we build up our team, there are certain positions where I know a man would be more traditionally suitable. And I also know that the way I handle hiring decisions is what impacts whether or not women like me will continue to be anomalies in Hyderabad.
More...