WOMEN SPECIAL ......WOMEN IN CHARGE.... ‘Women have to prove their worth repeatedly’

WOMEN IN CHARGE ‘Women have to prove their worth repeatedly’     As a woman, you have to prove over and over again that you are better than the best,” says Arundhati Bhattacharya, who on October 1 became the first woman head of the country’s biggest bank, the State Bank of India (SBI), and the first woman to ever lead a Fortune 500 company in India.     There’s always skepticism about a woman’s ability, she says. “Often, people wonder if she can give the time required at work, given also her responsibilities at home. So a woman has to prove her worth over and over again each time she’s given a new responsibility, especially when she is at junior to mid-level positions,” she says.     Bhattacharya unceasingly proved her worth, never holding herself back from a challenge. Many women, she says, pull back, feeling they may not be up to the given task. “There’s always this feeling that I have my family, so will I be able to manage my family as also do this work? One of the big lessons I have learnt from my life is that things are never as difficult as they seem. When you actively plunge into it, you realize you can easily do it,” she says.     Another big lesson followed from that: Once you deliver, people quickly change their opinion of you and become very supportive. “After some time, my reputation preceded me each time I was given a new posting.”     Bhattacharya has been an SBI lifer. She grew up in Bhilai and Bokaro Steel City, and then went on to do higher education in Lady Brabourne College and Jadavpur University in Kolkata. She joined SBI as a probationary officer in 1977 and gradually took on bigger and bigger responsibilities. She is said to have played a key role in creating three of SBI’s newest subsidiaries — general insurance, custodial services and the SBI Macquarie Infrastructure Fund.     According to the government’s original rules, Bhattacharya would have been the only one eligible to be chairman following the retirement of predecessor Pratip Chaudhuri. But the government changed those rules to bring three other SBI managing directors into contention, and there were many who wondered if that was an attempt to keep a woman out of the top post at the 206-year-old bank. But she won that final battle.     Bhattacharya says the support of her spouse, an IIT professor who now has his own venture, and that of many of her friends and colleagues have played a key role in her success. Public sector bank jobs involve regular transfers. “That meant a lot of compromises, for me and for my husband and daughter.”     When she was posted in Lucknow and was traveling to Gorakhpur, her daughter who she had left behind in Lucknow fell ill and had to be hospitalized. Friends took care of her. Once when she was manager in a small branch, her husband who was in Kolkata had an accident and she had to rush. Her colleagues helped her out. “My friends have helped my daughter in certain areas more than I have. What these have taught me is that you need to be good to people. There will always be times when you need their help.” Sujit John & Shilpa Phadnis TNN 131118