More than 200 women returned to work in 2018: Manjula Dharmalingam, Her Second Innings
Bengaluru-based Her Second Innings is on a mission to help women become financially independent, emotionally strong, and socially empowered. In this video interview, Founder Manjula Dharmalingam explains how they are achieving this.
The Women In Workforce Study, a HerStory survey on the state of women in India Inc, found that women, whether in a Tier II city, or an urban metropolis, face similar challenges at their workplace. The respondents unanimously agreed that more could be done to make the workplace more inclusive and diverse.
Not just in terms of diversity and equality, the challenges are multi-faceted for working women in India. Despite a growing economy, the female employment rate continues to be dismal. Take a look at the findings of the Economic Survey of India 2017-18.
According to the report, the female labour force participation (FLFP) rate has gone down from 36 percent in 2005-06 to 24 percent in 2015-16. The reasons behind these grim trends are many: lack of opportunities, gender parity, among others. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
Say hello to Her Second Innings
Bengaluru-based Her Second Innings is on a mission to bring women back to the workforce. The platform helps women become financially independent, emotionally strong, and socially empowered, while enabling them to resume their work and career after a sabbatical.
“Her Second Innings is a platform to get the women back to work. As the name suggests, when a woman goes on a sabbatical, they find it difficult to come back to the workforce,” Manjula Dharmalingam, Founder of Her Second Innings tells HerStory. “That’s one of the challenges we picked… why it should be a challenge for corporates, we thought let’s ease it out.”
She adds, “We created a platform where women can come back and upskill and reskill, gain the project experience, and then get back to the workforce.”
But Manjula's journey hasn’t been devoid of obstacles either. “I am from an IT background and it was the finance market where I failed miserably,” she says recalling the initial days of Her Second Innings in Mumbai between 2012-2014. Her ideas, however, took wings in Bengaluru and by 2015, Manjula says, people started recognising the company’s efforts.
“We have close to 8,000 women members in our community and last year, we helped more than 200 women get back to the workforce,” she adds.
Wondering how Her Second Innings is doing it? Definitely with a lot of help from industry experts, online sessions, and AI tools.
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“One of the initiatives Accenture helped us with was with a tool called Ease,” explains Manjula.
Ease is an AI tool, for the uninitiated, which could be used by candidates to brush up on the areas that require improvement.
“Women can sit in front of the computer and if they choose the path they want to take, the computer starts asking them questions. The tool records their gestures as well as their facial expressions and gives feedback on where they are good and where they could improve," she says.
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