Hello from Hamburg,
In December, the *Neue Zürcher Zeitung* published a story about eleven friends who worked as waste sorters in a village in the southern Indian state of Kerala and had won the equivalent of more than one million dollars in the lottery. What did they do with the money, and what are they doing today?
Of the approximately $60,000 that each of the eleven women received after all taxes were deducted, one built a shrine to protective goddesses to ward off misfortune from her family. Another enabled her niece to attend a secondary school. A third bought her nephew a rickshaw so that he could work a few hours a day despite his illness. The women have also renovated houses, bought refrigerators and smartphones, or paid off debts incurred from the medical treatment of a daughter who lost a leg in a train accident. Only one-third of the Indian population has health insurance, and families take on heavy debt for complicated surgeries. Escaping the debt and poverty trap after such a misfortune is nearly impossible. For all eleven friends, winning the lottery did not lead to early retirement. They all continue to sort trash, and one of them turned down an offer for a better-paying job because they value their camaraderie and their work together. One of them is quoted in the *Neue Zürcher Zeitung*: “I have to use this money to support everyone in my family. Everyone is struggling. It doesn’t help if only one person is better off.”
Around the same time the article was published, I visited executives at a textile company in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu in December. The company ensures that premium fashion brands in Europe are supplied with goods manufactured in India at the right time. It was one of the first to prioritize the highest standards in terms of environmental sustainability and working conditions. I have been advising the management of this rapidly growing company on strategy and leadership practices for ten years. We met on site to mark the tenth anniversary of the company’s in-house production.
In addition to working with the executives, the program included a weekend excursion with a hundred employees to a resort (where I shared a double bed with an anthill; our nighttime coexistence went off without a hitch). After a prayer at the Hindu temple and the offering of lemons to the gods Shiva and Ganesha—whom we had invoked for a safe bus ride—a fun anniversary celebration awaited us, featuring numerous team-building activities, karaoke, and other performances. The party had been organized by a festival committee consisting of female employees and a few female executives. What was striking was the pivotal role that women played both in organizing the event and behind the scenes.
At the evening buffet, they made sure all their male colleagues were taken care of before helping themselves. While the men left the ballroom during the performances—which had been prepared with such passion—to enjoy the whiskey being served in abundance outside the door, the women stayed behind—out of respect for those who had put so much effort into the event. The highlight of the evening was a satirical take on teamwork within the company, in which a well-known Bollywood TV series was reimagined with the company’s employees in the lead roles. The script was written by female colleagues.
On the sidelines of the event, I shared my observation about the strikingly strong commitment shown by the women with the staff and mentioned the story of the female lottery millionaires, which everyone was familiar with. When I asked whether women in India tend to be more community-minded than men, a male executive from the textile company answered in the affirmative. And why? One of the female employees on the merchandising team shrugged: “The boys are treated like princes from a young age. They get everything; they’re allowed to do anything.” This understanding of gender roles has been passed down from generation to generation. Incidentally, playing the lottery has been banned in most provinces of India since time immemorial, one of the women who had taken the lead in organizing the celebration told me. If men won the lottery, the money would tend to be squandered quickly. Some would stop working as soon as they bought a ticket—in anticipation of the jackpot. Given these circumstances, might women be better leaders? And why are there so few of them? Being a leader, a female colleague said, means having power, and men simply claim that power for themselves. Fate. But that’s beginning to change, even in everyday life. Several male colleagues told me that, unlike their parents’ generation, they start their day by getting the kids ready and taking them to school—something that used to be unthinkable in rural areas, as it was considered purely a woman’s job.
The textile company plans to recruit more women for leadership positions. This is no easy task in the traditionally conservative rural state of Tamil Nadu.
Having more women in positions of power could also benefit other parts of the world, if we take a look around. Let’s make 2024 the Year of the Goddess Durga, who is revered for her courage and her ability to defeat evil and find inner strength.
