Andhra Pradesh Innovation Society, the innovation wing of Sunrise State, Andhra Pradesh, is organizing the first of its kind initiative in Andhra Pradesh by supporting startups to connect with women who are desirous of resuming their career Post Maternity.
This initiative benefits startups and the women in parallel. With added responsibilities of motherhood, professional women aspire to find opportunities that would enable them to use their skill set while ensuring a work life balance. Startups would greatly benefit from the experience and expertise these women bring to the table.
Women have been closing the gender gap when it comes to education. On the other hand, many professional women significantly reduce their working hours or leave the ecosystem altogether after childbirth. Nearly 5.5 million women enter the workforce each year, but are compelled to leave their jobs for various reasons ranging from work life balance, lack of childcare support and cultural restrictions. Whereas by providing flexible working hours and work from home facilities, we can help women stay in employment even after the birth of their child. This has major implications for supporting mothers’ careers and enhancing gender equality in the ecosystem. This contributes to our understanding of flexible working not only as a tool for work-life balance, but also as a tool to enhance and maintain individuals’ work capacities in periods of increased family demands.
Andhra Pradesh Innovation Society is playing a key role as an enabler in this process by collecting startup resource requirements, mapping them with the registered, experienced women professionals returning back to work. On mutually evaluating the fit and expectations, startups enter into a contract with the women professionals for a time bound/goal bound engagement.
Project based assignments and payments enable startups to better manage their people cost while ensuring the quality is intact. The added advantage of working from home, flexible timings for the women would greatly support in further honing the skills and keeping them engaged in workforce. This would enable the women’s confidence to join full time workforce in the future.
Testimonials:
“The journey of a new mother back into workforce is currently frustrating with pay-cuts and inflexible working conditions. We intend to give our women the convenience and confidence to bring their newly mastered skills of multitasking, efficiency and compassion to workplace.”
– Vinutha Rallapalli, Associate Director, AP Innovation Society.
“Women are effective enablers and multi taskers, more so after childbirth and sabbatical because they know what it takes to drive a dream with meticulous time management. AP Innovation Society identifying this trait and empowering women is highly commendable.” – Deepa Balasubramanian, CEO, The Sedibus.
Registrations are open and women who are seeking to avail this opportunity can register on : http://bit.ly/balanceforbetter
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