For Indian women jobseekers, COVID has been a mixed blessing

Remote work has allowed more Indian women to take up paid employment but also increased competition and their workload.

In 2019, Chandni Kripalani was juggling being the mother of a one-year-old girl while trying to forge a new career as a freelance consultant. She approached a potential client, a global development agency in the Indian city of Gurgaon, that was looking for help with a strategy shift. The agency delayed the project by a year and then the coronavirus struck. As much of India and the rest of the world had moved to working from home to block the spread of the virus, Kripalani was able to convince the agency to take her on. She says she would have had a “much more painful” conversation with the agency regarding her need to work from home if the project had gone ahead according to its original schedule. Technology has helped to convince organisations such as Kripalani’s client to make the transition.