Exclusive: Author Bee Rowlatt tells us why India is better for women than the UK or the US

Bee Rowlatt is a writer and journalist who is known for her current book, In Search of Mary which is inspired by the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, who is called the first feminist.

She has always been the harbinger of Women’s rights, and now that she is settled in India, she’s helping women with an employment startup Sheroes, where she helps recent mothers or mothers-to-be to find flexible and rewarding work.

ALSO READ: Exclusive: What moms want from the Budget 2017

Rowlatt talked to Business Insider during Jaipur Literature Festival where she was talking on the ‘Mansplaining’ panel.
Here are the excerpts from a conversation about womanhood at work.
Rowlatt finds a lot of difference in culture especially when it comes to working moms,’’Motherhood is idolized here. As a journalist in the U.K., we didn’t want to divulge into our parental status as it made us seem distracted. In India, a young woman is asked about her marriage and then, when she plans to conceive quite often, which is uncomfortable.’’

ALSO READ: Take a tour of OYO's attractive new property: OYO Townhouse
She also thinks that Professional Indian women are more confident in putting their word across in a professional setting. ‘’Currently, I’m helping mothers become financially independent with Sheroes and I find that they are much more professional and straightforward about their career compared to the U.K.’’
An encouraging prospect is that technology has enabled women to work from anywhere,’’Gig-economy flexible working suits a lot of women.’’
The only question is why do they leave the workforce after marriage?

ALSO READ: India vs. the US: Healthcare industry

" They go and get an MBA, then they get married and then they leave the job! I’ve been told that the family structure in India is not very supportive of working women. Family relationships are very different in Britain and it must be hard to defy your parents or in-laws to work,’’ she laments.

Women Leaders

‘’Political women leaders, business leaders, and spiritual leaders have a lot of power in India. For example, in the U.S.A., the idea of a woman president is not widely accepted and the conversation is very gendered,’’she signs off.