For all the lady bosses out there

Apurva Purohit, president of the Jaagran Prakashan Group dons many hats. One of them is of an author and her latest book is called ‘Lady, You’re the Boss!’, a sequel to her first book. It discusses the many challenges that women are faced with when they take an active and competitive part in the workforce. Purohit released her first book in 2013 called ‘Lady, You’re not a Man — the Adventures of a Woman at Work’.

Over a telephonic conversation, Purohit mentioned that she has always been drawn towards imparting insights to people through storytelling and that’s what her books aim to do. “All of us go through the same problems. In my first book, I addressed younger women who are, say, newly married and just entering the workforce. My second book addresses women who have been in their field for a few years, put in their hard work and they’re wondering what’s next,” she said. Her book covers a variety of topics ranging from Imposter Syndrome to menopause to team building exercises.

Purohit’s book references a statistic — a study on women’s participation in the Indian workforce conducted by Anupriya Singh from the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management — only 15 per cent of women in the workforce made it to the middle levels of seniority, 10 per cent reached senior levels and five per cent and less for CXO positions. “Workforces aren’t primarily set up for women. Women at senior levels at some point, become tired of biases — they’re tired of being the only woman in the room,” she mentioned.

She pointed out that women who are in leadership positions, are not talking about leadership. Purohit also said that the book is not just for women “It’s for anybody who is trying to build an organisation or for anyone who is attempting to create an ecosystem. They will find lessons in prioritising, focus, on how to measure performance and so on,” she said.

“The biggest insight I took from my life that I tried to impart in my book is that everything in life is a lesson. All the anecdotes in the book have subtexts of a lesson. The message I’m trying to send is that there are so many women out there facing the same problems. I want to give them a sense of hope, courage and optimism and embolden them to handle their problems,” she candidly shares.

She mentioned during the conversation that she identifies herself as a feminist and emphasised that anybody who believes in equality between the two genders is a feminist. Her book also briefly touches on the #MeToo movement and she calls it an outpouring of support and sisterhood and believes this kind of solidarity is what women need to foster.

‘Lady, You’re the Boss’ has been published by Westland Publications and is available for purchase on Amazon, Flipkart, and other offline bookstores for Rs. 250.