Ananya Nanda, Brand and PR Manager, Chowman Hospitality Pvt. Ltd

How does your workplace embrace equality?

Workplace equality is the crux of a healthy and positive work environment that we have at Chowman. In a male dominated hospitality industry where over the years men have been ruling the kitchen, Chowman as a brand has tried to break the cliche by employing women at the front end.

Chowman has more than ten women employees who are now heading the back-end team as the leader for Brand & PR, Human Resource & Customer Feedback Representative. This might be similar scenario for many other corporates and service sector. But for the front end, many renowned delivery companies employed women in the recent times. For Chowman, this was a concept internalised almost 12 years back. From delivery executives to cashiers or even Managers, we have recruited and promoted women who have exceeded our expectations and met with an excellent work efficiency.

Other than the recruitment procedure, the brand also pay heed to equal pay work force which is a must. In fact, most of our women employees are paid better than the male due to their higher designation, job role and proficiency.

As a woman, how do you make sure that you embrace equality? When you are the decision maker how do you make sure you are not gender biased?

Currently, the notion of equality is expanding as the female male binary is slowly dissolving. Gradually from the term feminist, people are slowly understanding and identifying themselves to as non-binary. As a woman, it’s easy to identify as a feminist. But we are all bad feminists. The idea of feminism is entirely based of equity rather than the struggle for hierarchical power where the later has now become the mis conceptualised crux of ‘feminism’. As a woman, it’s very important to take hold of the characters like kindness, forgiveness, strength and power to understand a scenario from a gender-neutral point of view.

Do you believe that gender inclusive policies are justified with an increasing number of women in the industry while still not being a 50% strength or close?

The gender inclusive policies are important to create a supportive culture that promotes inclusion and equality without any biasness. We need qualified men and women both to become a part of the workforce and drive the growth of the hospitality industry with their unique ideas and talent.

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