IT women fight for a fair cause

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Bangalore, Nov 19: Software professionals in Bangalore may have spurned trade unionism, but they have not lost faith in the power of collective bargaining.

Women software employees in India’s IT capital have come together under the banner “The Working Women of Electronic City And Hosur Road” to fight for better road infrastructure. The harrowing hours in traffic snarls on potholed city roads – that affect their family lives as well – has forced female staff in Electronic City, Bangalore’s IT hub, to close ranks and fight against infrastructure bottlenecks.

Prime industrial clusters of IT, biotechnology and garments employing a quarter million people, half of them women, are located along the Hosur-Bangalore National Highway-7, one of the busiest roads in the country.

A delegation of senior women executives from companies including Wipro, Conzerv, HP, Infosys and Viteos is taking the lead to get justice from civic authorities. They recently met Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy, his mother, and other government officials with an appeal to save them from traffic disruptions.

Infosys’ Aruna Newton, who spearheads the battle told FE, “People leave home as early as 5 am and get back by 10 pm. They lose time with their families and this takes a toll on their mental health and productivity at work in the long run. There are many cases of miscarriages with expectant mothers spending long hours on bad roads every day.”

The rank of the women’s army for better traffic has been swelling by the day, with 500 employees having already joined the bandwagon, Newton said.