From Chalkboards to Cloud: A Three-Generation Journey of the Indian Working Woman

We recently celebrated the International Women’s Day at the Groupsoft and Compliance Cart office in Pune. What a wonderful initiative.

In retrospect, I find myself reflecting on the living history of the women in my own home.  Their stories, I think, are a fair representation of India’s journey — from the structured and stable life of the post-independence era to the high-velocity digital lifestyles we navigate today. So, here I am, sharing a few thoughts.

The Foundation: A Teacher’s Resilience

My mother represents, perhaps, the first wave of urban professional women in India. As a teacher, her workplace was defined by a blackboard and a bell. In those days, work-life balance was not a corporate buzzword; it was a survival tactic. She managed a household of four (not considering the month-long stays of our extended family during Diwali or summer holidays), travelled by public transport, and evaluated assignments and exam-papers after we went to bed.

For her generation, teaching was a respectable profession for women because it aligned with societal expectations of nurturing. Yet, her contribution was the bedrock of my education and our family’s upward mobility. She proved that a woman could command a classroom, a kitchen, and the family with equal authority, laying the silent foundation for the revolution to come.

The Evolution: The IT Professional’s Agility

Fast forward to my spouse, an IT professional who entered the workforce as India became the world’s tech back office. Her journey reflects the urban shift. Her classroom is a global scrum or a business transformation meeting; her blackboard is typically a Jira board or an executive dashboard.

In urban hubs like Bengaluru, Pune, NCR, Hyderabad, and Chennai women like her have rewritten the rules. They navigate the double burden — the pressure of high-stakes software delivery alongside the traditional expectations of home management. For her generation of women, the challenge is not just finding a job, but breaking through expectation paradigms and the mid-career glass ceiling. 

Today, women make up over 30% of the Indian IT workforce, the push is now to move from participation to leadership. I have been a witness to that.

The Future: The Student’s Ambition

Then there is my daughter, currently graduating from a professional institute. Her generation, the Gen Z, does not just want a seat at the table. They want to design the table. For her, technology is not a field; it is a language she has spoken since birth.

She enters an India where the women-led development narrative is gaining real traction (thanks to the preceding generations my spouse and my mother belong to). Her concerns are different. She looks for psychological safety, equality, AI-readiness, and ethical tech. She represents the shift from working for a pay check to working for a purpose. Well, the pay check is still important!

The 2026 Landscape: A Tipping Point

While we celebrate these triumphs, as someone that has witnessed three generations and has been part of a long corporate journey, I believe that the landscape for women, especially in urban India (if there is still a clear distinction between rural and urban India) is at a tipping point:

• The Rise of Emerging Tech: Women’s representation in roles like AI, Data Analytics, and Cybersecurity has jumped
• The Urban-Tier Shift: While metros remain hubs, Tier-2 cities like Jaipur, Indore, Kochi are emerging as new frontiers for women. Hybrid work models allow women to build global careers without leaving their local ecosystems.
• The Leaky Pipeline: We still face a challenge where mid-level women often drop out due to caregiving pressures. It is for the leaders to build ramps that allow them to return without losing much of their hard-earned seniority.
• The Equal Partnership: Today, parity at work is being met by parity at home. Whether sharing financial commitments, housekeeping, or childcare, the decline of the “second shift” model has created the mental bandwidth for women to lead.

A Message to All of Us

At Groupsoft and Compliance Cart, we are privileged to have a very capable team of women across software delivery, marketing, HR, and, of course, our CEO that has led Compliance Cart and the group HR from the front. I have had opportunities to have informal chats with some and learnt a bit about them – aspirations, challenges, struggles, and more. Inspirational. Kudos to you all.

Whether you are a mother, providing the foundational discipline; a spouse, navigating the complex present; or a daughter, dreaming of a decentralized, AI-driven tomorrow — you are the reason we innovate.

So, let us not wait a year for the next International Women’s Day, let us all commit to more than just a celebration. Let us commit to a culture where a woman’s career path is not a ladder she has to climb despite her life, but a journey that integrates with it.

Here is to all the women that have touched our lives or are around us. Here is to woman power!