Corporate Gifts

I’ve been thinking: How come so much of what I observe and write about is related to my experience as a woman, rather than as a human being. Surprisingly, this wasn’t a topic that was even remotely top of mind for me while I was in the US. It seems to me that living in India, you get rubbed the wrong way at least once (if you are lucky) or more, every-single-day. And after 3.5 years of this, I’ve just had enough. With that preamble, let’s pick a non-India example for a change :).

On Friday, I gave a talk to a bunch of 20 students and 2 profs from an MBA school in the US. Any B-school class studying emerging markets end up studying India, and ends up visiting us as one of the interesting companies to profile. So, inevitably, we end up hosting quite a few such student groups. So, back to the presentation on Friday...

I spent over an hour talking to the students about the company, India, its economy, etc. At the end of it, one of the students got up and, on behalf of the class, presented a gift. This practice of giving a gift is rare and not followed by all visiting groups because of restrictions on corporate gifts, especially the value of it, which they keep below $25-50. In any case, upon opening it I found a USB stick keychain and a money clip. Both of these are made in a bulky style, of heavy leather with bold stitching in a very male style to say the least. It’s something that Arnold Shwarzenegger would have carried as the Terminator (in the first of the movie trilogy), if he’d wanted to seem stylish. Believe me, I don’t mind leather, but no woman would carry anything of this style by choice.

So, why is a business school, in the year 2008, assuming that this is an appropriate gift for a woman? If in their defense they say, well, we didn’t know that we’d be giving this to a woman – well then, why are they assuming that there won’t encounter any women presenters? Sure, the number of senior women in business is low, but it is not zero!

Thoughtlessness is very off-putting.

The same goes for all kinds of corporate gifts and paraphernalia: it is all designed for men. Two years ago, I was responsible for organizing an annual meeting for roughly 100 senior leaders of the company. It had been customary for my department to give out polo-shirts for all participants. I had received one such shirt the previous year. As with all corporate-wear, this stuff is designed for men; I have never seen a woman wear a company-logo shirt in this company or previous ones. Since no other alternative was available, I decided against giving out any shirts. When an attendee inquired about the missing polo-shirts, I told him that when the company starts stocking shirts appropriate for women also, I’d be glad to give them out. :)