There are a lot of things that no one told you about motherhood — sleep deprivation day and night, hormonal imbalances leading to some women in high profile careers choosing to take a break from their demanding careers to look after their babies. The transition from a working woman to a stay-at-home mother is difficult but even more challenging is when these women opt to return back to work or look for flexible work options that offer them work — family balance. These women suddenly find the welcome mat a lot shorter or are faced with an absence of choices or even turned down for jobs. Unwilling to give up her job but faced with finding a right work option after becoming a mother, had one woman entrepreneur start her own enterprise Fleximoms to help women who had taken a career break return back to work which grew to become the larger platform Sheroes.
Sheroes, set up by Sairee Chahal, seeks to bridge the gap and make it easier for stay-at-home moms or those seeking a work-life balance to get back into the career groove or to find flexible job opportunities. “Everybody I went to high school with wanted to be doctors, architects or engineers and ultimately in a class of 25 only five women would work! That thought got lodged in my mind and Sheroes is a response to what I saw. It is built as a platform to make women engage with their careers and basically the whole idea of Sheroes is for women to custom-fIt their whole success!” The platform offers mentorship, career resources, skilling, jobs, franchise, work from home options and spans the length and breadth of a woman’s career. Sairee adds, “It is a massive eco-system for women! Yes there were challenges when I started the organisation. Getting companies to look at remote work as a possibility was difficult but now we are the number one platform for remote and flexi work options.”
Sairee loves donning different hats and she candidly states that she is a lifetime experimenter. A serial entrepreneur, mentor and a work flex evangelist, she is an M.Phil graduate from JNU and a PGDBM holder from IMT Ghaziabad. She learnt Russian and also co-translated a book, worked on a documentary called Holy Men of India and was a consultant with an MNC. She says, “I have always done diverse things; I started working when I was 21 and have always enjoyed learning and doing new things. Through all this I have been consistent about the theme of women in the work force.” As important as a career is, Sairee mentions, “It is important for women to retain their sense of identity and make conscious choices in life instead of being pointed out choices. Investing in one’s own interest in paramount!” Her busy schedules leave Sairee little time to enjoy free time but she is passionate about yoga and says, “If I had more time I would have spent it on yoga, reading, writing, my daughter and my dog. Travelling is something I do as a part of my work but I wish I could travel more for leisure.”
