This fortnight's edition turns the arc lights squarely on the Forbes Asia list of 20 Power Women, three of them from India. The list includes women, like Indra Nooyi, who have climbed to the top rung of the corporate ladder after years of relentless professional achievements. Some women've taken charge of family businesses and carved out their own growth paths
One foot on the accelerator, one foot on the brake.
Go out and capture the crown but leave it in the garage.
Those famous, oft-quoted lines that allude to a work-family balance are from Indra Nooyi’s biography, My Life in Full (2021, Hachette India). They capture the dilemma of women achievers, including the former chairman & CEO of PepsiCo. While on the one hand they are encouraged to “soar in the outside world”, the other expectation of equal importance is to be a dedicated wife, mother and daughter at home.
Nooyi recalls the night she returned home after being appointed president of PepsiCo (in five years, by 2006, she would go on to become CEO). Here’s an excerpt that captures the rather anticlimactic reaction when she broke the news to her mother.
“Listen to me,” my mother replied. “You may be the president of whatever of PepsiCo, but when you come home, you are a wife and a mother and a daughter. Nobody can take your place.
(This story appears in the 26 January, 2024 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)