The unfortunate truth is that, though women have progressed to a fuller development of themselves as people, most Indian men still remain opposed to their female partners’ financial independence and their freedom to pursue their careers. Very few men are willing to share in household duties and childcare. They expect their wives to put their careers on hold if family matters demand attention. This has led to unhealthy conflict between the genders with more women opting to remain single throughout their lives in order to pursue their careers more actively. The female career issue has split up many a married couple and has led to a higher rate of divorce and more single mothers. It seems, that barring a few lucky couples who are able to maintain dual income jobs along with their kids very effectively, many women who are serious about their careers and expect to reach a very high level within them, may have to sacrifice their personal lives in order to allow their careers to develop fully. The lack of support that working women still face in India is distressing because it forces many women to make choices that may occasionally lead to a rather isolated lifestyle. In extreme cases, such severe conflict arises between the woman’s career and her home life that she is driven to commit suicide or suffers emotional and nervous breakdowns frequently which impair her quality of life. Men still perceive themselves as the main breadwinners and they tend to make fun of working women, or harass them sexually, confident that their female colleagues could not possibly be serious rivals for them at the workplace. This leads to ugly situations arising where men may deliberately gang up on a female colleague and try to force her to resign.  

Working Indian women are constantly torn between a desire to prove themselves in a man’s world and also retain their own dignity and feminity as wives and mothers. Indian industry still has to make more allowances for the childcare aspect of women’s’ lives and needs to provide more maternity leave, flexi time, work-from-home options and in-house crèches.  

In spite of problems, Indian women are achieving steadily in many professions, some more traditionally female-dominated like nursing and teaching, others more male-dominated like IT, Science and Engineering. Many women are making it big in the media-based industries and also in retail, hotels, travel and customer service. Writing and filmmaking have become popular among Indian women along with modeling and acting. Since a career is a source of development of the person’s intellectual, creative and financial worth, it may become much more popular among modern Indian women. They are now more prepared to leave home and hearth and brave the travails of the outside world and this is reaping big dividends on the work and financial front for many of them.