DEFYING TABOOS

Neerja Birla's playbook has been to pick up causes which bear a societal stigma, normalise conversations around them, and then scale.

- By Ajita Shashidhar

OVER 75% OF Aditya Birla Education Trust's (ABET's) employees are women, in sharp contrast to the male-female ratio of most Indian workplaces. In fact, at ABET, women talk openly about stigmatised topics such as menstruation or menopause during meetings. “The men in our organisation are conditioned to freely discuss these topics with their women colleagues,” says Neerja Birla, chairperson and founder, ABET. Birla, who also features on Fortune India's Most Powerful Women 2025 list, believes these are important conversations which have been buried under the table for too long, and need to be urgently mainstreamed.

But isn't it far easier for a woman-dominated organisation to have these conversations at ease? Does the male-dominated world at large even understand the challenges of menopause, leave alone mainstreaming it? That is exactly why one needs to educate organisations and leaders, Birla emphasises. “Not enough is spoken about menopause. It is a bigger taboo than mental health. Everyone talks about anxiety and depression; nobody talks about peri-menopause and menopause, or the difficulties women go through at this stage in life.”

After making conversations around mental health acceptable not just in workplaces but also in rural India, Birla's next bet is to make topics such as peri-menopause and menopause subjects of boardroom discussions.