As part of our Women's Day Special we asked a working mother to express her views on work-life balance and the challenges faced by women at the workplace.

Of course, most of them are fairly competitive as well! Add to this the fact that a significant part of our collaboration has to happen with corporate headquarters around the world (anywhere from 6 to 13.5 hours behind Indian time) and you don't have a good recipe for work-life balance! Since we all don't look like gnomes and actually do have families or friends (at least a few outside the workplace :-)), there is some obvious evidence that company culture and policies allow seemingly conflicting work life parameters to co-exist with personal life.

A lot of this is achieved by a simple but powerful facet of a company's culture: allowing significant freedom for an employee to manage his work schedule and environment.

In addition, most IT companies also work on providing a large number of benefits geared towards enabling the productivity of the employee. While this is a big help for the working woman and/or mother, work-life balance is still a struggle for many of us.

As a mother of a toddler, working at Microsoft and also married to a Microsoftie, I find that the lines between work and personal life are constantly blurred. So what are some of the most challenging aspects of my life that I can wax about, while also talking about what approaches made a positive difference?

Being the only woman in the room

No, you are not the elephant in the room. But I can empathise with why you would feel that way. The key is to remember that any number of people (more so men than women) feel this way. Conversation, body language and assertive discussions have helped me to build confidence so that I don't feel like that elephant.

For most of us, these skills are learnt. At a minimum, I would recommend starting with The Fine Art of Small Talk by Debra Fine. Getting people in the room to listen to you hinges on two things: do you usually say something useful and does that help move the discussion forward? To quote Susan RoAne, 'Be Bright, Be Brief, Be Gone'!

Where's your network?

Believe me, being in the old-boys network is not as much fun as it is made out to be. But you can still benefit from it -- ask them to be your mentors.

At Microsoft, our career model profiles call out how to perform in your job today so you can be promoted tomorrow. If you see yourself being a (insert job title) tomorrow, then what do you need as skills to get there? Sometimes you need a mentor to even make this list. Then you would need different mentors for some of those skills.

The earlier you are in your career, regardless of your profession, much of your focus is on tactical execution. As you move up the leadership chain that changes into defining the strategy (even if you don't own the whole strategy!) and determining what the steps are to execute on that strategy. At this point, you need very different skill sets -- those of persuasion, assertion, collaboration, creating group consensus, and so on.

Diapers, dinners and conference calls

Women continue to underestimate their contribution to the workplace and to society. A few years ago, on a trip to the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, I met up with an ex-colleague from the Microsoft office in Hyderabad. A young girl, only three years out of college, made a statement at dinner that made me choke: "I plan to quit in a few years and get married. I just don't see myself being effective at work and at home after marriage".

Clearly there is still a lot more to be done to change culturally and socially ingrained beliefs that drive our sense of identity. Forty years after the bra-burning women of the sixties; we still had to see the day when a Pink Chaddi campaign and a Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose and Forward women (check out Facebook.com) had to be created.

Many women would unanimously agree that children get them to think, 'I cannot carry on'. I know I have felt it often enough!

That's when your partner is vital -- is he going to pitch in and be more supportive? I know many men who would say they are very supportive of their partners, but I do not see that support from these same men when the rubber meets the road, when diapers need to be changed, when running noses need to be wiped and when school gets off early. So your choice of partner is really important, but one hardly falls in love or asks these questions at the interview before an arranged marriage, whichever may be the case.

As in all things, one needs a dash of luck, a teaspoon of spirit and a bottle of fearlessness!

How do I get that corner office?

There is no silver bullet for this either. If I could have prescribed this for men; then I could have given Tony Robbins a run for his money.

There are things we need to do to enable women as a group and things each of us need to do simply as individuals who need to excel: speak up, be assertive, go the extra mile and deliver stellar work, think about how you present yourself, verbally and physically, and so on. What we especially need in software development is to 'bring synergy out of diversity' (quote from Sandra Dawson), from both men and women. In developing new products, one can do analysis, research and create personas of the customer. But you always get that extra edge when you have a real customer at the table.

And consumer research shows that more than 50 per cent of all buying decisions are heavily influenced by a woman -- even if she is not spending the money! The cycle of product concept to retail shelf space to a happy customer using the product would be much shorter if we had more trained and successful women in the workplace. On, On!

Reader invite:

Do YOU have a view about how YOU handle work-life balance and the challenges you face? What should women do to empower themselves? If YOU have an opinion, please write to us at getahead@rediff.co.in. Don't forget to mention YOUR name, designation and photograph and we will publish the most articulate entries beginning March 9.

The author is a senior programme manager at Microsoft India Development Centre. Prior to joining Microsoft, Mythreyee has worked with Wipro [Get Quote] Systems, Bangalore; Coopers & Lybrand and PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Philadelphia. She completed graduation in Computer Science from BITS Pilani, Rajasthan and a Masters programme in Boston, US.