Question

Read the following situation and choose the best possible alternative.

Seema was a finance manager at an MNC and felt that gender discrimination at her workplace was slowing down her career. Frustrated, she quit her job and started her own company. When she started the company, Seema decided to keep an equal number of male and female employees. Over the last six years, Seema has become a very successful entrepreneur and has grown her business to eight locations across the country. Recently, however, Seema has run into an ethical problem: many of her female employees are not willing to travel between cities or work late hours, even though the job needs this, while her male employees do this without hesitation. Seema is now under pressure to reduce the number of female employees, but she also knows that hiring equal numbers of men and women was one of the strongest reasons she started the company in the first place. What should she do as a responsible woman entrepreneur?

• A. Check whether the unwilling female employees can be given roles that do not need travel and involve less overtime.
• B. Reduce the number of female employees since it has become a business need, without letting this concern affect her decision.
• C. Let the current situation continue exactly as it is.
• D. Hire only male employees from now on.

Hint:

Look for the option that keeps her original commitment to equal representation while still solving the real problem, which is a mismatch of roles, not the employees themselves.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

Step 1: Understanding the Question:
Seema built her company on equal representation of men and women, but now some female employees cannot take up travel-heavy, late-hour roles that the business needs. The question asks what she should do without abandoning the value that shaped her company.

Step 2: Key Idea or Approach:
When a policy conflicts with a real operational need, look first for a way to adjust roles or work arrangements before reducing anyone's opportunity altogether. The problem here is a mismatch between certain roles and certain employees' constraints, not a flaw in having equal male and female staff.

Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
Reducing the number of female employees directly undoes the founding principle of her company and unfairly punishes women for a scheduling issue rather than solving it. Letting the situation continue unchanged does not help, since the underlying problem, some employees being unable to do travel-heavy work, remains unresolved and keeps causing friction. Hiring only male employees from now on is an extreme step that permanently locks out women from future roles because of a problem that affects only some current employees, and it also does not fix anything for the employees she already has. The option that actually addresses the real issue is to see whether the female employees who cannot travel or work late can be moved into roles at the company's other locations, or given other assignments, that do not need heavy travel or long overtime, keeping the company's equal-representation policy intact while solving the practical problem.

Step 4: Final Answer:
Seema should check if the unwilling female employees can be given assignments that do not require travel and involve less overtime. This corresponds to option 1.