My Journey to the Top

The question of balancing children and career is always posed to women, but men have children, too, so it's an issue for men as well. Areva now has seven in-house day-care centers for employees. It's a project I started back in 1999 and I'm rather proud of it. We also have a gym and a butler to run errands for employees. Providing such services is a win-win situation: the employee is happy and more available for work. I don't like to waste time because I like to be home in the evenings. I've worked at companies where people took long lunches and left the office late because it gave the impression that they worked a lot. I don't like that. I like to make every minute count.

Mayawati Kumari
Chief minister, Uttar Pradesh

I was born into a Dalit family in Delhi and grew up with eight siblings in a modest home in a crowded neighborhood.

My father worked as a low-paid clerk, and my mother, an uneducated woman, toiled hard to run the family.

We would often spend our holidays in our grandparents' village in Uttar Pradesh. During these trips I became acutely aware of the oppression that the Dalits in India faced. When I was in eighth grade, I began noticing that our relatives' huts were always in the most neglected and impoverished part of the village. Invariably, the Brahmins and upper castes would occupy the best houses and plots of land.

This is so outrageous and unjust, I thought. I knew I was one of them, but in the anonymous city I didn't face such violent discrimination as these poor, illiterate villagers. My heart ached, and I asked my father if I could do something to help. My father told me that without a proper education, I would not be able to do anything to help our people.