A Series by Sushmita Chowdhary for WMN COMM: In this opening essay, the writer explores how respect, resilience, mental wellness, and lived experience shape authentic female leadership, drawing powerful lessons from defence life and the unseen emotional realities women leaders navigate every day. 

Leadership is often measured by titles, decisions, and authority. We notice a leader’s confidence, the way they walk into a room, and the way others follow. But behind many successful women leaders is a reality that rarely gets spoken about openly — the emotional weight they carry quietly, every single day.

That pressure is real. And it matters more than most people admit.

As I begin this series — Battleground to Boardroom — I want to write from the ground up. Not from theory or research papers, but from what I have personally seen, lived, and felt. Being a defence officer’s wife has placed me in a unique position. I have watched leadership not just in formal settings, but in kitchens, in empty houses, in women raising children alone while their husbands are stationed at borders. I have seen what real strength looks like when nobody is watching, and nobody is applauding.

The environment shapes the woman

One thing I keep coming back to is this — a woman’s confidence does not exist in isolation. It grows, or shrinks, depending almost entirely on the environment around her.

In many postings, I have observed women officers being genuinely included. Their opinions were sought. Their work was credited. Their ideas were not just heard but acted upon. And slowly, without any grand moment of transformation, these women grew. They stopped apologising before they spoke. They stopped shrinking in rooms where they deserved space. They led naturally, not because someone handed them a leadership course, but because the people around them treated them like their contribution actually mattered.

That is what a good environment does. It does not manufacture confidence — it simply stops destroying it.

The weight that goes unseen

I have experienced this personally, more than once.

During the years when my husband was posted in field and border areas, I stayed alone with my child. I managed the house, handled problems as they came, sat with uncertainty on many evenings, and kept things moving. Nobody gave me a title for that. Nobody reviewed my performance. But something was being built inside me during those years — quietly, without my full awareness.

What helped was not just my own determination. It was the kindness of the people around me. Small acts of respect from the community. Feeling that I was seen as a capable person, not just a waiting wife. That mattered far more than I can properly put into words.

And that is when I understood something that I now believe deeply — mental wellness is not only about self-care or rest. A huge part of it simply comes from feeling respected. Feeling like your voice has weight. Feeling like you belong in the room you are standing in.

What women in leadership are quietly managing

Today, women lead hospitals, companies, government offices, schools, and communities. The progress is visible, and it deserves acknowledgement. But beneath that progress, many women are still carrying something heavy and largely invisible.

A woman in a leadership role is often managing two things at once. Her actual work, and the constant quiet calculation of how she is being perceived while doing it. She thinks about whether she came across as too direct or not direct enough. She wonders if pushing back on something will earn her a label she does not want. She repeats her ideas in meetings, sometimes three times, before they get the same reception that a male colleague gets the first time.

This is not a complaint. It is an observation. And it has a real cost.

The pressure to appear endlessly capable, to never show frustration or exhaustion, to manage everything at home and at work without letting a single thing slip — this wears people down. Society praises women for handling everything. But it rarely asks how they are actually doing underneath all that handling.

Respect is the foundation, not a bonus

From everything I have seen and lived through, I believe that mental wellness for women in leadership is not complicated at its core. It is built on something straightforward — being treated with consistent respect.

When a woman’s judgment is trusted, she makes better decisions. When she is not made to constantly prove herself before being believed, she focuses her energy on the actual work. When her emotional labour is acknowledged rather than taken for granted, she does not quietly burn out.

These are not difficult changes to make. But they require the people around women leaders — colleagues, managers, families, institutions — to actually pay attention.

Where women stand today — and what still needs to change

The numbers look encouraging on the surface. More women in boardrooms, more women in Parliament, more women heading organisations than ever before. But numbers do not tell the full story.

The truth is that in most situations — at work, at home, in society — women are still proving themselves daily. A promotion requires more justification. An opinion requires more defence. A mistake gets remembered longer. A success gets attributed more easily to luck or support rather than ability.

Even in 2026, a woman walking into a room full of authority still has to establish her right to be there in a way that most men simply do not. That invisible extra effort — repeated across years, across careers, across lifetimes — is what holds women back far more than any single barrier.

Today’s society needs to genuinely reckon with this. Not with token gestures or one-day celebrations, but with real, sustained change in how women are seen, heard, and valued — in offices, in homes, and everywhere in between. Because women will not truly grow as leaders until the world around them decides to stop making them fight for the basic respect they already deserve. And when that happens, leadership itself will grow stronger — for everyone.

My perspective: what defence life taught me about female leadership

Living within the defence community gave me something I did not expect. It gave me a front-row view of female leadership in one of its most unrecognised forms.

The women I have known in this world — officers and spouses alike — were not leading loudly. There were no presentations, no performance reviews, no applause. They were managing relocations, raising children across unfamiliar cities, holding households together across long silences and longer distances. They were adapting to conditions that most people never face, and they were doing it with a composure that I find genuinely hard to describe.

What I noticed most was that the women who thrived were not necessarily the toughest or the most self-sufficient. They were the ones who were given dignity. Whose role was treated as important. Whose presence was valued beyond the functional.

In those conditions, something different grew in them. A kind of confidence that was not brittle. That did not collapse when things got hard, or when someone doubted them, because it was not built on external approval to begin with. It was built on the quieter, more durable foundation of being respected as a person.

That, to me, is what female leadership at its best looks like. Not performance. Not the constant effort of proving yourself in a space that was not originally designed for you. It is leading from a place that is genuinely yours — built slowly, through experience, through difficulty, through the simple and powerful act of being treated like you matter.

BATTLEGROUND TO BOARDROOM – A Series by Sushmita Chowdhary for WMN COMM

Every woman who has ever led — a home, a team, a life — knows that leadership rarely looks the way it is described in books. It is quieter. Heavier in some places, surprisingly light in others. It is built not in boardrooms alone, but in border towns, in empty houses, in the middle of the night when a decision has to be made, and there is nobody else in the room.

This series is about that leadership. The kind that is lived before it is named.

About This Series

Battleground to Boardroom is a series about women, leadership, and the inner life that makes both possible. It is written from personal experience — from years spent watching women in the defence community lead without titles, manage without recognition, and grow without fanfare.

Each article explores a different dimension of what it means to lead as a woman today. Not the polished version. The real one — with its doubts, its quiet strength, its invisible weight, and its genuine power.

The series does not offer formulas or five-step plans. It offers something simpler: honest observations from someone who has been paying close attention for a long time.