26/07/2020
We would like to thank all our speakers for their invaluable input for the 4th and final session of WEDO presents "LeadWomen" - Webinar Series on Women Empowerment Season-1. Very thought-provoking material indeed. In order for our audience to have a recap of the discussion, we have summarized the discussion as a list of insights. Until we're back with Season-2, let's look back on the 4th session of Season-1!
1. It is an irrefutable conclusion from the narrative of humankind’s march through history until present day society, that women empowerment should be the first step to a civilized, progressive society. It is a fact that leadership positions are still dominated primarily by men. However, with more and more capable women competing with men of the highest caliber for leadership positions, we have seen substantial increase in female representation. The perception that being a leader is a man’s job still lingers, and will linger for a fairly long time, realistically speaking. Women need to take that perception into stride, and with grit and determination, must appropriate that perception into a favorable one by setting an example for all to follow. And to change other people’s perception of you as a woman, you need to change their definition of what a woman is.
2. An organization must be built on a set of common values and must conduct itself with those values to achieve a common purpose. Women leadership and female representation in leadership roles, be it commercial or political, has increased by quite a bit in recent times. And the organizations who have elected a woman to be their leader, have benefited greatly from their merits as women leaders. It is partly because these leaders have been producing the best results given the resources they had at their disposal by encouraging participation and constructive dialogue between leadership and operational personnel, and partly because these women leaders actually strive to be more inclusive and utilitarian. These extremely humble women strive to stay humble in order to avoid complacency, because it inhibits growth.
3. Women in leadership positions and other positions of privilege should understand how much value creation they can bring about by leveraging their assets and privileges to extend resources and opportunities to underprivileged women in their communities, in an attempt to help them make a positive change in their lives. There is no shortage of women who lost the lottery of birth and were born into families that were already surviving harsh lives under the poverty line and with minimal scope for growth and/or development. The social status of these women tends to dramatically increase once they learn to become financially independent and can support themselves. So women and men who have had the support that was necessary for them to pursue a life of challenges and growth opportunities to get to positions of high influence, should respond compassionately to the socially and financially disadvantaged.
4. Men are generally more emotionally averse to change, and women are almost naturally predisposed to handle change constructively. This transformative leadership on the part of women has always proved to be very effective in times of uncertainty and precarious paradigm shifts. It may be partly due to their abilities to rapidly adapt to a change in environment, since they have to adapt to a different life so often. Men need to be desensitized to sharing professional and social spaces with women as peers and not subordinates. In this regard, more open mindedness and tolerance towards women in leadership positions must be exercised.
And that concludes our first season of “LeadWomen”, a scintillatingly insightful account of the strong values, virtues, grit, resilience and determination that a woman needs to internalize in order to lead on all fronts. We have had four sessions featuring 13 women in leadership positions who have provided us with diverse real life experiences of growing up and navigating social and professional lives as a woman, not all of them very pleasant. These women have discussed several common issues that women have to face growing up and in their social and professional spheres, and have shared how they chose to handle these difficulties at the time. We believe that these insights into our speakers’ minds will help aspiring women identify with their struggle to achieve and as a result, take on a constructive and systematic approach to their objectives. We cannot emphasize the importance of networking and mentoring the empowerment of women everywhere. We need only provide them with examples to follow, and resources and opportunities to utilize.
Have a happy and fulfilling Eid indoors preferably, and we will see you again when “LeadWomen” is ready for a 2nd season. Thank you all so much!
