SHILLONG: An empowered mother raises both male and female children as equals and thereby brings balance in society, observed, Dr Kshama Bhatia, International Business Consultant, adding that a weak mother nurtures weak, insecure children who later become delinquents. Dr Bhatia was facilitating the two day workshop, “Women in Leadership – the unknown woman” organized by the German Development Corporation (GIZ) and facilitated by the Baroda based Academy of Human Excellence at the Asian Confluence Centre, Shillong on Wednesday and Thursday.
Dr Bhatia stressed on need to identify the themes and issues that foster, develop and sustain leadership qualities in women. According to her, education is the most effective tool to ensure balance in every field of work. “We need to foster other women to come forward and take on leadership roles by addressing both culture and structure,” adding that even if the structure is in place culture often holds women back.
“Being a leader does not always mean holding a position of authority but making your voices heard and making your mark in the society,” Dr Bhatia said.
She spoke on the need to create enabling structures stating that women have a smaller pool to compete in unlike men. “So instead of asking, ‘What can I do? I am a woman’, we can say ‘So what! I am a woman!” she added.
Participants included an eclectic group of people from different fields including education, social work, students and academics, senior police and government officials who all participated very actively.
An interesting power point presentation which ended with the words, “Man and woman are like the two wings of a bird. Both wings are required for flying,” set the participants thinking about this complementary role of man and woman.
On both days the participants took part in role plays depicting difficulties generally encountered by women and how to resolve them without being aggressive but through a process of negotiation with the power holders in society.
One role play depicted the problem that career women encounter while trying to handle both career and family. Bhatia pointed out that women’s careers get punctuated at three levels – when they enter a career, then marry and get pregnant the first time and have to take maternity leave. When the second child comes its another punctuation point. The third point is when children fall sick and she needs to take leave. “A woman’s career graph is never a smooth. It slows down at various stages whereas a man’s does not,” Dr Bhatia said hence women need an enabling structural environment.
The difficulties that women encounter in a non-supportive household was also well articulated in the role plays. Lessons derived from the two-day session included the need for more capacity building for women, skill building, education, self awareness and also awareness of her own legal rights. Many of the women participants said that such workshops should include more men as well since in the quest for gender equity, the male has an important role to play.
The need for peer support groups for both women and men to enable them to deal with life and family crises came out very strongly. One male participant pointed out that women need to be able to negotiate their reproductive rights so that they do not need to sacrifice their careers on account of an unplanned pregnancy.
Participants said they found the workshop very reflective and practical. Their involvement in role plays made the learning more meaningful.
Meanwhile, Founder of the Academy of Human Excellence, Parimal Gandhi said every woman has a choice and that it was up to her to ask for help when she needs it.
Dr Kshama Bhatia also demonstrated how she enabled a young student who would not speak up throughout the day but later picked up courage to articulate what actually troubled her.