“Women have always been in decision making roles and in various industries - NGO, Education, Corporate, etc. and with time more and more women are seen in such roles. However, the struggle is almost the same for all in this male chauvinist system. A lot of men are not open to women progressing in their work, or cannot accept constructive criticism from them, nor their ideas. Most of the time it's seen that they find a way to dismiss the ideas. And my personal struggle has been two-folded; firstly, young and second, a woman giving directions to men twice her age! And having a gentle voice makes it a little difficult for me to get the work done!”
I am supposed to be writing an article right now on women empowerment, on working women, on the number of women making differences (sounds too fancy?). Besides, that statement above? That’s not mine, that is a statement made by someone who spoke about the experiences gathered from her three generations of employed family members, all females.

It might be meaningless when I say this but I'm already a day late, and why exactly am I late? We will  find out shortly

I wanted to avoid writing another research paper on women employment confused with empowerment. And hence, I decided to rather cover the experiences by collecting different observations from women working in different sectors, and in different positions. My topic is not really   about how many women in our society are employed, instead, it is meant to cover how many of those employed women are actually empowered. And to validate that, I decided to connect with the working women in my network (partially the reason why I am late). One thing I must mention is that while covering this piece, I came across something worth writing which is, as a society, how confused we are about the term ‘empowerment’. Nonetheless, that is a topic we will get into, slowly.

Entering the ecosphere of career, passion, and being independent I wanted  to observe what the successful women in this part of the world did to be who they are today. While I kept my eyes open to see what they did, I also observed that there were only a few quantifiable numbers of female figures who made it to what we may want to term as “top the success ladder.”

Now, what am I supposed to feel seeing that, as women, we definitely made it, but not enough? Somewhere around the ladder, we are still lagging behind. Regardless of all the barriers the generations before us have fought and crossed, some of us are still unsure if we can make it. “Of course, it feels less confident, and there is a constant fear of being bullied for being alone or the only girl in the room. Although, sometimes the “some of us” feel proud that at least they  are not backing out. Coming from a complete IT background and working on something completely unique and business-based has definitely led me to unlearn and relearn a lot, and here is what it also made me, observant. Now that I see pictures of both the industries, I can say none of these actually consist of a proper number of female leaders in the top management. The colleges have a great number of female students graduating, in fact, more than males. But once you are expected to hit the career, this number only keeps decreasing.”

A thoughtful statement, don’t you agree? I mean, all that hard work, four-years of education and then where are  you off to? If almost all the industries are lacking the female workforce in the top management, where do these ratios reduce? And why? I have had some acquaintances also question that if corporates tend to have only a certain number of females in their top management for the sake of proving women empowerment, what happens to the number that passes through entry and mid-level?

Again, thoughtful question.

However, the other side of the coin is also that, some extremely successful female leaders also go through mansplaining (yes, this word is a thing- where a male explains something to a woman in a manner that is condescending) more than we care to acknowledge. Not just that, some of them have even lost a certain position/promotion because they were on “maternity leave”. Some sectors even hesitate to appoint female force for such biological reasons. How are we even focusing on ‘women empowerment’ if we devalue them for the very womanhood?  Are we really talking empowerment here?

“I loved my job and honestly, it was the safest and comfortable place to work at. When I joined in 2013, the ratio of female to male baristas was tiny. The number of female workers was the least in an administrative position or higher position such as manager, a shift in charge or even as trainers.” So here is another side, regardless of the profession, as we already know by now that this minority seems to prevail across most of the industries, if not all but, with a different perspective towards their workplace. Makes us think, if are we really to blame it all on the other gender?

Coming back to why I was late to submit this piece. If we observe the statements and observations above, that I have collected from different people, how many unique issues do we come up with? How many did you come up with? Statistics from various sources prove that  female employment is definitely increasing but what we haven’t found yet is if that is increasing the empowerment. And again, what exactly do we even mean by empowerment here? Putting all these in one, a piece in itself is not quite fair, and making all these so concise took me more than I thought. Yet, this one piece is not enough.

“With time more women will be in a decision-making role. Women need to be assertive, strong-willed, patient, and fully confident.”

As I end here for today, I am still stuck on the question concerning the number of women decreasing after the entry and mid-level. I am still stuck as to whom to blame for this reduction. I am stuck as to where exactly should the beginning of “women empowerment” be?

* The statements mentioned are kept anonymous on request of the people interviewed.

Sanjida Tanny is the Founder of Contentier (more known as The Raconteuse/Storyteller) and a passionate Art Curator