IT NASSCOM Women Leadership Summit

The summit was to spotlight the challenges women face in their career growth and how they can be addressed. The chair person for the summit was Kiran Karnik (President NASSCOM).

The first speaker was Narayana Murthy..I entered in the middle of Narayana Murthy's presentation (was a bit late - big jam on airport road:-( ). He told about different policies in Infosys..

The second speaker was Hari, HR Satyam. He talked about how telecomputing has changed the way we work.... most of the companies now have work from home. In his opinion, to be sucessful, we should be ready to let go of what is known and grab what one doesn't know...

The next speaker was Rosalyn O'Neale- CEO Barnes O'Neale & Associates.. I loved her speech so much that I will devote 70% of this post on what she had to tell..She first talked about "Gender bias".. She defined gender as "a particularly powerful lens through which all of us see and organise reality". Qouting her from now.. "The moment a baby is born people around announce with glee "Its a girl or a its a boy", the first message it gets is of its gender, we don't get an announcement like "she is a pontential engineer". The gender message is also conveyed through family and society.. The gender bias that exist is because of our conceived perceptions .. when a little girl falls, she is hugged, pitied for the small blood loss, whereas when a little boy falls and cries, he is told "little boys don't cry". Women are identified with attributes like "gentle, emotional, compassionate, collaborative" while men are identified with attributes like "aggressiveness (they play rugby), competitiveness, action oriented, individualist". She showed us an image of a brain (blue color) and asked us to identify if it belongs to a man or a women.. ofcourse we can't say that seeing an image...

She then talked about "Gender Stereotyping" .. Ultimately stereotyping undermines and undervalues women's leadership qualities. This stereotyping unfortunately is not just from men at workplace.. women are equal culprits...she sited an instance where her female colleague once stated "I don't a want a woman boss anymore.." That colleague has generalised and made an opinion - typical stereotyping. She also cited a humourous example of Senator Hillary Clinton.. people say that she is tough person ... not warm enough..unlike most women.. Hillary Clinton replies "You elect me President and I will become warmer".. Rosalyn also quipped that her husband, Mr, Clinton had got too warm ;-) This example was just to cite that if u r not warm its stereotyped as a male attitude and if u r too warm u still come under criticism....

"Lack of network"
I liked this quote ... "In the rarified upper reaches of high altitude careers, when the air is thin - men have a much easier time finding oxygen". She cited examples where when u talk to a guy about certain issues his eyes rollback and give a blank look and he says "oh ya.."

She went on to explain the positives of women workforce - some data which suggests that women remain in same job 2.5- 4 times more time when compared to their male colleagues. Its because of their nature ..women in general think deeper and take more time to arrive at decisions.. Another strong point in women is their inhrent capacity to multitask.. their different roles as a wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, mother etc make them more adept at multitasking.. also she sees others viewpoints with fairness, she is able to adapt more easily with lesser complaints ..this again is due to her different family roles.. She went on to explain how successful companies like IBM, Intel, HP, Motorola have leveraged talent and made the workplace better suited for women.

Other tips she gave - Trust ur instincts, n/w and support, don't be limited by cultural stereotypes, study- learn and grow...

She ended with this quote
"Today is all we have
Yesterday is gone and nothing can bring it back
Tomorrow is only a dream
Today is all we have to do things the best way"

Other speakers were Kalpana Morparia- ICICI Bank, Sangita Reddy- Apollo Health Street, Pari Sadasivan- IBM, Kalpana Sharma - The Hindu.

The last session was on "Glass ceiling for women leaders in Industry - Myth or reality?" This was more like a debate session with Kalpana Sharma as moderator.

There were two workshops of 80 people each ... Suprabha, Asha and myself (3 of us from Nokia) attended the training on "The power of networking and persuasive communication ". The other workshop was "Recipes of success : An interactive session with women leaders in IT"..

More on the workshop in a separate post later..