International Women’s Day began in the early 1900s and is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality in every field. Supporting and celebrating women’s rights is not a day’s responsibility but a year-round responsibility of everyone.
In India, technical fields are considered to be suitable only for men. The social biasness, limited opportunities, gender gap, inequality and dissuasion deter women from choosing their right path. With gender parity and diversity women can contribute to an organization's success. With the talent latent in every woman an organization will record a significant increase in productivity. Equality in the workplace breeds higher job satisfaction, which, in turn, increases employee engagement and performance. Through this women's role are redefined in a society, creating a sense of social cohesion. With the changing time women have also proved their worth and have excelled in every role.
There are some powerful statements made by some powerful women leaders and for women. These quotes on Women's Day highlight the issue of gender equality that society is striving towards and celebrate womanhood.
Margaret Dsouza
HR Head, Flock
“At Flock, inclusion and diversity are vital to the culture of the company and ensuring the progress of women remains a key priority. Being in an innovative and dynamic sector, it’s important for the IT industry to create more opportunities for women to not only enter the workforce but also lead it. More initiatives and forward-thinking policies needs to be introduced for upskilling and leadership training of women at all levels. The company’s policies of allowing leaders to follow their natural leadership style, flexibility of work hours and location to maintain balance between personal and professional life – all contribute to creating not only a sustaining a conducive work environment for employees, both women and men, but also help them advance and thrive in their careers.”
Prasidha Menon
Global Head of Communications, OYO Hotels & Homes
“OYOpreneurs are the backbone of our company's success. We always strive to create an employee-first work culture and the approach is gender-blind. OYO fosters a culture that is inclusive and embraces gender diversity. Leaders at OYO promote gender diverse team structures across businesses and levels. This is true for my team across the globe as well which includes a great mix of talented and seasoned communication professionals. I believe that in today's day and age if one is focused, determined and owns the right set of skills for the job or industry they want to explore, they can chart a bright future for themselves, irrespective of gender.
At OYO, we are offering quality living spaces at affordable prices in the best locations around the world. And we are making this possible by leveraging innovative technology. Technology is deeply embedded in OYO's DNA. Our able team of engineers and data scientists enables us in taking ownership of the end-to-end customer experience, right from the search and booking process to in-room amenities, service-delivery and check-out. We map the customer journey to the smallest detail and provide moments of delight at each step.
I think women have the ability and innate power to do well in not just this industry but any industry or space, it is all about taking ownership of your own life and the choices you want to make and believing in yourself unabashedly. I think we, as women often undermine our own abilities and potential, and as a woman, I will always remind all my female colleagues and friends to take charge of their life, and question the societal norms, if and when needed and to follow their heart. We, as women have the ability to multitask, we are decision-makers, we have clarity of thought, we are able to empathize, but what we often lack is the confidence to do things the way we want, and stand up for our rights, whether it is a raise, a promotion or sometimes just having the confidence to present a counter opinion. So celebrate your strengths! More power to all the women who are turning the tide.”
Sheenam Ohrie
Vice President, Dell Digital, Dell Technologies
“To ensure diversity and gender parity, one must start by building an inclusive hiring framework. At Dell, if you want to hire somebody at any position externally or internally, we ensure that at least two women are shortlisted amongst the top 5. Our talent acquisition team ensures that the panellists comprises of women, who conducts the interview process.
A recently launched report by Dell Technologies - 2030 Progress Made Real, focuses on social impact goals and our commitment towards hiring, developing and retaining women team members. The aim is to have women account for 50% of the company’s global workforce and 40% of global leadership.
2020 marks the beginning of what we at Dell Technologies are calling the Next Data Decade, and we are no doubt entering this era with new and higher expectations of what technology can make possible for how we live, work and play. Our customers are the owners of this data decade, where they will disrupt their industries in a major way and our job is to ensure that nothing stops them from reaching their goals. Keeping innovation at core, Dell Technologies is integrating emerging technologies like AI, ML, robotics, blockchain, etc. to drive transformation for its customers. We are leveraging the data we have today to derive insights and create actions that will drive compelling experiences for our customers. Using data science to understand key influences and using machine learning to predict next best actions and identifying patterns are powerful capabilities, we are incorporating these into our transactional systems. We recently launched ‘Dell Technologies On–demand’, which is a set of consumption-based and as-a- service offerings on the industry’s broadest infrastructure portfolio. On-demand delivers IT with the agility of the cloud, and the control, performance and predictability of the on-premises infrastructure. Customers need on-demand and consistent infrastructure that can yield predictable outcomes across all of their clouds, data centers and edge locations. Dell is poised to help its customers via intelligent automation and unlock the full potential of data for better results and outcomes.
Lead from the front, be confident and continue to learn and unlearn. Define your happiness priorities and go out and achieve them. The world out there is ready to be conquered – what are you waiting for!”
Dr. Arati Deo
Managing Director and Lead – AI & Data Practice and Inclusion & Diversity, Accenture Advanced Technology Centers in India (ATCI).
“Be bold and passionate in taking up whichever career or area you want to pursue. Any obstacles, personal or professional, can be tackled through a problem solving mindset once you have self-conviction about your goals.
Today, most corporate and organizations have recognized the importance of inclusion and diversity in their workforce and the fact that these act as very strong innovation multipliers.
At Accenture, we have a publicly stated our goal to get to 50/50 gender equality by 2025, and to have more women at the highest level of leadership. Hence there is a strong focus on hiring, retention and growing women employees across domains.
That said, we also recognize diversity to be broader than gender diversity, and have many programs to attract talent from all segments of society, including PWD, LGBTQ and veterans.”