My design thinking expertise brought me to attend a Business Women's Network get together. I with some of my peers conducted a design thinking workshop for a bunch of women in network. We moderated the participants to brainstorm on several topics related to women in business (or the lack of em).
While I have been a member of this network for a while, I had never attended their events. I always meant to, but my intentions never resulted in actions.
Here in Germany and many other parts of the world, there is a big ongoing debate and discussion about having too few women in leadership positions and in some industries, a pure lack of women in the workforce. IT being one of them as 'engineering' traditionally is a male dominated field.
Given where I come from, it is really strange to see how big a deal this is in the so called 'developed' world. This is the world where the society is supposed to have evolved. These are the countries where women's liberation movements happened. These a countries where women enjoy a much better position in the society than in many other parts of the world (my country included).
Yet, ironically, even here there are systemic issues that hamper women from achieving their potential.
Despite plenty of benefits provided by the German government to it's citizens to encourage them to have kids, it is still not making much of an impact. The support system needed for a woman to go back to work and have her child be taken care of is not very efficient and is not very accessible to many. Besides, I learnt about a social stigma working mothers need to overcome too...
This in a developed world is not very encouraging.
In India, given it's 'developing' status, my impression is slowly but steadily more women are joining the workforce. Relatively speaking, women in leadership positions are fairly okay in the private sector and quite good in the world of Politics. We have a support system that works - the parents/ in-laws usually are more than willing to take care of their grandkids (that's often the preferred option). Additionally there are plenty of kinder gardens and domestic help available. So working women do get back to their jobs. The government of India has also given some benefits to encourage women to work.
The irony here however, is, given the population we are, the number of women who do make it to the workforce is still relatively small. Those who belong to this group are still a privileged few who have been blessed with encouraging parents and a supportive ecosystem to get there. Our issues are more upstream. We struggle with social issues like female foeticide, not providing education to the girl child and many other typical issues of a patriarchal society, which somehow seems to take pride in itself - even in it's ills.
Some might say this is the Yin-Yan. To me, I still prefer to have some basic human rights and the ability to make my own choices.
While I have been a member of this network for a while, I had never attended their events. I always meant to, but my intentions never resulted in actions.
Here in Germany and many other parts of the world, there is a big ongoing debate and discussion about having too few women in leadership positions and in some industries, a pure lack of women in the workforce. IT being one of them as 'engineering' traditionally is a male dominated field.
Given where I come from, it is really strange to see how big a deal this is in the so called 'developed' world. This is the world where the society is supposed to have evolved. These are the countries where women's liberation movements happened. These a countries where women enjoy a much better position in the society than in many other parts of the world (my country included).
Yet, ironically, even here there are systemic issues that hamper women from achieving their potential.
Despite plenty of benefits provided by the German government to it's citizens to encourage them to have kids, it is still not making much of an impact. The support system needed for a woman to go back to work and have her child be taken care of is not very efficient and is not very accessible to many. Besides, I learnt about a social stigma working mothers need to overcome too...
This in a developed world is not very encouraging.
In India, given it's 'developing' status, my impression is slowly but steadily more women are joining the workforce. Relatively speaking, women in leadership positions are fairly okay in the private sector and quite good in the world of Politics. We have a support system that works - the parents/ in-laws usually are more than willing to take care of their grandkids (that's often the preferred option). Additionally there are plenty of kinder gardens and domestic help available. So working women do get back to their jobs. The government of India has also given some benefits to encourage women to work.
The irony here however, is, given the population we are, the number of women who do make it to the workforce is still relatively small. Those who belong to this group are still a privileged few who have been blessed with encouraging parents and a supportive ecosystem to get there. Our issues are more upstream. We struggle with social issues like female foeticide, not providing education to the girl child and many other typical issues of a patriarchal society, which somehow seems to take pride in itself - even in it's ills.
Some might say this is the Yin-Yan. To me, I still prefer to have some basic human rights and the ability to make my own choices.
