Women in Leadership Roles and Nay-sayers

This is an era for women in Pakistan to create history. It started with Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto to not just become the first women head of government of Pakistan but also the first woman prime minister of Muslim World. Treading on the heels of Benazir Bhutto, six more Muslim head of states were produced comprising Mame Madior Boye of Senegal, Tansu Ciller of Turkey, Kaqusha Jashari of Kosovo, Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia and Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina Wajed of Bangladesh.

Then we heard about Dr Shamshad Akhter becoming the first woman governor of State Bank of Pakistan. Yet another history was written when Pakistan’s premier business association, The Overseas Chamber of Commerce & Industry, appointed its first ever women CEO Unjela Siddiqi, followed by the appointment of Jehan Ara, the first paid CEO of Pakistan Software Houses Association. Last but not the least, Mrs. Nasrin Haq has become the first woman to head Karachi Port Trust as Chairperson. The story about installing women in high-powered decision making positions thus goes on and on. It appears as if Pakistan has become conscious of the power of women and hence bringing the female talent to the fore to head various institutions of significance.

Although the recent history of most Muslim countries points to a poor track record in engaging women as productive contributors to their economic and social prosperity, some recent trends point to a positive shift. Some leading women executives serve as role models and inspiration including Guler Sabanci, Chairman, Sabanci Holding (Turkey), Nahed Taher, Founder and Chief Executive, Maha Al-Ghunaim, Founder, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Global Investment House (Kuwait), Lubna Olayan, Chief Executive, Olayan Financing (Saudi Arabia.), Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi, UAE Minister of Economy and Planning, and Chief Executive Officer of Tejari (an online B2B marketplace).

Pakistan is widely recognized that although female participation in the paid labor force is increasing, it is still at a low level. According to Federal Bureau of Statistics, Pakistan’s labor force survey, only 0.3% employers are female.

Notwithstanding the huge women population in Pakistan with a flagrantly paltry female workforce, we are indeed changing—from the notion that women got married, had children and stayed home. Still we have a long way to go to ensure the best talent makes it into leadership positions. Women in leadership roles continue to be an important topic for top professionals and women themselves. Not just a matter of fairness - it makes good business sense to retain and promote the best talent, irrespective of gender.

Through and through in a male dominated society like Pakistan, for women acquiring leadership roles, is like a hard nut to crack. Such women, who acquire top slots in organizations, have to confront a perfervid repugnance from male peers. Despite Mrs. Nasrin Haq represents an acronym of extraordinary academic credentials and well practiced knowledge in road, rail and sea transportation, a campaign of vilification and contempt has been launched against her.

Verily, Nasrin Haq must be confident in her leadership abilities, not letting nay-sayers stand in her way. She can take the lead from Fran Keeth, the CEO of Shell Chemical, who faced incredible resistance from executive officers at her company, but she just kept doing the best job she could, and doing it with a smile. It took her some doing to get herself accepted and earn her spurs. She eventually became accepted.

Women leadership can also learn from Carleton Fiorina who was chairperson of HP—world’s second-largest computer maker. With close to $50 billion in annual revenue, it's one of the 20 largest companies in the world. Carleton Fiorina was crowned the most powerful woman in American business by Fortune magazine. She also played a critical role in the spin-off of Lucent Technologies Inc. in 1996. Taking over at HP in 1999, she was thought by all to be the one who would rescue the faltering computer giant—and she gracefully did it.

Nasrin Haq needs to break down the glass ceiling right through using leadership skills that have taken her to the very top of the KPT. Indeed women such as Nasrin Haq have beaten the odds by delivering above average results, their industry knowledge and superior leadership abilities.

The critics of Nasrin Haq should get to know that full participation of women in decision-making processes has been recognized as a human right in international human rights conventions and global policy frameworks and as critical for the achievement of gender equality.

The outcome of the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, the Beijing Platform for Action, considered the inequality between men and women in the sharing of power and decision-making at all levels as one of the critical areas of concern for the empowerment of women. It also noted that women's equal participation in decision-making is not only a precondition for justice or democracy but is also a necessary condition for ensuring that women's interests and rights are taken into account. Without the active participation of women and the incorporation of gender perspectives at all levels of decision-making, the goals of equality, development and peace cannot be achieved.

In the 2005 World Summit, Member States reaffirmed that the full and effective implementation of the goals and objectives of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was an essential contribution to achieving the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals. To put this commitment into practice will require that women have equal opportunities to participate fully in all decision-making processes.

The dilemmas faced by women in terms of assuming leadership roles, climbing the corporate ladder and contributing to decision-making processes in the organization are, anchored in the socio-cultural context as well as in the maps and definitions they carry from the past.

Despite their comparable qualifications, however, female managers are not entering the highest leadership positions at the same rate as their male counterparts. At the start of the 1990s, only five of the Fortune 500 industrial and service companies had female CEOs, and of the highest paid officers and directors of the 1,300 largest industrial and service companies, women made up less than 0.5%. The numbers have improved, but another survey found only 11% of Fortune 500 board members were women. These statistics raise the question of why women have encountered limited access to senior leadership roles. Perceptions, rather than reality, may be the answer.

Just as successful managers are defined in masculine terms, perceived leader effectiveness is also associated with male characteristics. Masculinity in male and female leaders is perceived by all subordinates as effective, whereas female leaders displaying feminine characteristics are not seen as effective. Especially in cases where they occupy highly male-dominated leadership roles, women are vulnerable to “prejudiced evaluations and lowered effectiveness.” In leadership positions that are rarely held by women, and that perhaps as a result become strongly associated with male characteristics, women may need to display masculine characteristics to be seen as effective. In fact, current advice to women adopts this strategy. Women need to be assertive. Men in the business world often misjudge women's behavior style ... as an in ability to lead.

We recognize that women leaders in the public sector face the same challenges as their counterparts in the private sector in terms of breaking through the class ceiling. The limited career opportunities is an issue, the constraint of traditional gender roles is another.

In keeping with the quote of Dr. Shamshad Akhter, “Even in traditional societies, the widening of women’s horizons and the promotion of their confidence and social awareness can facilitate women’s involvement in community affairs and even in the leadership of their communities.” She also said, “Don’t just promote women for the sake of promoting women. Promote competent professionals. By design you will promote women who have contributed substantially to the good work.” Dr. Shamshad Akhter has always moved up through merit and being a female did not really help her to get to the giddy heights of glory, for she probably deserved them by virtue of her commitment and hard work.

The challenges to increasing female participation in mainstream economic activity, and the creation of leadership within women entrepreneurs, are manifold. These challenges range from social taboos; conservative lobbies; lack of access to education, information, and finance to discriminatory behaviors by male counterparts, severely inhibiting the ability of women to develop leadership skills and to participate in the policymaking process. Yet another complexity is the non-existent gender focused institutions such as women chambers, which generally act as facilitators in networking, mentorship, and learning opportunities.

The corporate sector of Pakistan stands to benefit from these trends in increasing and improving their productivity as well as applying diversity in their capabilities. In more conservative societies, entrepreneurs stand to gain by engaging women in a culturally sensitive way and leveraging technologies such as the internet to enhance their participation in the economy and society at large.

The Government also needs to recognize the key role women can play in communities and society at large. We want to see more women in key decision-making positions. This is crucial if we are to ensure we have policies that deliver for women. (www.asifjmir.com)

Child Labor

We often hear about goals of education relate to ‘meeting our children’s needs,’ ‘responsible citizenship’ and ‘equipping students for the future.’ Yet, what do such goals mean when millions of our children are forced to work? How much actual attention is given to the circumstances of this segment of our future? How much consideration is given to the needs not only of this generation but future generations? How seriously do we care about human values when we see around innocent child laborers selling newspapers at traffic lights, serving tea at kiosks, or weaving a carpet? Is this the future we are talking about? How might we enhance the quality of our responses to unmet poor children’s needs? How might we begin to contribute more effectively to building cultures of peace and sustainable futures? No easy answers.

That the shameful practice of child labor should have played an important role in the Industrial Revolution from its outset is not to be wondered at. The displaced working classes, from the seventeenth century on, took it for granted that a family would not be able to support itself if the children were not employed. The children of the poor were forced by economic conditions to work, as Charles Dickens, with his family in debtor's prison, worked at age 12 in the Blacking Factory. In 1840 perhaps only twenty percent of the children of London had any schooling, a number which had risen by 1860, when perhaps half of the children between 5 and 15 were in some sort of school, if only a day school (of the sort in which Dickens's Pip finds himself in Great Expectations) or a Sunday school; the others were working.

Child labor is a pervasive problem. Children work for a variety of reasons, the most important being poverty and the induced pressure upon them to escape from this plight. Though children are not well paid, they still serve as major contributors to family income in Pakistan. Schooling problems also contribute to child labor, whether it is the inaccessibility of schools or the lack of quality education which spurs parents to enter their children in more profitable pursuits. Traditional factors such as rigid cultural and social roles in Pakistan further limit educational attainment and increase child labor.

There are 19 million working children in Pakistan, 7 million below the age of 10 and 12 million between the ages of 10-14. Everyday sun sets by shoving over 100 children into the labor market. The number of child workers under 15 years is estimated to be not less than 8 million. Punjab accounts for 60% of the total child labor. More than two-thirds of child laborers are working in the agricultural sector. Of 20 million bonded laborers 7.5 million are children and 1.2 million children are bonded in the carpet factories. Nearly 250,000 children working in brick kilns are bonded laborers, driven into a miserable state by the fact that their entire families have been 'pawned' to the owners by virtue of their having pledged their labor in return for some money taken. Children are sometimes kidnapped to be used as forced labor.

The newly emerged affluent class in urban cities employs some 6.7% of female child workers in domestic help. These domestic workers generally have to work for 15 hours a day, seven days a week.

Bonded labor, a contemporary form of slavery according to the UN definition, unfortunately holds strong in certain sectors in Pakistan, such as brick manufacture, construction, sports goods manufacture and carpet-weaving.

Demand for child labor is so high that children are often sold by desperate parents. They are then forced to work long hours, day and night, unable to attend school, and often subject to abuse and malnourishment. This perpetuates a cycle of poverty since most of these children never get the education and training needed to obtain a livable wage.

As a peace educator, human rights activist and a father of seven year old son, I am the first to admit that we have done nothing to halt child labor and just about 19 million child laborers continue to work in Pakistan. What inconsequential the government has done is measly cosmetics. This is just to show to the West that child labor is not involved in the production of export oriented goods. We have done nothing to remove the horrific and reckless conditions that push children to child labor. Rather than working together to help build a better world, in which poor children have the possibility to live, to laugh, to play, to share, to care and to transform into responsible citizens, we may fatalistically accept a foreclosed future. Rather than building intergenerational partnerships, the well being of children today and of successive generations may be stolen or colonized through our lack of quality responses.

We can, we must, and we should stop the exploitation of children. In 1999, when the member states of the ILO unanimously voted to adopt Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, the world community made a commitment to stop the suffering of millions of children. It was recognized that ending the commercial exploitation of children must be one of humankind's top priorities. It was accepted as a cause that demands immediate attention and a high priority action. Caught in a nightmare that never seems to end, a significant part of Pakistan’s future endures the worst forms of child labor. More than just words and passing resolutions, child labor is a part of the reality of our world today. No one will say that children should suffer. No one will support that children should work 14 hours a day. But who will step forward to stop this? (www.asifjmir.com)