Compiled By: Xama Mehta
About Xama: She is an experienced, progressive Assistant Manager Human Resource at eInfochips. She has worked for over 9 years across several domains – Employee Relationships, HR Operations & engagement.
Ever wondered how a matriarch or the female-dominated world would look like? Well, growing up, I didn’t.
This decade, times seem to be changing, with us, women, successfully breaking the shackles of poverty, discrimination and biasedness.
However, our objectification, body shaming, casual sexism, racism etc., still plague the society we all talk about making” safe” for us. Ironically, some of the decade-old, best Bollywood movies have brilliant(read: highly misogynist)dialogues.
From late Sridevi to Kalki Koechlin, to Farhan Akhtar and Aamir Khan, today’s celebrities have begun questioning the patriarchal norms.
The boss. The wife. The mother. The daughter. There’s hardly any role we haven’t played, hardly any battle we haven’t fought, any profession we’ve not been in. Still, especially in India, our leaving houses to pursue our dreams remains underappreciated.
We today do not want to snatch away the rights or roles of men, we want a middle ground: Equality.
The most powerful women across the world: Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand; Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany; Damilola Odufuwa and Odunayo Eweniyi, women’s rights advocates, Nigeria; Kamala Harris, US vice president-elect, Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at University of Oxford and co-founder of Vaccitech, UK and many more, are our idols. They inspire us to grow, voice our opinions, and show how we can make an explosion even with a single match.
Over the years, our political participation worldwide has continued to grow.
As of July 2013, 35 countries, including nine in Africa, had national parliaments with at least 30% female representatives.
Countries now comprise quotas to secure our political participation. Instances of women climbing up include –Hillary Clinton, Janet Yellen, Angela Merkel, Sheryl Sandberg and others — and on their terms, are increasingly more common.
Horrible statistics today about violence against us have a silver lining — that violence is being reported– contrary to centuries of hush and approval of the arm-twisting we’ve faced.
Metoo and Time’s Up movements have strongly opposed misogyny and male chauvinism.
We today are leaving no stone unturned to ascend the corporate ladder.
“You can find me somewhere in between inspiring others, working on myself, dodging negativity, and slaying my goals.”
Nothing could have better condensed the lives of those employed amongst us than this Pinterest quote.
The persistent pandemic has compelled us all to reconsider working, thinking of downshifting, or quitting jobs altogether. Battling gender and racial discrimination for years, the locking down of schools and daycares has amplified the toils today.
Early AM, late or sleepless nights, cooking, retaining a healthful and active lifestyle, ensuring everyone at home has it easy, heeding work meetings – is our life in a nutshell.
The go-getter ones amongst us are trying their best to be hands-on mothers, mentors, and whatnot- being a jack of all trades and mastering them all with efficient time management.
FinTech undoubtedly seems to be a male-dominated industry. With only a small number of us working in FinTech with even fewer of us as Founders, we can say that we have an underrepresentation in this arena too.
We make up just 7% of the total pool in Fintech globally, which speaks volumes.
Louise Brett, Head of FinTech and Financial Services Innovation at Deloitte, believes that by identifying some necessary steps we can take to start levelling out these gender diversity issues, we can safeguard the fintech industry’s future.
She adds in FemTech Partners: breaking down barriers, “we’re seeing some innovative solutions emerging already. One firm is offering double finder’s fees to employees that recommend successful female job candidates.
Another is reviewing all its job descriptions to ensure the language appeals to female applicants.”
“We need to apply the same principles to solving this problem, as we do with our product: test and learn. The first step is to make a conscious effort to rebalance gender inequality in Fintech. Then we can start to identify what’s working.”
However, with women like Anna Maj – FinTech Leader at PwC and Senior Lecturer at CFTE, Cordelia Kafetz – Head of Fintech Hub at Bank of England Eva Wong – Co-founder and COO, Borrowell, and many more goddesses embodying strength and power, our future in FinTech doesn’t seem very grim.Reflect and hear us.
Listen to our struggles and dreams.
Give us wings to fly, roots to grow, reasons to come back and watch us break free!
