Kuruleca: Share Your Experience and Mentor Younger Women
Women and men have been impacted differently by the pandemic. This week, SunBiz looks at how women’s leadership in any sphere of life whether its professional or personal level, is important now more than ever. Women are crucial to the recovery efforts Post COVID-19 .
In Fiji, two sectors that employed largely women pre COVID-19 and the hardest hit was manufacturing and the tourism.
Will we recover, yes we will but it will be a new normal.
Asian Development Bank Chief of Gender Equality Thematic Group, Samantha Hung, said: “Women’s leadership is often characterised with traits such as consultation, collaborative and participatory approaches, and also a focus on ensuring that nobody is being left behind.
“These are some of the leadership traits that have been associated with political leaders such as Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, where we all know that pandemic management has led to one of the lowest infection and mortality rates in the world.
“But most importantly, whether it’s responding to a pandemic, or leading a business, or leading at community level, there is a lot of evidence that shows gender diversity leads to positive outcomes. “Unfortunately, women remain largely under-represented politically with less than a quarter of women parliamentarians across the globe.
“Let’s hope that these positive role models of female leadership will become the norm in the new normal.”
SunBiz spoke to Kuruleca Consultants and well established psychotherapist and consultant Selina Kuruleca about the importance of strong leadership during the crisis.
What’s your advice to women who are trying to manage their family and their ambitious career in light COVID-19?
Family and career are important, give each committed time and effort.
COVID-19 is the current world affliction that we are fighting.
Family are the people that will and should always be there provided we nurture, care, show love compassion and kindness to and provide for, not only when it suits us, but at all times.
What would be your advice to: young women who have just started their career and upcoming:
Start by proper time management and prioritising. Some put off their having children because they pursue their careers, though its an individual decision.
I believe its important to be reminded that a family, having children has an expiry date - that is, a woman can only safely have children up to say mid 30s, but thereafter it’s considered a health risk and can lead to complications.
So don’t wait till it’s too late, your career will end, and if you don’t have children when it was your time to have children, then you will be alone for the remainder of your adult life after you are done with your career.
Of course we need to treat each case differently as some women may not be able to have children because of medical reasons.
Established women in the corporate world:
You got there by doing a few things right, share your experience and mentor younger woman. I think it’s important to have a balance between a career and family life.
Unconscious bias in the workforce, how can women escape this vicious cycle?
By speaking up.
By recognising that they worked hard to get to where they are, by educating themselves and their teams to look beyond gender, beyond sex, beyond race.
There is a lot of talk about creating sisterhoods and being the mentee and mentor. How will this create a more collaborative organisation, where we work effectively together first before we consider other gender (s)?
Thats an awesome concept that must be well managed and be developed from a place of genuine care and uplifting of other people. Ensure that by setting up such sisterhoods that we don’t end up self discriminating, because the self discrimination is as crippling.
Women tend to compete with each other. Can you give examples where it is beneficial to the organisation or where it hurts the organisation?
Beneficial when they then share their success stories and how they got there, building others up.
Hurtful when they feel like someone is always out to get them, this suggests a lack of self respect and worth.
Whether it is a man or woman we get to where we get through hard work, sacrifices, time management and strong support systems.
Women can break the glass ceiling and women have, but how do women stay on top and be equal partners with men?
Remembering how and who helped them get there; continued faith and belief, perseverance, determination, hard work.