The Economic Times Women’s Forum 2019 took forward the mission that it launched last year — to collaboratively and urgently build a sustainable culture of empowering India’s half a billion women — through a scintillating day of conversations and debates about encouraging greater participation and reducing gender inequality in every sphere of life, work, and play.
Understanding the issues that are proving to be barriers to empowering women and providing relevant solutions will be the key to creating new leadership with the right skill sets, said women leaders.
Thought leaders driving several successful initiatives for women through organisations such as Facebook and SEWA Bharat as well as international forums like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said that a deep dive into women-centric issues is required to put together a set of solutions that will ultimately create impact on the lives of women.
“There is no formula for empowering and mentoring women. You need to learn what the need is. Unless we understand the problems, we cannot come up with solutions,” said Sanchita Mitra, national coordinator, SEWA Bharat, in a panel discussion on New Leadership: Skilling and Mentoring the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs.
She recounted her experience when she started visiting girls’ homes to understand the reason behind low response to one of SEWA’s initiatives. As she puts it, the programme could not have moved ahead without a granular understanding of the baggage and barriers. According to Kanta Singh, gender lead, UNDP, information is the first key barrier as women and girls don’t always know the right sources to get it from.
“Empowerment will be knowledge and skills-driven and that’s where we are working,” Singh said. We need to understand what their aspiration and dreams are… We will fail our girls, if we don’t act now.”