One of the major points of discussion was the need to break the “Glass ceiling” which is accepted by one and all but still needs a comprehensive efforts from the grass root level. Mrs Rajeshwari started the lecture with a lot of facts about the socio-economic standing of women globally. The revelation that meagre .3% of total executive work force constitutes women all over showed the grim situation in the era of globalization. She conveyed the point that the fight for empowerment has to be done at a war likes pace and then only the gap can be bridged. Presenting before us the data from UN she showed the severe level of disparity. Constituting the half of the population, their share of global income is just 10%.
To answer to the root cause of the problem, Mrs Rajeshwari conducted a group activity called “breaking the ice” which dealt with the contribution of internal fear. It was proved during the exercises that the hurdles which govern our actions are mere perception of our mind. Going ahead, she discussed with the students the effect of external factors in aggravating the problem. In her presentation, she discussed in detail on the issue of “emancipation of women in rural India”. To include the participation of women in strategic domain needs a lot of interwoven attributes to work jointly, both external and internal.
Achieving this goal requires some clearly defined measures and mechanism which include literacy and higher education, healthcare, greater work participation, knowledge of her rights, opportunity at higher positions, enhancing self reliance & dignity by encouraging self employment.
To present the whole process in a systematic manner she discussed about the steps taken towards women organization in our country. Step One included the formation of forums at tribal, rural, sub-urban, urban level in Phase1, in Phase2 at the state level, Phase 3 for the regions and Phase4 as national forum. Step Two was working on enhancing awareness amongst women by confidence building exercises, educating both male and female, changing the basic attitudes and values for acceptance and making them come out of the shell of inferiority. Step Three was about providing freedom to be involved in decision making in all the critical issues so socio-economic importance, self and the nation, physical or the psychological. Step Four is about reinforcement and continuous motivation to move on and bring a change and a paradigm shift in the roles of women in the society and their area of influence.
During the session she did another team activity “blind trust” to show that women trust more on men. While concluding she emphasised that anyone can reach at the top anyway but to sustain there one has to prove his worth and it’s the onus of future managers to take the charge and make every effort to make talent the only parameter not the gender.
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