Strength of a woman!

A new-age India witnesses the dawn of eve power... all the way!

As 4Ps Business & Marketing completes two magnificent years of its existence and we present our much cherished readers with yet another one-of-a-kind special feature – showcasing India’s forty most prolific women achievers under the age of forty – the occasion sweeps me with what is at once a sense of pride and pleasure at the giant strides that the Indian woman of today has paced forward within the last decade, casting an indelible impression of accomplishment in practically every realm of business and society. Be it the corporate arena, the fields of literature and art, sports, politics, information technology, entertainment or media, there’s more than the traditional handful of women flying the country’s flag high into the new millennium you could identify with, domestically and globally.

And while it may well be considered rude to ask a girl her age and weight, the gravity with which these stellar livewires have descended into public consciousness coupled with the magnitude of their achievements is impossible to ignore. We’ve basked in the now familiar glory of Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, whose efforts at Biocon made her the nation’s wealthiest businesswoman; Chanda Kochhar, Shikha Sharma and Renuka Ramnath – each a phenomenon in their own right who have spearheaded the ICICI success saga – Naina Lal Kidwai of HSBC and Vidya Mohan Chhabria of the behemoth Jumbo Electronics company, making it to the echelons of the prestigious 50 most powerful women in international business compiled by Fortune, a few years back. With these role models to emulate in the foreground, the present has been blessed with the phenomenal ascent of the young female Indian professional and businesswoman, catapulting into an erstwhile pre-conceived, male-dominated bastion of senior and top-rung management names like Madhabi Puri-Buch, Kiran Chhabria, Monisha Shah, Vedika Bhandarkar, Shireen Bhan, Ekta Kapoor, Barkha Dutt, Renuka Jaipal and Priti Nair Chakravarthy, besides dynamic young business leaders of the ilk of Sulajja Firodia Motwani, Pia Singh, Schauna Chauhan, Manisha Girotra and Pooja Jain, each a formidable force in their functional domain. Then there springs to mind the ladies to whom we owe international acclaim: the likes of Indra Nooyi, who rose to the position of PepsiCo’s global CEO last year and earned Fortune’s No.1 title for the Most Powerful Woman in Business (2006), Booker Prize winners Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai, Pulitzer Prize awardee Jhumpa Lahiri, to name a few. I personally have admired Rajita Chaudhuri (Dean-Undergratuate Studies - IIPM) more than most. Simply because of the fact that she not just makes an amazing teacher – where all her students that I have known swear by her to have made a difference in their lives most positively – but also her management and motivational skills are absolutely extraordinary. And also like most ideal a woman should be, she makes a great mother and wife who just brilliantly balances the entire mix of sheer brilliance of a woman.

Blessed as this trend is, and far too significant to form a matter of mere fluke, the fact remains that the quantum of women managers and leaders at the higher-ranking, strategic and directorial levels of corporate hierarchy is still sparse, internationally and more so closer home. Whilst globalisation and the arrival of multinationals in India has translated, over a period of time, into a stupendous number of opportunities and considerably led to moulding conventional mindsets towards women employees occupying positions of executive power and administrative influence, I believe that we’re yet to transcend nascence in this regard. And the benefits are only for corporations to revel in. At the risk of sounding a feminist, I feel we need to appreciate what is a well-documented truth: women possess the uncanny ability to accept and tackle situations in a more detached and rational manner than their male counterparts. They are known to discern with perfect clarity the objectives and output they desire, besides the very critical element of empathy and intuitive thinking they bring to the table as a natural attribute (and yes, on a lighter note, why do they always do better at studies?!). Think of it, if you were to design a marketing strategy for a consumer product knowing for sure that more than 50% of your target audience would evidently comprise the opposite gender, whom would you be better off hiring to create your blueprint?! So I say, shatter that proverbial glass ceiling with finality and think beyond the barriers of illiteracy and prejudice, with a line from Shaggy that goes out to all the women I know… So amazing how this world was made, I wonder if GOD is a woman…

Written On:

05-06-2010