It's Time to Empower Women at Workplace. Things to do!

I was surprised by a message in my inbox from a lady who, out of frustration, cried her heart out to me.

“I am in my early 30s, with a good experience of working with IT companies, I am really upset with the scenarios today. I have been promptly rejected by several companies just because I am married. They have their strict policies to hire more men and no women who are married or have kids. Career history doesn't matter, my experience is of no real worth because I am married now!”

This particular message, made it all boil down to a fact that education didn’t matter if you are born a woman.

Being in the managerial position at ProofHub, I am always eager to create an environment that would help women be empowered. And we follow the same here. With this, it was surprising to me that an imbalance against the women in the corporate workplace is still in existence. When looking at statistics, I think we still got a long way to go.

• Women constitute around 48% of the Indian population, but their participation in the workforce is much lower.
• There is a 21% pay gap GPS -0.36% between female and male workers.
• Women with full-time jobs still earn only about 77% of their male counterparts' earnings.
• 62 million girls are denied an education all over the world, and former first Lady of USA Michelle Obama started shining a light on this issue through her Let Girls Learn initiative in 2015.
• A third of business have no women in senior management roles.
• Women lose out on senior roles because they have to leave employment to raise a family.
• Being underrepresented in leadership roles, only 14.6% of executive officers and 4.6% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. And with this rate, surprisingly it is estimated that women will not achieve leadership parity until 2085.

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Women empowerment is the need of the hour, be it in education, home, IT industries or the film industry. Emma Watson in her speech in 2014, talking about women empowerment, spoke of the cases when she was discriminated, treated and paid unequally for being a woman. Though slowly over the years, situations are changing as women are opting to work breaking through the glass ceiling, there is a lot to be done more.

You can take a number of steps to empower women at the workplace:

1. A supportive environment that actively empowers women to lead by encouraging mentorship and collaboration, nurturing family life with benefits like flexible working schedules and on-site childcare.
2. Promote gender equality by making sure that esteemed women are given rewards at the workplace, promoted to the top managerial positions.
3. Encourage women to make the leap, take more chances and go for opportunities they desire.
4. Provide equal pay for equal work, based on experience level, with zero exceptions. No gender pay gaps.
5. Tell them to contribute their voice, vocalize their ideas and not just agree with their male counterparts.
6. Be transparent about desires to make a change, and then follow up with a real action.
7. Celebrate and integrate the unique perspectives that a woman brings to the business.
8. Stop thinking of them as a woman, think of them as people.

The Future: Empowered Females

Let’s bring in a new era for girls and women empowerment. In the coming years, hope females go even further, reaching new heights that they haven’t yet seen. Organizations should do the purposeful by setting targets to get women into leadership roles. Create an equal-level playing field for both men and women.

Cheers to womanpreneur!

Author Bio:

Vartika Kashyap is the Marketing Manager at ProofHub and has been one of the LinkedIn Top Voices in 2017. Her articles are inspired by office situations and work-related events. She likes to write about productivity, team building, work culture, leadership, entrepreneurship among others and contributing to a better workplace is what makes her click. Follow her on Linkedin.