Women — The Mantra Behind Success
By: Nidhi Singh
Tags: Women, Women In Tech, First Post, Women In Business

“I realized that if I was willing to step up and be in the spotlight, I’d be able to make everyone else around me much more powerful as well.” — Alaina Percival, CEO of Women Who Code

A little girl with a large mind-set was born in a small town in South India in the year India became a Republic. Being a studious and bright student from the beginning of her childhood, she had a keen desire to become an engineer. In spite of facing opposition not only from society but also from her own family, she managed to get into the engineering college. At that time, she was the only girl among 599 boys with no basic amenities for girls. With her strong determination, she faced every hurdle that bumped on her way.

She was consistently performing well and on top of her academics throughout college. After post-graduation, a scholarship to study in America was offered to her, but she went ahead with her job at TELCO becoming their first-ever women engineer altogether changing their hiring policies for women.

After her marriage, she motivated her husband emotionally and financially to start a company and played a key role in the company’s success and growth. Today that company is one of the leading MultiNational Corporation known as Infosys, now you might have guessed who that woman is all the while.

She Sudha Kulkarni Murthy is a crystal clear example to prove that women’s perspective is essential in innovation, creativity and relevance to business, products and services. Oops!! It seems I have revealed the identity myself for those of you who were not able to guess.

Anyways, this is just one success story, there are many happening around you every day — keep your eyes wide open looking for and making the next.

Women are integral part of success

Women now hustle the world economy

You won’t be surprised to know that women are the world’s largest and most prominent consumers.

As of 2020, woman comprises 48% of the Indian population and is known to bring into play a huge influence on all products and services. Women dominance is clearly visible in the purchases across most of the domains — be it home, home furnishing or automobiles or vacations and consumer electronics.

According to a study by Boston Consulting Group — a management consultancy, women contributed about $20 trillion in consumer spending in 2011 globally and that figure could climb as high as $28 trillion after five years. Their total yearly earnings of $13 trillion could reach $18 trillion in the same period.

The study points out that the “global women economy” is much larger than the total consumer spending in India and China put together.

Women contribute to larger consumer set [source: Harvard Business Review]

With the above facts, we simply cannot ignore or underestimate the female as a sizeable consumer set.

Knowing your target consumer and what they look for in the marketplace can be an immense source of advantage to the business.

Why women perspective cannot be overlooked?

Traits for effective business leaders

For succeeding in business and one’s career, technical skills and knowledge no doubt play a crucial role. But at the same time, we cannot deny the importance of soft skills. That being said, women already have an upper hand in soft skills and emotional intelligence over men. In accordance with a study conducted by a global consulting firm Hay Group in 2016, women outperform men in 11 of 12 key emotional intelligence competencies. All these competencies are necessary for effective leadership in the business, clearly indicating women can be better leaders and rightly called as “leaders in heals”.

2. Diversity is an ideal environment

Diversity has resulted in strengthening creativity and innovation. Various organizations from Johnson & Johnson to MasterCard and Sodexo are looking to leverage from a diverse work culture. With each man and woman coming from different background having a different experience to share challenges each other and their collaboration will lead to creative and innovative ideas that make way for the organization to sustain and grow at the same time.

3. Offering consumer perception leads to business expansion

Keeping in mind the contribution of female consumers, women can bring important consumer perception more accurately on the table, since it is well-known that to understand your consumers best, you have to walk in their shoes for a while. By combining the insight offered by men and women, the products and services can thrive which leads to business expansion.

4. Women are mothers of multi-tasking

We all have seen and witnessed this ourselves that women have several roles to play in social, personal and professional life and each of these roles comes with additional responsibility and challenges. They are masters in managing all these simultaneously and again and again with time, they prove this point.

All these pointers lead to a very straightforward conclusion, women perspective is essential in every aspect of life — from personal to societal and business.

Make an effort to empower women so that their participation in the global economy can add to the growth of GDP. Set an aim to encourage women and open new opportunities for them in every field so that they can accomplish what they are capable of.

And live the tagline of OnePlus entirely which says “Never Settle” and let’s all say Cheers to the womanhood!!!