Say ‘no’ to women entrepreneurs

Men Empowerment

Men Entrepreneurs

Men Excellence Awards

Something sounds off?

Sample this:

Women Empowerment

Women Entrepreneurs

Women Excellence Awards

This article attempts to rebut the stand: “But women empowerment is need of the hour. How many women entrepreneur or women CXOs do you see around? We need to recognise, felicitate and make an example of these women for other women to follow.”

Here’s the problem with this assumption.

The moment we think we can empower someone, we put ourselves on a higher pedestal. It is not the awards or any external factor that makes these women reach the top management brass or remain entrepreneurs; it is their will power.

Will power is agnostic of ethnicity, class or religion. Will power is gender-neutral.

Will power makes CEOs, not women CEOs. Will power makes leaders, not women leaders.

Will power makes Entrepreneurs, not Women Entrepreneur.

I have read and written exams on my waves of feminism in college and I celebrate the differences between men and women. But when it comes to work, both give equal outputs. That’s what a lot of feminists claim, right? Then why do we have separate awards, categories and quota for women? Readers in the PR industry would guess the answer. But for those who need more food for thought, let’s read ahead.

From the most underprivileged to those born with silver spoons in their mouth, what makes these women reach on top is their self-drive and will power. Ask women who think they have made it while they are jostling their way up, they don’t think of themselves of being “empowered”. They don’t do it for the women awards.

They do it because of their inner will power.

No woman can empower another woman or man. Similarly, no man can empower woman or a fellow man. Empowerment is an internal phenomenon, not an external construct as the world plays it out to be. We can incidentally inspire one another sometimes. But to empower a peer is to condescend.

The usual poster faces like Kiran Bedi, Anna Chandy, Karnam Malleshwari, Mary Kom. One look at their Wikipedia pages and you would see most of their awards being “women” awards.

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Would it not be a great disservice to the sheer gender-neutral personal effort they have put in to achieve their goals by calling them “women achievers”?

Shouldn’t their accomplishments be lauded in and of themselves as a momentous victory for anybody that was achieved through sheer grit?

Why unnecessarily denigrate their triumph by suggesting that their wins are not ‘normal’ work? The norm is still men. There’s no “Men” Entrepreneur, there’s no “Men” Awards. There’s no change in the ever stoic “Mr.”, while women is expected to be pliable—from “Miss” to “Ms” to “Mrs.”

Indra Nooyi, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and Mallika Srinivasan are all doyennes of the business world. Not because they were women, but because their acumen was on par with those around them. Majority of their peers are men and not women because of the societal expectation of men acting in a certain manner. Speaking from experience, will power breaks most those constructs down.

I understand the argument that women had to fight against added layers of women-centric social issues like patriarchy, guilt of being a working mother, fighting-it-out-in-a-man’s-world, etc. But a lot of men had to struggle too. They have their own fears and their own battles to fight.

Imagine the burden of family expectation a man gets born with. He has to live up to a certain idea of masculinity and assertiveness. My male colleagues had to fight much more to pursue their passion than a lot of women peers around me had to. But stories of those men are never highlighted the way stories of the women are. And we keep on deepening this chasm by treating specially and differently.

In a lot of government places, women of all ages, the physically challenged and the elderly are spoken about in the same breath. The need of the hour is to let the women fight on neutral grounds.

The real strong women I know want to fight on neutral grounds. Top 50 CXO Managers in India; not Top 50 Women CXO Managers in India.

What are the few traits common to successful people?

Most people who decide to venture into the world of business have some traits in common:

1. They are resilient enough to weather the constant ups and downs that come with the running of an enterprise.
2. They are courageous in that they have willingly stepped out of their comfort zone and have voluntarily embarked on an unpredictable journey.
3. They are confident of their abilities, sometimes even overconfident, which gives them the added boost required to achieve lofty goals.
4. They enjoy a challenge as it helps them test their limits.
5. They thrive under pressure.

It is evident that these traits are not limited to only being in the hands of men. World defines ’entrepreneur’ as “one who organises, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise” -- is there any legitimate reason to prefix a gendered word to the title? It is neither a man’s world nor a woman's world. The world is what you with your will power make of it.