Analytics Insight Celebrates the International Women in Engineering Day 2021

Celebrate the International Women in Engineering Day on June 23, 2021, with Analytics Insight.

The field of Engineering is celebrating International Women in Engineering Day annually, for the last eight years on June 23, 2021. This day is dedicated to all inspiring women who choose to pursue their careers in Engineering by fighting against the patriarchal society. These milestones are showing women's empowerment in this 21^st century where women can demonstrate their intelligence and powers in an open forum. Gender equality and equal pay in all workspaces are required to encourage more women to break societal norms and drive success in the nearby future. There are immense contributions to the world from these empowering women leaders in multiple tech companies. They are revolutionizing the workspace by utilizing their incredible traits efficiently and effectively. They are focused to bring diversity, integrity, equal pay, equal opportunities, and a well-communicated team to organizations.

Analytics Insight is celebrating International Women in Engineering Day, by speaking to some amazing women who have hands-on experience in the transformation of the diverse workplace in these recent years— Nidhi Gopal, Director of Product Engineering, Intuit India; Sashikala Viswanathan, Director, Corporate Quality, CSS Corp and Jaxa Gohil, Senior Director, HR and Communications, Falabella, India.

Women Leaders Confronting Challenges-

Nidhi Gopal: Women in the workforce face some unique challenges such as a lower level of confidence, lesser role models and mentors for a career growth discussion and many more. There is a huge demand for women to lead and mentor because women are more empathetic and can be inspiring role models to other women colleagues who come forward for necessary help in navigating life situations, without having to leave the workforce.

Sashikala Viswanathan: Women have already managed to balance their professional-personal life at home in the pandemic. It is overwhelming but the positive side shows that there are a plethora of opportunities for women to work from home to drive success in their careers. There a range of flexible arrangements in multiple organizations to help women achieve the balance through innovative communication and collaboration tools. Women leaders can help in enhancing productivity, efficiency, and flexibility to add to the company's overall success. Women require diversity in the working culture through conscious effort and commitment at the core of organizational value.

Jaxa Gohil: The world has seen many successful women in technology and leadership roles in these recent years. Yet, it is a long pathway to cover for women to become established and successful to completely transform the mindset of society. It starts with providing education to girls and recruiting women in the workforce for better productivity.

Initiatives for Women in Tech-

Nidhi Gopal: Women are changing the narrative across each industry and leading from the forefront with dynamic and disruptive outlooks and practices. Women need to embark on the journey towards a future, where women thrive in equity. There is a level of awareness and understanding about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion through several programs and initiatives in organizations. The fundamental step begins with teaching girls about science to develop a love for STEM as well as celebrate the achievements of multiple women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The workplace is now focused on conscious investment in building, growing, and retaining women leaders. Tech Women @ Intuit focuses on the growth of the women technologists' community including sponsorship by leaders, development workshops such as negotiation, executive presence, speaking skills, mentoring, and site events.

Sashikala Viswanathan: Women can explore multiple opportunities, be successful in their careers through initiatives and support offered by tech companies such as mentorship programs, peer training, reskilling, upskilling courses, or sessions. CSS Corp provides comfortable, flexible, transparent, equal pay, and approachable working environment for women to make the optimum use of opportunities to drive success in their lives.

Jaxa Gohil: The gender ratio has not changed much for the last thirty years when a computer science degree had only 25 women out of 125 students.  There are discussions about how to attract women towards technology through a campus program, scholarships, mentors, and internship programs. These initiatives provide an opportunity to work with Falabella and gain knowledge of organizational impacts through technical know-how.

Providing Exposure to Encourage Women Techies-

Nidhi Gopal: The journey of a woman techie commences from the love for technology at a young age through coding events, corporate events, focus groups where the girls can engage early with STEM graduates. These opportunities will provide sufficient exposure to cutting-edge technologies through sponsoring them in conferences like Grace Hopper Conference, AWS Re-Invent, and many more. This will enable women to build networks and experience the feeling of being a woman in Engineering. Intuit practices Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) while maintaining a dashboard to keep track. The company is focused on providing pay equity also fair and equal workspace to all employees across the globe. Intuit also trains leaders, managers, and employees to create and nurture an inclusive environment with the Leading Inclusively Learning Programme.

Sashikala Viswanathan: Organisations are required to invest in equipping women with the skill sets and knowledge to provide sufficient exposure. CSS Corp challenges the status quo by retention, succession, addressing the skill gaps as well as committing to inclusion. The company celebrated its silver jubilee and celebrated Women's Day to introduce Women 25 (W25) ON March 8. It is an initiative to bring aspiring women leaders from different parts of the world for a mentorship program. The mentorship program hones their skills and builds the leadership qualities required to be the leaders of tomorrow.

Jaxa Gohil: Organisations have to walk the talk! When there is a 10-membered team in an organization with only one woman, the woman gets multiple looks while talking or getting emotional. The organizations are required to have a mandate50:50 gender ratio to provide more exposure to women and eliminate the looks from their counterparts.

Survival Tips for Aspiring Women Leaders

Nidhi Gopal: Women leaders always need to speak up and ask without assuming that everyone will understand the situation. The outcome will be fulfilling if one must speak up and ask for grabbing multiple opportunities. The leaders must own their growth by understanding the strengths and opportunities. There will be blind spots at the time of self-reflect. It is better to seek mentors who can be the critique. It is important to continue to learn and compete with oneself to be the better version every single year. One must continue the perseverance to focus on the fruitful outcome. The growth is directly proportional to the exposure in the workspace environment. Training and coaching at Intuit provide sufficient exposure to learn from the leaders through their success stories, insights into current business trends, and applying the trends to the current role. Massive exposure to a wider perspective of the organization enables aspiring women leaders to understand the big picture in the nearby future.

Jaxa Gohil: Be a woman instead of a man! Different women bring so much to the table in different ways. Aspiring women leaders must be equipped to manage all kinds of emotions at the workplace. Some managers handle emotional scenarios in different ways. When any leadership position is opened, it is necessary to make it a gender conversation without shying away. Women are always doing the right thing for the long-term success of the team. Falabella looks forward, to engaging with tech leaders for an unofficial meet and greet.