Females as Leaders

(This piece was written in April for a magazine but was neither published nor refused until last week)

I have been involved in leadership discussions during last two weeks and then at the end I just got a chance to attend a leaders’ summit in Islamabad. Before I go ahead and talk about leadership qualities and traits I want to share one important feature of this summit. There were 36 male speakers and only five female speakers among the panelists. Yes the host was also a very smart and intelligent female, so there was a 1:6 ratio if I include her. Having this thought in my mind I turned round and looked at the Sheesh Mahal Hall of Serena Hotel where I think the whole gathering  did not have a bigger ratio of female audience or may be even lesser. The question in my mind was why? Why is it so, while a few months back I heard the rector of NUST claiming at an international forum that females are coming into research studies of practical fields more than men. This makes me think even deeper, not only about the gender differences but also about what is happening at higher education in Pakistan. These questions need further elaboration and research to be answered. Yet one answer that comes from my experience of last ten years in higher education is that in middle class families of Pakistan,men after fourteen or maximum sixteen years of schooling are supposed to get into economic activity. While within this class there are many “liberal-conservative” families who let their girls study as much as they want, and allow them to keep studying until they get married; but do not allow them to get into workforce. A woman’s earning is a source of disgrace for them.  Thus I find one reason and tell myself that if you sit in such a gathering of “professional leaders” definitely you will find more men than women. And yes if it was a gathering of development sector instead of more from business and corporate sector then the ratio could also have been different.

Let’s forget for a moment that how many females are there and how many more are ready to come. How many of them will find their way and how many of them will be lost in the chadar aur char diwari somewhere. Let us take a closer look at the leadership qualities and traits. Some decades back the trait theory of leadership was claiming that leaders are born with certain personality traits and that is why they lead; then the behaviorist theories brought in some more logical reasoning of stimulus response relationship to explain how in various situations people behave differently. Now in the age of postmodernism when we sit and talk about leadership the question is not if one can become a leader or not, the question is not about good or bad leadership the question is more about what sort of leader a person can be or will be. The assumption today is that everyone is and can perform as leader when the situation is so. Some people only show leadership skills under a crisis and some keep showing and applying their leadership skills in their everyday work and interactions, while some other lead in a way that they really make things happen that affect a larger group of people.

I am thinking now within Pakistani cultural context and trying to chart out what differentiates female leaders from male leaders; the first thing that comes to my mind is females’tendency of attending to minute details and not missing out anything that may create trouble later on. They might not be very good at vision crafting but they are very good at turning dreams into realities. They visualize a home decor and they turn this into reality with their art and aesthetic sense. They love to take a closer look and think of phenomenon in simple and comprehensible manner.  Females of this region are brought up with a sense of responsibility to play the significant role of mothers and home makers; so the role of family builder makes them good team builders too. They do not tend to work in isolation they work in collaboration and want the people around them to be involved and included in what they do.

Something that I wish to warn my fellow females is not to pretend or not to copy their male fellows. Just be what you are. Once you are out there in your practical fields you do not need to be like men. You only need to be strong and healthy minded women. Your strength is your feminine-hood. You can make miracles happen and you can bring such changes that men do not even dream about. Go ahead take the risk of leading like a woman and see how the world will be decorated with flowers and ornaments because of your sweet aesthetic sense.