Last year I wrote a blog in which I confessed “I Am a Feminist“. Since then, Engage Consulting has launched Engage Women and has approached a number of companies to partner with us in conducting a study to identify what drives female talent in the workplace.
I am now happy to announce that we have found that partner in PepsiCo. International. Pepsi has been one of the trailblazers in Pakistan and together with a few other leading companies has been taking the lead in driving the gender and diversity agenda in the country. According to Pepsi, they have the highest female participation rate in the Pakistani FMCG industry and most likely within the corporate world.
The purpose of the study is to establish how organizations can enhance the female workforce, identify what practices others have introduced that have had an impact, to get a benchmark on the number of females working in organizations and how women rate their own company on efforts to enable female workforce participation. As part of the study, we will also interview a number of female role models that have made it to the top of the corporate world and ask them to share their insights into what made them successful.
I am really excited, as I am not aware of any other study currently being conducted in Pakistan on this topic and as a self-proclaimed feminist this study is something that is close to my heart and which my team and I really want to drive forward. We will use the launch of the Women @ Work Study to introduce a number of other initiatives from our Engage Women platform. We plan to share data, build connections, introduce career advice forums and develop a network for working women in Pakistan.
At the moment we will focus our study specifically on a number of leading companies in Pakistan to establish what works and what doesn’t work for talented women in moving their career forward.
I know of one female CEO of a multinational in Pakistan and she, Musharaf Hai, is an exciting example for many aspiring Pakistani women out there. We need to make sure that more and more women will follow in her example. Join us, participate and help women succeed in the workplace.
I would love you to help. Join our Facebook Page, keep connected through Twitter or reach out to Anushey Matri (anushey@engageconsulting.biz) if you are interested in more information, would like to identify female role models to share their experiences, or if you have ideas (and maybe want to help put them in action) to move the female participation agenda forward.
– Paul Keijzer