A Force to Reckon With — Faceoff with Reality
How SHEROES is building the New Internet for Women
Time is probably the only thing that has all mysteries wrapped in its wide round arms. Another year and what a year this has been!
One thing I am equally happy and sad about. Happy about gradually seeing the gender divide getting closed globally with a of lot of focus. Sad that many people still yet to understand and recognize this as a pain area.
Let me talk about some Numbers by domain experts before I talk about Empathy.
India can increase its 2025 gross domestic product (GDP), estimated at $4.83 trillion, by between 16% and 60% simply by enabling women to participate in the economy on par with men: according to a new study by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). The upper end of that range — if everything works out the way it should, or a so-called full-potential scenario — could add $2.9 trillion to India’s 2025 GDP. So, if female workforce participation (FWP) were to increase by 10 per cent, it would add $700 billion to India’s GDP by 2025.
India has one of the world’s largest gender gaps when it comes to labour force participation, but with women accounting for only 23–24% of the total labour force and generating a mere 17% of the share of GDP, finds the MGI study. This is far below the global average where female workers generate 37% of the world’s GDP.
However, India also has the biggest relative scope to add GDP at 16% in a best-in-region scenario. The full potential boost would be as much as 60%. Boosting female labour force participation in India would contribute 90% of gains in the full-potential scenario.
“When a woman’s career starts to peak, she is suddenly confronted with multiple conflicting situations, marriage, children and so on.Women tend to drop out of the workplace because of a lack of flexibility and as they advance in their careers, they find that they have to balance increasing workplace responsibility with increasing family responsibility like ageing parents or teenage children. They end up with two jobs and find that they cannot cope.” says Sairee Chahal, Chief of SHEROES
If I were a bot and you asked me something that my algorithm did not teach me, for example How do you solve cosθ=sinθ? I would answer — “As a bot, I am not human, but I love learning so please let me come back to you on this”
Having said that, Alexa, Siri, Amy, Sophia, Keya, Eva — majority of the world’s most popular virtual assistants have female personas. Is that for a reason? Yes, no rocket science- Empathy. Women are born with this innate attribute deeply engrained and again …we should recognize that together.
The female-driven economy has been engulfing and spreading wings silently and for good. It is usually taken for granted about focussing on the male perspective.
Now the Emotion piece.
I am not here to preach about women. All I am saying is why is it so difficult to accept women as the Chief Juggling Officer?
With the roles they juggle daily…simply hats off! And I am not saying this because I work here. I am saying this because deep down we all know but may be we prefer to be cataracted.
One question to all reading this — Both Men and Women coexist right? So why can’t we together make this world a better place? The patriarchal code since ages made unnecessary way to gender biases. It is not about gender, it is about women being born with the ability to juggle multiple things which men essentially are not able to and which is okay. Even if she is not expected to, she will still balance out everything beautifully. Also, let me be upfront in stating- the adage being while both women and men are required to procreate, it is the woman who enables the procreation by carrying us in their womb. And then why do organizations look on women returning back to work with the eyes of ‘Oh…you were on maternity break for a year!” Like, does that make her any less? I believe post pregnancy a woman is even more equipped to even run a company, leave aside just a job.
I have never understood one thing — what has the ‘Ability to Dream & Accomplish’ got anything to do with gender? There are legendary Kathak dancers who are males and who are females? Does it make Kathak as a dance form any less?
There is no profession and there should not be a profession which is gender based. Have you heard about Israeli women commandos? And how about Indian women in armed forces and specialized in hand to hand combat and special weapons tactics, women in body surfing, paragliding, bike racing, sports, women with disabilities, women at petrol pumps, women cab drivers, women in STEM, women in Music…I mean the list is simply never-ending, even with more women centric movies globally and thankfully starting to portray women in a much more positive light.
Let me tell you something about why I joined SHEROES- Culture, Collaboration, Creativity and Freedom to Be. As our founder Sairee says- ‘We do not believe in managers, we believe in leaders’ .There are women and there are men at SHEROES (more women yes), however on Diversity, swing by our office some day and see for yourself the real essence of ‘Diversity’. Here it is not about gender, it is about a mission, a fast moving one. Creating a safe and constructive space only for women where they can talk anything…. anything at all without being judged. I, being a man, can tell you one thing for sure, if there are two attributes that can make us grow as humans — that is mutual respect and compassion. Be it man for woman or woman for man.
So many things transpired in 2018 at SHEROES — milestones, acquisitions, events, product improvements, blocking males, engagements, strengthening our vernacular framework starting with Hindi, Telegu, Marathi, Bengali, while also the app being launched in Hindi version, deeper community conversations, solutioning for brands like Tinder, Fair & Lovely Career Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, MG Motor along with belting out so many inhouse creative engagement concepts for our women users
Then, market coverage, successful City Takeover starting with Indore (link https://tinyurl.com/y8xpmkg6 ) fabulous 6th Edition of our annual mega multi-city #SHEROESSummit which witnessed sponsorships from Top Brands like UST Global, Kotak, DIAGEO, Klay apart from other multiple projects lead by smashing teams and even server migration! And finally, our app being launched on iOS as well! SHEROES partners with Jagriti Yatra this December and also launched a Toll-Free Helpline number in rural areas of UP for women to talk directly to our counsellors.
With a mobile first approach, our Communities- Health, Fashion, Career, Cooking, Love Sex & Relationships, Parenting, Aspiring Writers, Women in Corporate, to name a few of the 40 plus Communities that we have at present, are buzzing with our Community leaders triggering and monitoring the posts. Recently our Founder Sairee started a simple conversation around ‘Chai’ and it simply went viral on our platform. SHEROES is not just a platform, it is an Idea and a becoming a force to reckon with.
With acquisitions such as Babygogo and Maya we are have not only created a constructive social space for women but that which can add value to the ecosystem. That brings me to AskSHEROES the one of its kind chat based, free of cost helpline for women with a dedicated team of certified and expert counsellors and doctors running the show more than 18 hours a day and all those conversations are handled with utmost confidentiality and empathy.
Our product, engineering, community, creative and marketing teams have been closely working to churn out one item after other with each one of us working towards that one goal — reaching 100M women. SHEROES is first, a product for India where we are together building a New Internet for Women and we are building it like we would build our own home — with Safety, Constructiveness, Trust, Love and Transparency.
We stand tall as the largest and deepest segment of the Women’s Internet at 14 million women, over 3.5 million monthly actives.
And to leave everyone with a question — Do we recognize that without tackling gender equality in society, economic benefits cannot be realized?
So apart from the top 3 trends of Vernacular , Voice and Video that we see shaping up through 2020, I see Trust, Empathy and Transparency setting the grounds for all technologies, even 5G!
So, for 2019, let’s make it more compassionate, more empathy driven and come back to Maslow’s Theory with Self-Actualization on top. In the meanwhile I am sharing our SHEROES genie with you for fulfilling 3 of your wishes in 2019! Go ahead, close your eyes and wish from your heart!
Ankoor Dasguupta, a passionista at heart, brings with him a pedigree of 19 years across the full spectrum of print, digital, mobile and event productions along with C-Suite relationship. Ankoor is also certified from Dale Carnegie in ‘Mentoring to Develop Talent and identifies himself equally as a learner and a coach and also believes in the power of Energy & Energize while driving Return on Relationships. Ankoor is working with SHEROES and is a proud SHEROite.
