Women have a high sense of self worth and professional ambition to match. Yet most women are unable or unwilling to travel extensively, relocate, work long hours, network, dedicate time for professional development, and look at long term. Career does not rank first in their priority, but family. In a discussion with Ms. Shweta Thakare, Senior AVP – Europe, APAC & SAARC, eScan reveals some interesting facts.
How women at managerial posts are viewed by your organisation?
In today’s scenario, women climb up the corporate ladder, but somewhere they get vanished because of personal, professional, and societal reasons. At eScan we feel that Women are better equipped to juggle a top executive role along with their personal lives. So with changing times, we believe in giving more opportunities to women at workplace. We believe that will evolve towards greater equality.
How do you see your ‘role sets’ evolving in the IT world?
Business development is a combination of sales and marketing which is vital for successful business growth. Customers today are very knowledgeable and have more power than ever before. Today access to any information is just a touch away. Consumers today have all the required knowledge even before they speak with any business development team. So we have to keep ourselves informed and educated on all the latest emerging things related to cyber security threats; so the role sets keep evolving at an enormous speed with new evolving and upcoming technologies.
How a woman can execute challenging tasks, and can bring desired results in corporate world?
Working in a male-dominated world is challenging and demanding, but is certainly worth the mile. Someone has rightly said, “Every cloud has a silver lining”, hence, it is better to discard all negative feelings and look at the brighter side of life. Problems are just there to test your mettle so that you break through and emerge as a winner. I don’t think corporate world is gender biased. Challenging tasks needs to be handled with proper strategic vision, in a tactical and ethical way. For executing challenging tasks, things need to be put together.
Do you think a woman at decision-making position can understand the channel issues more sensitively?
Channel issues can vary from region-to-region and it could either be related to product, pricing, promotions or specific to target markets. Being a Woman; you can be more patient and thoughtful and plan things ahead to make everything go smooth. Sometimes channel needs a more empathic person who can relate to their pain points and try to ease it out by implementing proper strategic solutions. Being a woman; sensitivity also plays an important role – that is the willingness to explore and discover what really works in benefit for the channel. I believe Women tend to be great networkers, have inherent skills for negotiating, and have an innate ability to multi-task.
What type of challenges are you faces in corporate business?
It’s hard because there are few Women Role models. There are hardly 2-3% of women on leadership roles. So there no one from whom you can learn or follow them; or even go for guidance. I feel to reach the pinnacle it’s very hard and also a continual learning Process. As a Woman, the demographics (Marriage, Kids, House) are designed in such a way that it’s very tough to balance.
Being a woman, how did you balance between your family, relationships and work?
Creating balance is not about quantity of time spent in any one place; rather it is about the quality spent in every place. I try to be present when at home, make time for my family consistently and include them in my life – physically, spiritually and emotionally. Over the years, I guess I have managed the art that helps me to demarcate the shift from work to home almost naturally,
What are your future plans?
My plan is to settle in a hill-station and do organic farming, thus keeping myself active but at my own pace
