Harassment In The Pakistan Workplace Environment

• Access to education
• Employment opportunities
• Sexual harassment
• Gender-based Violence
• Economic and political empowerment
• Domestic violence
• Right to divorce
• Child custody
• Equal pay/ Wage Gap
• Women’s political representation
• Iced out of industries

What is verbal sexual harassment? Are you a victim? Barrister Hamna Shah can be contacted at humnashah@yahoo.com

Why Professional Women are better managers than Men?

It’s a known fact that women earn less and are less economically productive than men almost everywhere across the world. And women have less opportunity to shape their lives independently and make decisions than do men. It’s like women are co-dependent on men and we cannot ignore that fact especially in Pakistan. No matter how educated and literate a woman is at the end of the day she is in every aspect of life dependent on their male members of the family.

No one is reducing the existence of women (or men) to the title of sexy. But the field would benefit if both men and women were attracted to those jobs if women viewed the positions as desirable as men did. Changing prevailing attitudes is the hardest task anyone can TRY TO DO. This is why Elementary Education is so important, via dedicated, hard-working instructors–from parents, teachers, and ministers. Our youth come onto earth as, ‘blank slates’. We do not attribute sexiness to concepts like data or objects like cars. We remember when cars were advertised as sexy. We also remember when cigarettes were “sexy”. They were sexy because a bunch of sycophants said they were. Leave Madison Avenue tripe out of it. As far as trade magazines, hire technologists, not “writers” to write articles. Women do not need a hook to read something necessary to their career because they are social animals that like pretty things rather than dwell in caves with other smelly nerdy men. There’s weren’t many female pirates either.

With that said, we will also submit we are in the middle of a generational confluence where older generations have historically less interaction with technology than younger generations.

Imagine that there would be no reason to bring new “qualified or skilled” people since all (males and females) have the knowledge and skills or be able to do the current jobs; Data analytics implies more than statistical/math knowledge like intuition and that is an important skill that women have it naturally.

Computerization and automation to analyze big data in order to push products, services, money, people, places, and things for an ever-expanding civilization. Women may have the talent but not the training. Part of the issue is related to a growing hiring skew away from (Bio)statistics in favor of Engineering and Computer Science, which is more male-dominated than (Bio)statistics. The expanding echo camber in data science that evangelizes trendy methodologies like ‘deep learning’ and ‘machine learning to the exclusion of everything else (as if time series, for example, couldn’t form accurate predictions) and the lack of awareness that (Bio)statistics programs teach machine learning and coding explicitly as core classes and also not as an end but as a means to completing every homework assignment must be addressed if we are to draw new hires from increasingly neglected core Data Science programs more greatly represented by women. Women tend to be multi-functional and detail-oriented much more so than men and women have the patience needed for IT jobs.

Why are so few women involved in roofing, and for that matter, construction?
How many women accountants, real estate brokers, and bankers were there in the previous generation? And, how many are there now? Information Technology jobs for women fall into much the same trending as those jobs. Most people prefer interesting and colorful work, not just women. Stereotyping gender roles is still a hot topic, especially at the professional level. We also need to stop introducing gender stereotypes to children which, frankly, starts at home! Because women do not exist merely to carry the title of being “sexy.” We believe the key to changing this ‘perception’ that females have on STEM-related careers is education from a very young age. We need to get the message into primary schools, not secondary schools. If left to secondary school, it’s too late.

For workplaces to change, men need to change – and be seen to change! You don’t need much confidence to deal with data, compare to dealing with men in the business world, data is just a piece of cake. Some cultures are the main drawback to females enrolling in certain roles. Career break from marriage, raising children prevent them from dedicating the time needed to keep up with the pace of the continuously evolving Data science field. Oddly, no one complains that dirty, dangerous jobs like sanitation work, window washing, coal mining, construction, deep-sea fishing, etc. are “male-dominated.” Just the well-paid, safe, prestigious jobs in air-conditioned offices. Again looking at Dubai we should be amused by the enrollment of female taxi drivers.

Do women bear a heavier load balancing work and family?

We think the work/life balance thing is the biggest factor, but it’s too easy to just put those words on a job ad. So we actively model our family-friendly work culture by not being shy about fitting my work in around our childcare responsibilities (pickups, drop-offs, sick days, parent days, etc). Balancing family and career is a tough act to do. This just goes to show that women are risk-taker and multi-tasker. If parenting is such a bad deal for women, why do they continue to have babies? Women tend to be the “default parent” no matter what it seems. Even outside of societal views of women’s “roles”. This imbalance is very real. This comes from a narrow-minded view of a woman’s “role”. This is taught to us by our parents first, our culture outside of our family secondly, and finally by our society as a whole. But it does not rock solid. Companies are slowly starting to wise up, especially in the IT / Tech/data worlds. The issue with “family time” versus work time isn’t Just about the women. This is a bigger topic than a simple gender role. And even the still critical Point is that women want to have children. This is still a career killer.

As prejudicial as you may think it sounds, women do bear the burden of a balancing family and work more than men. And, because of that reason, job stability is a greater issue than chance taking. Add to that the remaining gender role bias that’s about… and how disconnected men are to their families. Men are a lot more distant and will put career over their kids. Plenty of dads have to make the “big boy” choice and can’t have it all either. Some single parents (man or woman) HAVE to find a work-life balance – still keep up with trends and changes in tech and BE parents (they don’t have a choice outside of welfare). The bigger issue is the cost of living. You CAN’T reasonably raise a family and work a corporate job. Even making 50+k a yr barely covers bills in a single-parent household. When you have a spouse that doesn’t work, whose sole job is kids…. that’s an additional dependent. That’s more money that ONE person needs to make. So to make ends meet, most families it requires two incomes.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

So it’s not JUST about the woman… never was, never will be… we applaud those men who face the same struggle women do to balance family and work.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5