50 Days Workshop on “Women in Leadership & Management: Opportunities and Challenges”

Organized by: Women Research & Resource Centre, Fatima Jinnah Women University

(WRRC, FJWU)

Collaboration: Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) & Punjab Higher Education Commission (PHEC)

Nominated Faculty Members of GC Women University, Sialkot

Resource Persons:

Sessions Details:

Participant universities:

Objectives:

• To introduce participants to the need for effective management and leadership
• To enable participants to differentiate between the educational administration and educational leadership by analyzing management and leadership precepts through the lens of gender.
• To identify behavioral patterns and attitudes which reinforce or impede women’s abilities to participate in key decision-making processes and determine ways to counter it.
• To equip the young female faculty of Higher Education Institutions/Women Universities in Pakistan with the knowledge, skills-sets, and attitudes that will enable them to participate meaningfully in policy and decision making processes in their respective universities.
• To equip participants with socializing skills within the institutional culture.
• To enable participants to play their role as mentors and polish networking skills required for leadership roles.
• To equip participants with the skills to balance personal and professional roles within the academia.
• To impart research orientation and inculcate a culture of research publication within the participants.

Learning from the workshop: The workshop ultimately arranged for young/junior female lecturer of universities to aware them about the difficulties in their academic life. The workshop clears the concept of management and leadership, as well as develop more characteristics in their professional life. Different instructors ask the participants to do some activities through drawings, writings, writing down the hierarchy of decision making in their institutes and personal lives and by sharing verbally. In this workshop, a comparison has been done to see how and where anybody is important and what place they have in job capacities.

Recourse persons very clearly told how to manage life between duties and personal life without getting aggressive over things or very petty issues vis-à-vis they elaborate how a female can be assertive and perform her duties in very right manners. Another perspective of the workshop was to make teams and teamwork is a best possible way to do tasks very elegantly.

Gender gap is the main issue of the today’s world, Male and female always remain busy in competition in which many tasks and things have gone in wrong way but the purpose of this workshop is to understand the main issue among man and women through study, women have many other responsibilities than man to which she can’t resist or refuse, participants of the workshop actively participated in the discussion by sharing their personal experience at job and at home.

Furthermore, the resource person also tried to identify the main role of leader/women leader by assigning tasks to make a strong leader, the one who has the ability to combat the today’s challenges.

The word prospect remains topic of concern during various sessions because this is an easy word but when we talk about our the female’s prospect we get confused and mix it with different things in this context if we take prospect incorrect manner we can avail many opportunities and open more easy ways towards a successful life.

Different research work, dissertations and Ph.D. thesis of the resource persons have been shared in the sessions in which the main important part was that the female who is working on some basic pay scales by the govt. but she is unaware of her rights, she does not know about her benefits in jobs and how to tackle her issue by using the real mean and channel in academic institutes, when a resource person ask about the acts and laws of different universities everyone remain silent because they have no idea what strange thing is that but one or two people respond question very nicely but in next question when they ask what’s in these acts and laws they remain confused which make it clear they never tried to read their own rights. Later on, the resource person suggests all the participants read it and be aware what they have or have not.

The workshop also boost-up the morale of its participants by letting them share their issues with each other in confidential matters and tell the technique how to work with those who do not like you or have any kind of jealousy so it makes their catharsis at meantime and tell techniques to work with the concerned person which may help them to work with the same person in future.

By showing some images asked participants about their circumstances their thinking and the way how they look their images and ask all of them about real-life decision making when they took very important decisions and share their challenges vis-à-vis how they face the thing when they were at difficult stage because it may be the reason to combat the challenge for others who are going to face or in condition to take a final verdict at that time.

The resource person also shares presentation skills for female which can make them more confident and successful in their professional life as well as about the writings, Article writing is a fun said by Dr. Samina Qadir. As much as one can write by herself, definitely she will enjoy and made this enjoyment part of her life the life which will be going to pave her ways for successful future. It makes her sure how to work and how to get the reward of those tasks which she has done and she deserves appreciation. Food of thought of workshop for the candidates was to combat challenges in real life, she has to be aware of what is around and what step should be taken in certain process of work and whatever she is deserving in the meantime, whenever she would be a leader or a manager or both at the same time. If women will be aware of the things properly she can work more accurately, it’s not a lie a woman is working more than man as a mother, wife, sister or a daughter she might be far away in the job but she is strong because she is tackling with more things with work. Nevertheless, our main topic is not to create a competition between man and woman but make sure our woman are aware of work and her rights, as-well-as she has an idea about her next step and position. She should not be shy by saying herself a woman and she cannot do but she would be proud what she is and about her accomplishments.