Breaking the Glass Ceiling
by Natasha Eliyana Azahari, ICT
Tronoh, 17th July 2013 - GE day has brought yet again
another series of spectacular events. Among these events was an informative
talk, or rather, a sharing session entitled ‘Breaking the Glass Ceiling;
Sharing by Women Leaders. Held at the Undercroft, the sharing session managed
to open the eyes of the prospective female leaders in UTP about the importance
of stepping up the game in today’s competitive world. The two lovely speakers
were more than willing to share their experiences while working for GE and the
reason why they had chosen GE as their employer.
They had managed to get into the company through a Leadership
Program GE had organized.
At the start of their career with GE, they had to go through a
‘rotation system’, whereby a trainee works for a certain period of time in
different places, local and international. Through this system, they had gained
the opportunity to travel to various countries around the world.
They highlighted the notion that GE is a performance-driven company
as they take the well-being of their investors very seriously; a large portion
of their investors are actually citizens.
Currently, both of them are working under the finance department of
GE and are the forefront liners contributing to much of GE’s success. It was
then revealed that both of them are married and have children. It was
surprising enough to discover that the forefront liners, the success drivers of
GE (a large company) are women, but to learn that they are married women, was an entirely new thing altogether. In order to take
on such responsibilities, it is vital that they are physically and mentally
capable.
The audience shared the same sentiment as Mrs Alisha (one of the two
speakers) recounted her experience as being one of the few female staffs in GE.
She listed the difficulties she had faced during her career; among them were
the challengers of working in a male-dominated industry, as well as countless
self-confidence issues.
“Just be thick-skinned. You need to be thick-skinned!” she exclaimed
to the audience.
That being said, she linked the fact that women tend to worry more
and consequently, underestimate themselves. In order to overcome it, she said,
you have to be brass and just ask when you don’t understand, rather than just
sit there and nod along. She also reminded the audience that is required of
them to be physically and mentally prepared.
As the session approached to an end, the GE ladies team stepped
forward to introduce themselves. One of the ladies in particular, Ms.Awatif, is
the only female Field Engineer of GE in the Southeast Asia region up to date.
Ms Awatif shared her many stories during her travels and career under GE with
the audience, followed up by a tirade of questions from the floor, to which she
boldly answered.
The team encouraged more admissions of female employees in the
future. They hoped to see fresh faces from time to time in the company.
It was a highly beneficial sharing session
for all the participants. As so, more events such as this should be
incorporated more frequently, as a source of inspiration to female population
in UTP.
