A small initiative by Sanwari women Empowerment | Use Khadi & Handloom Products

Say "Goodbye " to foreign brands and sees make in India as vital impetus for employment and growth A small initiative by #Sanwariwomen Empowerment .Let's take initiative push to revive an ailing manufacturing sector,has found resonance with india inc. & enhancing the global competitiveness of Indian manufacturing sector to ensure sustainability growth and empowerment in India . 

Initiative taken by Sanwari Women Empowerment Founder - President Seema Goel (Social Activist )

Lets make khadi a symbol of nationalism and self reliance and not hesitate in boycotting foreign goods .Amplify the word khadi and include not only clothes but also all natural and non natural made in India product.

How to get Indian women on boards

Arun Duggal, Chairman, Shriram Capital in partnership with Anjali Bansal of Spencer Stuart India have spearheaded an initiative to get more women on corporate boards.

He speaks about the challenges and what the process has been like so far.

Tell us a little about yourself...

I am a retired banker. I spent the past 26 years in the Bank of America and this was my last posting before coming back to India.

I am now chairman of Shriram Capital. I am an independent director on several companies. I also teach and am a visiting faculty member at IIM Ahmedabad.

You’ve worked across the world and in leading organizations. Are you a risk taker? 

I’ve worked in various parts of banking and find it to be a process involving continuous challenges and learning.

What qualities do you look for when hiring graduates?
I don’t hire graduates so I will give a generic response here. One would look for technical competence, intellectual abilities, interpersonal skills and assessment in terms of morals and ethics.

You have started a program of mentoring women in the workplace. Is there a story/experience behind it that you’d like to share?

It was an issue that was being written about at the time. There was a lot of support for this idea. But the practical aspect was the availability for women at senior positions. We wanted to train between 50 and 60. But there are very few women already in these positions to train them.

We have people like Deepak Parekh, K V Kamath, Saroj Poddar, Hari Bhartia etc. who came on board. The idea is to one mentor would work with one woman for three months.

What does the term ‘board ready’ woman mean to you?

Better understanding of what regulations and law are. It means that a woman understands what it means to be an independent director with practical knowledge and human insight. She will be aware of strategy and corporate governance. She should know how an audit committee works and be ready to join a board of directors once the mentorship is complete.

How do women get involved in the initiative?

We are looking for 75 women of high potential. They can send their biodata and photo across to deepika@shriram.com .

Since we’re looking for people at the board level, we will be focusing on women who are above 40 and can demonstrate success in their professional life. We will be matching the skills of the women to that of the mentors. We are looking at training 100 women in the next 12 months.

How many applications have you received?

We have received around 75 applications. Most of them are from Mumbai and Delhi but we’ve also got a few from Hyderabad and Chennai. We need to match women with mentors in that city so it is easier for us to find mentors in larger cities. 

Is there anything else you would like to add?

According to the new Companies Act, there has to be one woman on the board. Now, 60 per cent of the BSE 500 companies don’t have a single female director so there is a gap in terms of requirement. Our effort is not a legal effort. We are looking at a high potential drive for women to be effective on boards.

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Platform for Women Empowerment | Women Empowerment in India

Economic benefits of women empowerment- Most women across the globe rely on the informal work sector for an income.
If women were empowered to do more and be more, the possibility for economic growth becomes apparent. Eliminating a significant part of a nation’s work force on the sole basis of gender can have detrimental effects on the economy of that nation. In addition, female participation in counsels, groups, and businesses is seen to increase efficiency. For a general idea on how an empowered women can impact a situation monetarily, a study found that of fortune 500 companies, “those with more women board directors had significantly higher financial returns, including 53 percent higher returns on equity, 24 percent higher returns on sales and 67 percent higher returns on invested capital (OECD, 2008).”  This study shows the impact women can have on the overall economic benefits of a company. If implemented on a global scale, the inclusion of women in the formal workforce (like a fortune 500 company) can increase the economic output of a nation.
Sociological empowerment often addresses members of groups that social discrimination processes have excluded from decision-making processes through - for example - discrimination based on disability, race, ethnicity, religion, or gender. Empowerment as a methodology is often associated with feminism: see consciousness-raising.
"Marginalized" refers to the overt or covert trends within societies whereby those perceived as lacking desirable traits or deviating from the group norms tend to be excluded by wider society and ostracized as undesirables.
Sometimes groups are marginalized by society at large, but governments are often unwitting or enthusiastic participants. This Act made it illegal to restrict access to schools and public places based on race. Equal opportunity laws which actively oppose such marginalization, allow increased empowerment to occur. They are also a symptom of minorities' and women's empowerment through lobbying.
Marginalized people who lack self-sufficiency become, at a minimum, dependent on charity, or welfare. They lose their self-confidence because they cannot be fully self-supporting. The opportunities denied them also deprive them of the pride of accomplishment which others, who have those opportunities, can develop for themselves. This in turn can lead to psychological, social and even mental health problems.
Empowerment is then the process of obtaining these basic opportunities for marginalized people, either directly by those people, or through the help of non-marginalized others who share their own access to these opportunities. It also includes actively thwarting attempts to deny those opportunities. Empowerment also includes encouraging, and developing the skills for, self-sufficiency, with a focus on eliminating the future need for charity or welfare in the individuals of the group. This process can be difficult to start and to implement effectively.
One empowerment strategy is to assist marginalized people to create their own nonprofit organization, using the rationale that only the marginalized people, themselves, can know what their own people need most, and that control of the organization by outsiders can actually help to further entrench marginalization. Charitable organizations lead from outside of the community, for example, can disempower the community by entrenching a dependence on charity or welfare. 
A nonprofit organization can target strategies that cause structural changes, reducing the need for ongoing dependence. Red Cross, for example, can focus on improving the health of indigenous people, but does not have authority in its charter to install water-delivery and purification systems, even though the lack of such a system profoundly, directly and negatively impacts health. A nonprofit composed of the indigenous people, however, could ensure their own organization does have such authority and could set their own agendas, make their own plans, seek the needed resources, do as much of the work as they can, and take responsibility - and credit - for the success of their projects (or the consequences, should they fail).

Amrit India Press Release

Amrit India Press Release, a photo by sanwariclub on Flickr.

Past Event for Pics Promotion

Past Event for Pics Promotion, a photo by sanwariclub on Flickr.

Sanwari club Press Release - Secular qayadat

Sanwari club Press Release - Secular qayadat, a photo by sanwariclub on Flickr.