Tell us a bit about the “Inspiring Women Award.” I believe that people need to be made aware about the women from this subcontinent. Not only globally, but also in Bangladesh. As an artist, I portray the problems and issues plaguing women in my paintings. But we need to tell the rest of the society about inspirational women and their stories of how they became empowered. That is why we began this initiative under our organisation, Women in Leadership two years ago. It has a few branches and one of them is the Inspiring Woman award. The first time we launched this award in 2014 was because we wished to inspire and award successful and inspiring women from major fields. We are trying to include as many sectors as possible. Last time, we included women from Joyeeta, a government organisation that applauds and helps women entrepreneurs. I think this recognition is required not only to acknowledge their contribution, but also to inspire other women in the society and allow them to be empowered.
What is the criteria for the award? What really matters is excelling in a particular field and making your mark. There are a lot of categories that we've broken this down to. We can't say that we've covered the whole country but we did as much as we could. Women with inspirational stories of their own are nominated in each category from which, a jury decides on the winners. In my opinion, everyone who is nominated is a winner but since we need to choose one, we award a woman who acts as the ultimate role model for that particular field. We will also be sharing these inspiring stories at the event today and we believe that the stories have the ability to make a difference.
What are your goals for the future? The primary agenda is to inspire people and the society. I think more and more initiatives are being taken up to support women. We need more and better organisations to help support women. Our organisation intends to mentor mid level women employees by high level employees which would allow them to gain important skills which in turn, would help them to achieve their goals. We'll also be unveiling the first issue of a Bi-monthly publication from Women In Leadership at today's event, which will showcase all such inspirational stories of women who are flourishing in their respective sectors.
Women are taking up leadership posts in many fields, as the president of WIL, where do you want to see Bangladeshi women in the next ten years? On one hand, there are a lot of women in influential positions, on the other, there are many more who aren't. The gap between them is huge. Women are succeeding in most fields, and we really need to tap into this to fully realise the true potential of a woman. I believe that the number of successful women should be greater than what it is at right now. And in order to achieve that, we need to bring forth, the potential for women who are flourishing despite the struggles. With a combined effort, we need to give all women that final push and bring out the best in them.
