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Is this bias because I am a woman? Do I want to be an ambassador for the so-called women empowerment buzz? No!! Let me explain…

For a small sized company like ours, it is very important to get optimum contribution for every penny spent and every minute spent. Having right person at right position is the key to achieve this. Hence, we have to be very rational while choosing people.

I do understand that men and women have unique and complementary traits. When it comes to roles where high level of organizing, detailing, creative skills are required, women tend to perform better than men. Some examples include –

• Management roles where women’s natural ability to plan, organize, minutely track and multi-task can help greatly
• Design roles where women’s creative skills can give better perspectives
• HR roles as women with their basic empathy can focus on individuals and their needs better
• Purchase roles where women’s intrinsic cost saving tendencies and buying just at the right time can make great impact
• Accounting roles where their ability to pay attention to details, sincerity can help to have up-to-date books and timely compliances.
• ….and the list can go on….

Let me put a disclaimer here. This is not about men vs women. Yes, there are roles where men tend to perform better. While the above statements sound stereotyped and there can be exceptions, these are my general observations over 25 years of my professional life. Time and again, I have experienced that self-motivated women are the best assets in the team. Once any work is allocated to them, they own up the bottom line responsibility to get it done.

Of course, women have their own set of challenges. Biological, social (more so in Indian context), psychological and her own struggles to do-it-all. I believe that with proper guidance and conducive work environment along with their own-determination, women can definitely overcome these challenges successfully to lead their professional life with high effectiveness and dignity.

Women are energetic and natural go-getters – generally away from office politics, not wasting time at work place and thereby enhancing productivity. They are more sustaining and thus bringing stability in work with reduced turn-over.

At Advent, we have women at key positions – Design (Ms. Poonam Desai & Ms. Mayuri Mundhe), Quality (Ms. Pooja Gaikwad), HR (Ms. Nikita Gavli), Purchase (Ms. Charu Hude) and myself at the Management. We are also happy to have women partners at key functions – Tax Audits (CA Preeti Kulkarni), Banking (Ms. Medha Hippargikar), Digital Marketing (Ms. Amruta), Canteen services (Ms. Kavita Gothe) and Healthcare (Ms. Swati Choudhary). I must put this on record that in each of these areas, the sincerity and work-ownership shown by all these women is tremendous.

These kinds of repeated experiences endorse my belief in women power!! So, given two equal options, I would definitely go for hiring a woman, how about you?