Breaking the glass ceiling for womenkind

Women today are breaking the glass ceiling and are excelling in various roles. We speak to Dubai-based Peri Ozdemir, Digital Innovation Professional, who believes that hard work is the secret to success

Peri Ozdemir, Digital Innovation Professional in a leading bank in Dubai, is very enthusiastic about International Women's Day. "I find International Women's Day very special and meaningful to celebrate and honour the women contributing to the workforce. As a female manager, I am blind to gender. However, the data clearly shows that there is still a huge gap when it comes to the female share in the workforce, especially in leadership roles, even in the most developed countries," Ozdemir says in an interview with Khaleej Times.
Ozdemir is a graduate in Industrial Engineering from Turkey's top university. "In 2009, digital banking was in its early days and mobile explosion was just about to start. I was very passionate about the digital platforms and technology. So, I decided to build my career in digital, mostly related to the development of mobile and online products," she says.
Ozdemir moved to Dubai in 2017 and today is a digital innovation professional. She mentions the share of female CEOs in Fortune 500 companies was 4.8 per cent in 2018 from 6.4 per cent in 2017, adding the share of female leaders does not change radically in other working areas, such as educational institutions or government positions.
"Therefore, dedicating March 8 to observe the importance of gender equality has genuine value for all women. It is a good opportunity to use this day as leverage to support future generations of women to be more aware, better trained and stand strong in both their personal and business lives," she adds.
Ozdemir says that it is imperative to understand the context when we try to understand the challenges faced by women. "In my opinion, both cognitive and cultural factors have significant effects on our actions when it comes to gender bias."
Firstly, several types of research show that both genders have unconscious beliefs or subtle behaviors that result in favoring male workers over female workers. Ozdemir shares details on a study conducted by Columbia University on gender bias. They selected a success story of a female worker and duplicated the same story just by changing the name of the female character into a male name. They gave these two stories to a group of students and asked them to express what they think about these two people. As a result, students evaluated both characters as successful.

However, when it comes to their ideas about working with them, they had the tendency to like the male figure more and want to work with him more than the female figure. "I think that this is a good example of showing the cognitive bias that we unconsciously have when it comes to a fair assessment," Ozdemir stresses.
She shares another study from Columbia Business School to point out the gender bias in the start-up ecosystem, which showed female entrepreneurs getting considerably less funding and face a biased evaluation in the entire pitching process. The research fellow figured out that this results from the subtle differences in questions asked to male and female entrepreneurs. The apparent discrepancy was that male entrepreneurs received more promotional questions, whereas female entrepreneurs were asked more prevention questions that connected the female with an unfavourable domain.
According to Ozdemir, another critical insight is that female investors chose preventional questions for fellow female founders, which again results in negative correlations. Unsurprisingly, female entrepreneurs received only 2 per cent of total venture funding.
"These facts are quite sad, however, not unresolvable. I strongly believe that we can break our prejudgments, as well as those of others with careful reasoning while making decisions. Also, assessing the context of communication is important for turning the situation to our advantage when we feel that there is a negative intention," she notes.
"Statistics in this particular research shows that female entrepreneurs are likely to achieve positive results when they succeed at transforming the context of the discussion with promotional answers rather than preventional answers.
Secondly, understanding the importance of socio-cultural factors and working for its betterment is vital when it comes to gender-related challenges.
I strongly believe that availability of equal education opportunity to girls is an indisputable factor that could change the world. Encouraging and supporting children from an early age and training them equally to help them build a successful career should be a priority of governments," she adds.
According to Ozdemir, all government bodies should impose balance in the workforce by designing an education system where all children benefit equally. Furthermore, specialised skills training for female workers in their particular industry and supporting female workers with managerial education in the business world would have an enormous potential to create incredible changes, with the impact of positively changing societies.
Female contribution to the development of both developed and developing countries are inevitable with many historical examples that are backed with data.
"When we consider the importance of gender balance from this point of view, it is obvious that the female work power can be a leverage for reaching a better future state with better profits, better economies and better societies," she adds.
Views on the glass ceiling
"I believe that we should concentrate on a better future state rather than the prejudgments of negative examples or common myths that keep women from rising in their career. We need to break negative thinking and programme our minds with a more positive and more conscious set-up," says Ozdemir.
"Female executives like Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors; Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM; or Marissa Mayer, ex-CEO of Yahoo, are excellent examples of female executives who have made to the top level in male-dominant industries. These examples are not only limited to the business world, but we also have many encouraging examples of female heroes - from science to literature - with notable contributions. Thus, I'd rather choose to focus on success stories and strongly believe that a hardworking, intelligent and ethical individual will break any barriers if there is any, regardless of the gender," she stresses
Her advice to young women, "I sincerely believe that hard work is the most important factor for success. I would recommend that you raise the bar all the time, and excel at whatever you are doing and wherever you are working. I also believe that women should have self-confidence and not underestimate their potential to be successful. Firstly, they must believe in their selves. If we do not believe that we deserve to get to a leadership position or we do not recognise our efforts, there is no chance that we will succeed," Ozdemir concludes.

I strongly believe that availability of equal education opportunity to girls is an indisputable factor that could change the world. Encouraging and supporting children from an early age and training them equally to help them build a successful career should be a priority of governments.

- suchitra@khaleejtimes.com

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Suchitra Steven Samuel

• suchitra@khaleejtimes.com