Empowering women through SCCI

Quite a sizeable number of women from Pakistan participated in the recently concluded two-day SAARC Business Leaders Conclave in Mumbai. The participation of women entrepreneurs in different international meetings and conferences is a welcome sign.
It is increasing and proving encouraging for the businesswomen of Pakistan who are still far behind than their counterparts in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India.
The second SAARC Business Leaders Conclave with its theme of Regional Cooperation: A springboard for growth and job creation was held on February 17- 18, 2007 in Mumbai. This Conclave aimed to set the economic agenda for the SAARC heads of states summit and to give practical ground level inputs for business promotion in SAARC to policymakers at the highest level. SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) had organised the conference.
A brief encounter with information about businesswomen on the Internet in these four countries will show that women have ventured in textile, telecommunication technology, heavy engineering and manufacturing and financial institutions and have made their presence felt across the region.
The Pakistani women have yet to explore these areas and train themselves in the difficult art of learning techniques that are left as exclusive domain of men in Pakistan. Pakistani women have to come forward and take upon themselves the leadership role to make impossible achievable as women in other parts of the world have done; and have done better than men.
There is no dearth of women engineers, financial analysts and telecommunication specialist in Pakistan but either they are shy in taking initiatives or lack proper support from their families, public sector organisations or financial institutions in setting up their business concerns.
The participation of women from Pakistan in the recently concluded SAARC Conclave did not have proper skill and talent mix that could have exposed women participants to different works that women are able to do and could contribute to their national economies. Besides representatives of the Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry, women's associations of the participating countries were mostly from the garment sector. The representation from other sectors was very little. Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry from Pakistan had its representation at the moot.
SAARC Business Leaders Conclave seemed to have been dominated by male participants as the Mumbai Declarations issued at the conclusion of the moot says "Over 300 leading businessmen from across the region deliberated for two days...." Probably businesswomen were not noticed at this Conclave.
At the same time the 13-point policy reform agenda to achieve intra-regional trade of $20 billion by 2010 for submission to the 14th SAARC Heads of States Summit has ignored the contribution of women - 51 percent population in the region - in trade and industry.
Women workers and women entrepreneur dominates the entire garment industry of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India. The contribution of Nepali and Pakistani women in trade and industry is also significant. Women in Maldives and Bhutan are also coming up. The women factor is missing from the 13-point policy reform agenda.
In the light of the theme of the conference there are many question that need to be answered. Are women in the SAARC region being paid adequately for their labour; are they not being discriminated on the basis of sex; is there no complaint about sexual harassment that hampers their productivity; and, is there no need to set up SAARC women chamber of commerce and industry? Do they (men) not think that at the SAARC level skill development of women entrepreneur would empower women in managing business and industry? Not only these questions but a large number of women-related issues need to be addressed at SAARC level have not been addressed properly at this conference.
It would have been appropriate at the Mumbai moot to give some thought to entrepreneurial women's issues to bring them in the mainstream business activities.