Women's day - 2008 - MMA meet at Taj

It was exhilarating to note that nearly 500 women gathered at Taj Coromandel fighting all odds on March 8th. The theme of the MMA women managers' convention 2008 was "Women unlimited - challenges in a global India." All the speakers spoke well. I have listed a few key points:

• Skills such as creativity, innovativeness, and collaboration will be highly rated. These are the skills that cannot be outsourced and have to be an intrinsic part of every organisation.
• Women have to display their feminine qualities only in their private lives. Office is a place where they need to be assertive.
• Cross-mentoring ( a man mentoring a women) should be encouraged. This brings a man's perspective to a woman and vice versa.
• Your role-models can be men as well as women. Though you can emulate few of their qualities you have to develop your UNIQUE strategy for success.
• Women should learn to accept compliments.
• You must play to win and women must follow the path of education, employment, and empowerment ( 3 E's) for progress.
• The GDP of homemakers is enormous and their silent contribution as facilitators should not be underrated.
• Never accept a mistake that you never made and always speak up for yourself.
• Avoid aggression at work. It may sometimes reflect a lack of self-confidence. You don't gain anything by getting angry. Instead, talk to the point assertively.
• A lot of emphasis was placed on acquiring a global perspective as 'the world is flat.' And a cliche phrase was "It is not about India or China but about women."
• One of the male speakers was mentioning that in future we need not have a specific ' Woman's meet.'
• Flexi-time, part-time, and time-off during pregnancy has and will become natural ways of conducting business in times to come.
• Men have turned a little 'green-eyed' about the flexibilities given to women. They have started demanding similar options for themselves.
• Foreigners working as managers in India, found Indians to be very expressive, emotional, and articulate at office. They found scenarios such as crying in office -- very interesting. They also found that a lot of hype was laid on punctuality rather than getting work done.
• Radhika Sarathkumar who was the chief guest observed that people always offered a lot of advice to her -- she always said "yes, yes, yes" and then took her own decisions!! She also mentioned that "even when sleeping you have to keep shaking your toes" or the industry digs a grave for you.
• Overall, women can no longer give excuses for not succeeding, as corporates have become accommodative and flexible and the glass-ceiling..um ..huh..what is it?