EquiLead – Engineering Gender Equity for Accelerating Women’s Leadership in Social Impact
Dear Readers,
Ask any woman you know (in the social impact sector or otherwise) who aspires to become or grow as a leader in their work and workplaces about what inspires and intimidates them about being a leader and chances are you’ll get most of the following answers. We posed this question to a bunch of women - colleagues, friends, peers and strangers - who were at different stages of career journeys but united in what drives them towards and away from leadership.
The thrill…
The power to innovate and influence. The fulfillment in mentorship and showing the light to those following us. The ability to fight biases and stereotypes and breaking myths of what women can or cannot do. Or about the leader they can but shouldn’t be. The opportunity in shaping workplace culture and leadership attributes that focus as much on equity, as they do on merit. The potential to redefine leadership rooted in feminist principles of justice and equity.
BUT
The toil…
The weight of responsibility that comes with power and privilege of leading. The pressure to perform in workplaces that extol myopic masculinised features of leadership but having to remain composed (read unemotional) while being ambitious (read aggressive). The fear of failure not just of one’s own but also that of having let down your peer women-kind each time you falter. The infamous Impostor Syndrome that is fuelled by a multitude of (sex, age, able) isms.
We, at EquiLead, aspire to erase the BUT
We are an initiative supported by Climate Asia Inc. and Arthan Foundation, who through our intent, interventions and interactions with the social impact ecosystem are committed to accelerating women's leadership* in the impact sector by building gender-equitable organisations of the future.
Our mission is two-pronged:
- Enabling more women to rise and grow in leadership in organisations committed to social impact by facilitating linkages to growth opportunities and a community of peers and mentors.
- Enabling organisations to make their workplaces to become inclusive and gender equitable in perspective, policy and practice.
Anchored in the values of “Equity” and “Leadership”, as our name suggests, we envision an ecosystem where women’s leadership will empower social impact-focused institutions to become gender-just organisations of the future: where workplaces, leadership pathways and institutional intent and structures will be gender intentional, inclusive and equitable.
We are committed to do this by:
By enabling talent to meet opportunity: We are committed to support organisations connect with and hire exemplary women professionals for middle and senior management as well as C-Suite roles. We are also committed to build and bolster a burgeoning pipeline of women professionals who are in or are ready for leadership roles to access these opportunities. Check out our jobs board that features middle and senior leadership roles (both gender agnostic and women-only) that are prioritising women professionals. Write to letstalk@equilead.org should you have any talent acquisition needs we can help with!
By enabling gender-intentional and equitable organisational transformation: We aim to walk and work with organisations to build capability to achieve their gender equity goals by providing tailored solutions that address challenges and opportunities unique to their contexts. Some of the areas that excite us include working with organisations to build a gender equitable leadership pipeline and change management, gender policy to practice brainstorming, strategy and implementation, GEDI awareness workshops, gender mainstreaming trainings, and support in building workplace communities and developing attrition prevention strategies for organisational leadership. Write to maathangimohan@equilead.org for more details and check out her blog in this newsletter!
By enabling a community of women to grow and thrive together: We are actively cultivating a supportive community that champions allyship, creating a space where women can guide, mentor, and access support, and safe spaces. We strive to be a platform that facilitates women in accessing work opportunities, including jobs, upskilling, mentorship. Furthermore, we provide women's leadership development through coaching and institutional mentoring programs. Write to soumya@equilead.org for more details and check out her blog in this newsletter!
By bridging gaps in data and knowledge around workplace gender equity and women’s leadership: Knowledge building is a means not an end for us given that our roots date back to the Women’s Leadership in Development Sector study in 2020. Investing in knowledge building and building thought leadership is a priority for us and we will do this through research and data endeavours that will map gender equity practices in social impact-focused institutions and their correlation with organisational effectiveness and sustainability, identify and document good practices and gaps in gender intentionality and integration with a focus on women in leadership. If you are an organisation interested in undertaking diagnostic studies on gender equity status and organizational requirements, conduct data-driven studies for informed decision-making, offer recommendatory studies on best practices, or conduct salary benchmarking surveys write to pritha@equilead.org for more details!
By championing women’s leadership and spotlighting women in leadership: We believe in the power of communication to inform, inspire, influence and incentivise and will be leveraging it to establish the pathways towards a gender equitable social impact sector. Through dialogues and data endeavours; communiques and campaigns, we want to showcase and champion both: women who have redefined leadership through their work, words and wisdom as well as individuals and institutions who have led by example in creating gender-equity focused allyship, policies, processes and ecosystems in their institutions.
Write to letstalk@equilead.org if you wish to start, lead, join and inform conversations and collaborations on institutional and individual priorities to engineer gender equity and women's leadership or if you want a forum to share, champion, and disseminate your work.
EquiLead is a journey and we anticipate it to be as dynamic as “leadership” itself.
- An opportunity to lead by example
- An opportunity to do good and grow by helping others thrive.
- Centre-staging the values of diversity, equity, inclusion and belongingness in everything we do. Learning, unlearning and relearning what gendered transformative change in individuals and institutions can look like.
- Expanding definitions and our scope of work with respect to intersectionalities and non-binary identities and doing it mindfully.
BUT…
We have no intention to be Superwomen and do this all by ourselves. We look forward to collaborating with peers and partners like you who share our destination and would like to join us in this journey. If any of the above resonates with you, we would love to hear from you. Do drop in your ideas here: https://forms.gle/nqrbuv11sqg3s1ud7
Or, write to us at aiswarya@equilead.org and anchal@arthancareers.com.
Warm Regards,
Aiswarya and Anchal
*Endnotes
- Gender transformation of an organization refers to a deliberate and comprehensive effort to change the way it operates with regard to gender equality and inclusivity. It involves challenging and altering the norms, power dynamics, and structures that perpetuate gender inequalities, with the goal of creating an inclusive workplace for all genders by intentionally restructuring policies, practices, and culture to ensure equal opportunities, representation, and treatment for individuals of all genders. The ultimate goal of gender transformation is to create an organizational culture where women can thrive, contribute, and participate equally in decision-making processes, resulting in improved performance, innovation, and sustainability for the organization.
- “Women” include cis-women, trans-women, and all individuals who identify as a ‘woman’
- Within the context of the initiative, the terms ‘women’ and ‘gender’ have not been used interchangeably.
- While we recognise that gender is not binary, the scope of this initiative is limited to women's leadership, recognising the unique experiences and challenges faced by women in leadership positions.
