May Wafa, Head of FIG for sub Saharan Africa at JP Morgan Chase&nbsp;was NileFM's guest at the "CEO Women" Conference, and she shared with us all about leadership, work-life balance, and the signficant role that men play in empowering women.&nbsp;
How do you define empowering women?
First of all, it&rsquo;s amazing to be here and see all these fascinating people engaging in panels, discussions, and networking. It's fantastic.
Seeing the number of male figures in the room was fantastic&mdash;very encouraging. Their speeches and open discussions were empowering. It&rsquo;s great to have women talking to other women, but we need men in the conversation too. Men as allies are very important in order to empower women.
There are lots of programs that are there such as mentorship and sponsorship, those are very important for empowering women, but the main idea and what I found really inspiring today when I heard one of the CEOs and chairmen speaking about that it's great to have numbers, but how can we facilitate the work life for women.&nbsp;
We all talk about work-life balance, but what are we doing to do that, we keep encouraging women to have a work-life balance but what are the companies doing in order to encourage and empower women in order to have this work-life balance, I believe empowerment has a big scope, but one of the main things is getting things into action rather than putting policies and procedures without applying them.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Women are often asked, &ldquo;How do you do it all?&rdquo; It&rsquo;s a question that&rsquo;s rarely directed at men, which still reflects a gendered division when it comes to balancing work and life.
I actually managed to achieve balance thanks to my husband. If it weren&rsquo;t for his support and belief in the importance of my role, I wouldn&rsquo;t be here today. There have been milestones within my career where I considered stepping down or not taking certain opportunities, and he was surprisingly the one pushing me to do it. I was like, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s quite interesting!&rdquo; This encouragement definitely comes from my husband, and I also need to acknowledge my family. Don&rsquo;t be shy to ask for support; everyone is there for you!
If you mention the male figure as an example of why men are not being asked about work-life balance, guess what? It&rsquo;s because they&rsquo;re getting support from their wives, friends, moms&mdash;everyone around them. There&rsquo;s an automatic support system for men that isn&rsquo;t questioned.
But when you see a woman, you ask, &ldquo;How are you doing it?&rdquo; Because, relatively speaking, we&rsquo;re not very present in some of the jobs that we do. For example, I work for Sub-Saharan Africa, and if you know what that means, it involves traveling to very interesting countries like Nigeria and Zimbabwe&mdash;not always the nice tourist destinations. But if it wasn&rsquo;t for everyone supporting me&mdash;from my mom, my sister, my friends, and also the fact that I have help at home from an amazing woman who supports another family, so it&rsquo;s a sequence of events&mdash;a domino effect, if I may say so.
You&rsquo;ve been to many different cultures. How can you compare the strides that have been taken internationally for women in the workplace or women in leadership positions?
You know, it&rsquo;s a big scope. It depends on the composition of the company itself. Today, we saw chairmen who were all male giving stats and numbers about the progress they have made and the programs they are implementing to empower women.
In Egypt, I was particularly fascinated by the progress we&rsquo;re making. We&rsquo;re definitely making amazing strides, and if you look at multinationals, I believe they are more mature in terms of how they tackle the diversity and inclusion agenda in general and specifically the women&rsquo;s agenda.
Is it fair to say we&rsquo;re doing fantastically now? No, there&rsquo;s definitely more to be done. Are we on the right track? Absolutely! We can see more women in leadership positions and public speaking, even running for the U.S. presidency. We can now see a female figure with a very high probability of making it, so I think we&rsquo;re not really way behind everyone else.
I don&rsquo;t want to undermine the fact that we have done really well in Egypt, based on the stats mentioned today. It&rsquo;s worth noting that the majority of those companies are multinationals. However, I hope to hear more from local companies, and I believe that if you look at the political arena, you can also see that Egypt is doing really well with strong female figures present.&nbsp;
What advice would you give women to keep going and not feel pressured or demotivated by the industry?
We talked about this today, the opportunities that exist now and the equal distractions that can easily deter you. There&rsquo;s a lot going on, especially with social media and everything at the tip of your fingers. My advice is old school: be consistent, be persistent, be resilient, and don&rsquo;t get demotivated if you fail because failure is there to help you appreciate success when it comes.
Just don&rsquo;t feel demotivated! Women are known for their patience, so please leverage your merits. We are inherently resilient and patient. We need to go back to our roots and embrace the qualities we genuinely have. We are created differently, and if you look at males and females, there&rsquo;s no right or wrong answer; we simply complement each other.
Everyone has their own strengths, and we bring a complete picture to the table. At some point, you&rsquo;ll find that you have more empathy while some men have a more realistic view, and then you&rsquo;ll be surprised to discover you are the one mitigating risks while they are making hasty decisions. I think we create balance together. It&rsquo;s unfortunate to think about women and men as equals and to have them at the table, whether as entrepreneurs, leaders, or simply having a seat at the table, because you&rsquo;re wasting 50% of your talent pool, from creativity, ideas, productivity&mdash;everything!
If you could give one piece of advice from your experience and everything you&rsquo;ve learned until today, what would it be?&nbsp;&nbsp;
I would say three pieces of advice. The first piece of advice for women is, once you make it, please be aware of the Queen Bee Syndrome, which is the idea that once you reach a certain position, you become the only one entitled to it. Don&rsquo;t make that mistake! Please give a hand and pay it forward to the other female generations. Try to help them up the same way you were helped. We fully appreciate the hard journey you&rsquo;ve been through, but you can make the next generation&rsquo;s journey easier by paving the way for them. Not everyone has to go through the same obstacles; we can help each other out! And I&rsquo;m saying this from a position where I have been helped before. Honestly, the first thing I think about is paying it forward to the next generation.
The second piece of advice is for men: without you, we won&rsquo;t achieve anything. Men as allies are very important. Remember, you may have a wife, a mom, or a daughter, and they are all female, so we present a big part of your family, so please be a support system for us.&nbsp;
And the third one is basically for the companies and the corporations please don't hire or promote females just to fill up the quota, please bring up the good talents because if you're doing this, you're only ticking a box, not doing justice to anyone because we will be portrayed as "She has reached there because she's a female" and we don't this.&nbsp;
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