Another Woman’s Day – so what have we done. A lot, Claudia Sheinbaum was elected as Mexico’s first female president in 2024, and Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah became Namibia’s first female president in December 2024. The Paris 2024 Olympics achieved full gender parity, with an equal number of male and female athletes, and not to forget Eileen Gu and her unapologetic brilliance. We have come a long way and yet we have a long way to go.
We have definitely cracked the glass ceiling, but it’s still not broken, and let’s face it, the biggest hurdle often is ourselves. We continue to whisper about each other, we compete for the seat at the table by withholding information rather than building a bigger a table, and we even clique to ignore one. This woman’s day, be brave enough to say it, we want a village but we want to pick and choose our own.
Also, lets be brave enough to change it.
Dear woman, You wake up the sun, finish making breakfast and lunch before the house wakes up, and yet you walk into work on time, with your head held high knowing you have a mountain of work. You navigate your gender with grace and authenticity. You come home and are present emotionally for the family. This is extraordinary – This is the kind of resilience, emotional intelligence and the ability to think multidimensionally that no machine can replace.
It’s no secret, I am not exactly in love with the AI hype, and this has led me to reading a lot about it and when I say , a lot, I mean A LOT. I recently came across this article from Stimson and it got me thinking. The glass ceiling may have gone digital, and yes, the data fed to AI has a gender bias built in, that will hurt women, and maybe in the short run, women jobs will be impacted, but I refuse to accept that we will be back on the burner again. For the love of sisterhood, I continue to read and research more and I find this WSJ article by Lauren Weber – she asked AI executives what they tell their kids about careers in an AI driven world.
Read these:
“In terms of what he should study in college, I’d want him to stay as broad as possible.” -Caroline Hanke, Global head of organizational growth and health at SAP, leading internal AI workforce transformation
Ethan Mollick, author of Co-Intelligence and a professor at Wharton, is advising his teenagers away from hyper-specialization entirely. Here’s why: If your job consists of executing one specific cognitive task repeatedly, an AI agent will eventually do it faster, cheaper, and without complaining. The future belongs to bundled generalists – people who combine three or four distinct, complementary skills into a stack that’s harder to disrupt.
“Metacognitive skills will be very important—flexibility, adaptability, experimentation, thinking critically, being able to challenge things. Developing critical-thinking skills requires friction, doing things that are hard, doing deep thinking. For that, a traditional liberal-arts education is really important.” -Jaime Teevan, Chief scientist and technical fellow, Microsoft, and trustee, Yale University
“When I think about what my kids will need as they get older, it’s human qualities: the ability to relate, to empathize and be around other humans. What’s not going to be replaceable is how you treat other people, how well you communicate with them, how kind you are.” -Daniela Amodei, President and co-founder, Anthropic
The consistent message and theme is building the human skills – be alert, know how to pivot, empathy, critical thinking, adapatability, have multiple microskills … as I read this, I am like, wait, I do this everyday and so does every other woman I know. This is it ladies, CHAT GPT can sit down – ‘cos we got this. The algorithms and models can predict a digital glass ceiling, but this humble blog Shilpa’s – predicts that women will be in demand, for we have the Natural Intelligence that cannot be machined.
There is a tiny catch though – we have to walk collectively. Yup no more whispering in corridors or cliquing.
There’s an African proverb: if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Professional women have been going fast — alone, exhausted, proving ourselves in isolation. It’s time to go far.
Build your village and protect it fiercely.
What does the village look like?
It looks like recommending the woman whose work you admire — even when she’s competing for the same things you are.
It looks like amplifying her ideas in the room when they get talked over.
It looks like celebrating her win without quietly wondering why it wasn’t yours.
It looks like talking to each other and not texting.
It looks like checking in on each other’s silence.
It looks like crying together – It looks like laughing together
It looks like being present – being present – being present
Let’s stop the silence,
Start the chat
Start the referral
Start the honest conversation,
The next wave is about women.
Let’s be in this TOGETHER.
Happy International Women’s Day!
