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NewsDay

AMH is an independent media house free from political ties or outside influence. We have four newspapers: The Zimbabwe Independent, a business weekly published every Friday, The Standard, a weekly published every Sunday, and Southern and NewsDay, our daily newspapers. Each has an online edition.

Business women and media: How we shortchange our daughters

Opinion & Analysis
The universal contribution of women to development everywhere is widely acknowledged. Women who forge paths in the wilderness of spaces that are traditionally not occupied by women are highly esteemed, as are the many who overcome great obstacles to achieve their goals. In Zimbabwe we value modesty. We value humility. We value unpretentiousness.We value dignity. […]

The universal contribution of women to development everywhere is widely acknowledged. Women who forge paths in the wilderness of spaces that are traditionally not occupied by women are highly esteemed, as are the many who overcome great obstacles to achieve their goals.

In Zimbabwe we value modesty. We value humility. We value unpretentiousness.We value dignity. All of this is good.

Except that we so highly esteem these qualities that we can no longer see when they are harming us instead of helping us. Take for instance the subject of women leaders and the media.

We often hear that the media is disadvantaging women in leadership positions. We complain that we don’t see enough businesswomen in the media, that women’s voices are silent, that the media is guilty of practicing symbolic annihilation where women in business are concerned; that women are not given opportunities to showcase their incredibly abilities.

But it seems that women: serious, successful, inspiring women in business do not want to be in the media, do not want their voices heard, do not desire to attract attention.

When I canvass girlfriends who are business leaders they invariably tell me they are very private people, that it’s just their personality. Having sat around boardroom tables with the same women, having watched them negotiate at very high levels, having seen them skillfully circumvent disaster, I would be hard-pressed to describe their personalities as shy and retiring. On the contrary they are bold, decisive, insightful and influential players in the business world.

The universal contribution of women to development everywhere is widely acknowledged. Women who forge paths in the wilderness of spaces that are traditionally not occupied by women are highly esteemed, as are the many who overcome great obstacles to achieve their goals.

So why do they shy away, adopting an aggravating level of bashfulness and false modesty that leaves the rest of the world thinking we do not exist?

The message that is not reaching women in business is this: Its not actually about you. It’s about all the other women whose lives stand to be transformed by your story.

While researching for a panel discussion at the quill club this week, I cam a cross a headline in The Chronicle, Tuesday 3 April 2012 which read: Media Suppressing Women’s Contribution in Economy

When I see this kind of thing I generally am torn between screaming and weeping. I want to scream in outrage because I am thinking about all the times I have tried to encourage my own friends to make their voices heard in the media. Bank executives, publishing professionals, NGO achievers… all of them suddenly become spectators when it comes to the media. I think about all the events for top executives that I have been party to organising and the fact that of the handful of women on the guest list, only one or two ever showed up.

Headlines like this make me want to weep because I think of my daughter, your daughter, and all the daughters of all the mothers in Zimbabwe. I wonder how it is that they are expected to know what to hope for when it comes to being women in the business world.

How do you begin to visualize yourself as a robotics engineer if you have never seen or met one? How do you know what one can do with a degree in animal science or civil engineering or political science if no one is telling you?

We are shortchanging the next generation in the name of fear, in the name of modesty in the name of false humility. We are drawing the curtain on possibilities.

Wilf Mbanga, writing in The Zimbabwean says:“Most professional women in Zimbabwe are smart but not power hungry, which probably explains why there are so few of them in the media and politics.”

The Centre for International Private Enterprise says “to be truly empowered, women must develop their power base, advocate for reform, and exert their own leadership to change their operating environment politically, culturally, and economically”

How will we do this when women don’t want to be seen or heard in the media?

In a stirring piece entitled “The transformation of silence into language and action” reknowned author, AudreLourde says, “…what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence.”

There are people who died for the freedoms women enjoy today. In the face of that, what’s a bit of criticism in the press for the sake of a new generation of women leaders? Will we really put our fear of being seen as flawed before the staggering benefits that can accrue to girl children all over the country and indeed the continent.

More visibility for women in business means more role models, more choices more opportunities of our girl children, and for their children, and their children’s children.

Who will we be when we finally grow up?