Well much-inspiring and good to hear when it comes to education and professional career, most difficult to follow especially for women in the male-dominated culture. Most of the fields, unfortunately, in Pakistan are considered well-suited to males only and if a woman dares to dream so, she has to face numerous problems starting from convincing and getting permission from family to admission in the respective university and practicing firm or company.
While interviewing a girl who I met in an office, left me disheartened. She was a law graduate and working as a receptionist in a private company on a very low monthly pay and to my surprise, the reason was she didn't find the environment of "kachehry" suitable to girls. Her concern was quite acceptable as the language used by lawyers especially males might be offensive to females. Most of the people portray female lawyers as they don't belong to a good family.
I think law is the most respected profession as nothing seems better to defend an innocent or sentencing a wrongdoer. The feel that you are contributing towards the justice is amazing itself. Well, the problems are not restricted to law profession, professional accountants and engineers also face the same difficulties. Pursuing a chartered accountant profession is really challenging and requires a lot of patience from not only student but also from their families as the profession requires at least 6 to 7 years dedication if you are lucky enough to clear papers during training period. And for a female student in a country like Pakistan, where after attaining the age of 23, families use to force them to get married. Furthermore, working in a chartered accountancy firm where so-called "hard working males" had a common trend of late sittings at clients and firm. Unfortunately, the competency of a trainee is judged by the late sittings and clientage. In these circumstances, females usually feel disappointed as they are not allowed from their families to sit late at clients or firm. They are even not considered for the outstation clients and other opportunities which are offered to male trainees.
However, in the situations mentioned above, contribution by women like Hina Usmani a qualified chartered accountant from Karachi is remarkable. Her efforts for encouraging girls to achieve what you dreamed, by running a female chartered accountancy firm is a source of inspiration for females facing problems of late sittings, by offering flexible working hours.
(The writer is working as Senior Auditor in Big Four Firm)
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.