International Women’s Day: Fatema Zahra Munir Ahmed Managing Director & CEO Hamdard Laboratories (Waqf) Pakistan

TEXT: International Women’s Day, March 8, is celebrated all over the world to reaffirm our global commitment to recognize the accomplishments of women, and their contributions in all spheres of life. More importantly, this day highlights the importance of empowering women so that they can independently earn and support their families. For this, there has to be an inclusive corporate culture within society where diversity and merit give equal opportunities to the deserving.

As MD/CEO of Hamdard Pakistan, I take great pride in the fact that Hamdard has been playing a leader’s role in this regard and establishing new standards for equal opportunities and a healthy workplace environment for women. Moreover, on this day, Hamdard Pakistan organizes and supports various seminars, activities and programmes at Hamdard’s establishment, affiliates and partner institutions.

Hamdard is leading the way when it comes to workplace inclusion and has established itself as a true champion of diversity. For Hamdard, the terms of ‘women empowerment’ and ‘gender equality’ are not new, because behind Hamdard’s stellar success is the struggle and determination of a few exceptional women; Rabia Begum who assumed the leadership of Hamdard in its infancy, when the founder, Hakim Abdul Majeed, passed away, and Mrs Sadia Rashid, who has lead Hamdard Pakistan till now, after the tragic martyrdom of Hakim Mohammed Said. Because of these inspirational women, Hamdard inherits a rich corporate culture of gender equality and diversity, which is now deep-rooted into our core corporate philosophy.

But there is no denying the fact that we have to constantly improve the workplace environment by adopting new strategies while maintaining our Eastern values and traditions. The case of our renewed commitment to provide a healthy workplace environment is clear. Under our adoption of a new corporate theme: ‘Aafiyat Sey Jeetay Raho’, we embarked on a new journey of broader societal change. With this message of Aafiyat our efforts are underway to not only address issues that women face at the workplace, but also to produce an administrative environment with the ability for immediate redressal of grievances.

Moreover, at the management level, we have devised a mechanism to ensure that transparency, merit and equal opportunities continue to play a prominent role in our policy framework. Whether equal opportunities is a cross-cutting issue that runs through all goals, or whether there are one or more goals that deal specifically with women empowerment, the commitment to measuring progress for women and funding policies and programmes as part of our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities under Hamdard Foundation Pakistan (HFP), that improve conditions for women, is critical and will be increased. Goals, metrics and policies are being recognized as progress for all workers at all Hamdard offices and affiliated institutions.

Hamdard Pakistan stays firm and steadfast to its core values to provide merit and equal opportunities to anyone who deserves it, both within and outside the walls of the organization, where female inclusion can have a far-reaching social impact that empowers them to make significant contributions towards the socioeconomic development of their families and communities.

I sincerely hope that the vision of ‘Aafiyat Sey Jeetay Raho!’ will inspire other corporate institutions to take similar initiatives and collectively we hope to lead our country towards a better, brighter future.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022