Delhi, 29/6/23: Arthan is set to host its first-ever Women at Work Conference, ‘She The Change: Empowering Voices, Enriching Workplaces’ on 4th July 2023 in New Delhi. The conference aims to bring together organizational leaders, human resource experts, gender experts, and remarkable individuals from civil society organizations and social enterprises. With the G20’s current focus on women-led development and inclusion of all development factors, this conference would facilitate the sharing and acknowledgment of good practices, support networking, and also help foster useful deliberation and knowledge exchange. This will be done to nurture dialogue and form communities of practice centered around gender equity, diversity, and inclusion in the development sector.
In 2022, Arthan started the ‘Women at Work’ initiative to boost women’s leadership in the development sector by offering them growth opportunities and enabling the integration of gender-intentional strategies and processes into the workplace and organizational culture of social purpose organizations. To inform this initiative, Arthan conducted a study to map the landscape of organizational development approaches, activities, and processes enabling gender equity. In line with this purpose, the ‘She The Change’ conference will host panel discussions, discuss key highlights of this study, and serve as a networking forum for attendees.
The conference will feature two distinguished keynote speakers – Renana ben Jhabvala (SEWA) and Shrayana Bhattacharya (World Bank – Social Protection Unit, South Asia), who will share their experiences and help set the stage for meaningful deliberation and discussion.
The conference will unveil compelling discoveries from the landscape study and offer actionable recommendations for organizations to embrace gender-intentional strategies and build capacities to integrate these policies into organizational practice smoothly.
The conference will foster discussions on gender equity in the workplace through two-panel discussions featuring an outstanding lineup of experts and thought leaders. The inaugural panel of the day titled, ‘Experience to Experiments: Intergenerational and Intersectional Perspectives on Building Gender Equity at the Workplace‘ will encourage an insightful dialogue between different thought leaders with diverse experience, expertise, demographic, identity, and sector on their pursuits of gender equity within institutional structures and strategies. The panelists include Akshay CM (DEI Expert), Parul Kamra (Project Baala), Indrajit Chaudhuri (PCI India), Riya Singh (Dalit Women Fight) with Aiswarya Ananthapadmanabhan (Arthan) moderating the discussion.
The second panel, ‘Intent – Yes, Resources – No: How to incentivize gender-intentional organizational behavior and reward gender-equitable outcomes,’ will highlight funding practices with gender equality goals and help initiate a dialogue about practices that can help incentivize the prioritization of gender equity in and by organizations. The speakers for this insightful panel include Anand Sinha (The David & Lucile Packard Foundation), Dr. Anuradha Rajan (South Asia Women Foundation India), Gayatri Nair Lobo (A.T.E. Chandra Foundation), and Raj Mariwala (Mariwala Health Initiative), with Anchal Kakkar (Arthan) facilitating the conversation.
The conference will also host ‘She The Change – Showcase,’ featuring a series of effective practices for organizations to become inclusive and equitable in their institutional perspective and practice. Through the showcase, Arthan aims to highlight incredible workplace values and practices ideated, instituted, and institutionalized in their organizations which have contributed to fostering gender equality and integration, women’s leadership, and DEI.
The conference will also feature a networking session, ‘Behind the Networking Scenes: Real Experiences, Real Impact,’ led by Disha Shrivastava (Centum Foundation) and moderated by Maathangi Mohan (Arthan). In this session, the participants will be oriented on the nuances of networking and engage in a participatory session to forge meaningful connections with like-minded professionals, including mentors and potential collaborators, who share a passion for fostering change through their work.
The conference and its sessions will provide an opportunity for the attendees to engage in thought-provoking panel discussions. Moreover, it will help them understand capacity-building gaps for gender-intentional policies in the development sector, learn about institutionalizing GEDI in organizational policies and practices, and host a networking opportunity to enhance their professional development. So, suppose you are a woman leader, development professional, GEDI Advocate, Social Entrepreneur, or anyone interested in driving gender-equitable practices in the development sector. In that case, this conference is definitely for you. Register for the conference here – https://forms.gle/EZQH5xuMKQgicZGM8
