International Women’s Day is a day to celebrate all women from around the world and from all walks of life. News Hub Asia (NHA)’s Ruzanna M. Zuknik managed to speak to one of the most influential women in Malaysia, Dato’ ‘Aliyah Karen, who is all for celebrating, recognising, and supporting women in the roles they play in society and in the business world.
NHA: What are your thoughts on International Women’s Day? Why is there a need for one special day as opposed to celebrating women every day?
Dato’ ‘Aliyah Karen: That’s a very normal thing that all women say that every day should be women’s day. For me, I think, International Women’s Day is celebrated and the key word here is celebration; so, it’s celebrating and recognising the women in our lives around us; the people who plays a very important role.
For me personally, it’s especially the underdogs – people who don’t get the recognition; people who are behind the scenes; from the lady sweeping the streets, to the receptionists, to the female taxi drivers and food delivery riders. And today we have a whole lot of frontliners, and a majority of them are women. So yeah, they are not just the doctors but also the nurses, the cleaners, the people who does the laundry, the cleaning and disinfecting and so on. These are the people I mean and they need to be celebrated because they too have been slogging the past one year for our country and for us. Right? So, also a shout out to single mothers and home entrepreneurs. There are these wide spectra of people, women in particular, who needs recognition. So I think it’s a good day to just stop everything, think, celebrate them, remember them; at least one day to say “I’m celebrating you. Thank you.” I think that’s good.
With this one day to celebrate and recognise these amazing women, how do you think it impacts them and how does it empower women in general?
I think the recognition itself is a big thing for women. I think indirectly it encourages and gives women a boost. It’s a recognition that says, “Okay, I’m recognising what you’re doing now”. Basically in simple language, do more; go out there, put yourself out there, and prove yourself. We all can’t run away from the fact that we all like recognition. So, when we are recognised, indirectly it motivates us to do even more. It makes us go one step further. It makes us do things on a wider scale, on a bigger spectrum; we tend to help more people. So, it’s very encouraging to see a woman who is recognised and acknowledged, and then have that same woman take it a notch up or getting more women on board; there’s a spiral effect as far as I’m concerned.
So, I’m all for recognising and encouraging women out there. I’ve seen how it benefits women when you recognise them and give them that little push to say, “You’re fine”. So yes, it goes a long way.
What do you think is the role of women in the business world?
One advantage that women have, and I noticed it in the past year, is that we thrive. With everything that has been going on (the pandemic), and women having to work from home, (and at the same time) take care of their families, take care of the kids and homeschooling, taking care of their husbands who are working from home as well… so these women have to juggle, and they thrived. Look at the statistics of how many women have become overnight entrepreneurs, from baking to cooking to packing. Suddenly, everyone’s got a business, and social media has been fantastic to help highlight these women.
So, one thing that women have, which is an advantage is that, as we know, people always say that women are soft, but I think we can also be very, very strong. So, when you put the softness and the strong together, it’s a win. That’s the advantage. Today, we can juggle our responsibilities – we can manage the household, family, business, work, outside work. Anything is possible. I think with all these challenges that women have to face in these times, I say, “Look at the challenges in the eye, give it a wink, and you’re ready to go”.
There are opportunities and I think the last one year has proven that when push comes to shove, for many women including myself, every single opportunity that came our way it was a question of “Shall we do it or shall we not do it?”; weigh the consequences – do a quick SWOT analysis in our brains and say “Yes, we can do this; okay we want to collaborate. We may not have the funds, but let’s find the funding”.
So, when push comes to shove, everybody turns out okay, and everybody is prospering, and that’s the good part about how we have thrived. You did not see this five to 10 years ago when women were holding 9 to 5 jobs, and going home, and that was the routine, the norm back then. And then suddenly the pandemic hit, which was very unprecedented obviously, and suddenly we were placed in a dilemma: we were staying at home, some were going to lose their jobs, some were finding a little bit more time on their hands, and the worst part is for most women they did not know what’s going to happen the next week, the next month, or the next year. It was a lot of “what’s going to happen next?” and then we saw some women starting businesses and people supporting these businesses… I for one is all for supporting local businesses.
So, when we see single mums selling cakes, we buy their cakes – if we don’t eat the cakes, we send off the cakes as gifts. It became a vicious cycle; everyone is supporting somebody. Those who could support and those who needed that support started to reach out and say, “Look I’m doing this; I’m now doing packaging; I’m now doing arts and crafts, and so on”. So, I think everyone rose up to the next level, and continue to rise, and playing their roles very well, whether they are the people on the supporting end or they are the people on the giving end, the handing out end.
I think it has been a fantastic year for women. As much as you want to say it’s a COVID-19 year, I’ll say it was a women’s year; when 2019 turned into 2020 and now 2021, and I see this not stopping. I don’t see this (women playing their roles and growing businesses in the community) stopping.
We have never had this much of hype for International Women’s Day as we are having this year. Last year, it was very low key. This year the hype started in February and it’s going all the way on until April. A lot of us have got our calendars quite full giving talks and interviews, doing events and programmes to support the community; but I think what’s added on this year is also a lot of other elements like SDGs, gender equality, poverty, education. I think when combining all of them and having more groups of women out there, for example I belong to the Tulips Movement and that’s a powerful group of women, advocating (and it’s not about advocating the rights of women, we don’t think we need to do that), but it’s more on advocating what we can do such as putting ourselves out there, and say “Look, this is the best of us, come and take, come get us; we are more than happy to play a role in society”. So that’s important.
Moving forward, which industries do you see women striving in?
I think the first one at top of my head will be IT (information technology). I see a lot of buzz in information technology, and I think a lot of women are jumping on that bandwagon. And I don’t think it’s just a men’s industry – it used to be a very male-dominated one – but today, you find that there are lots of women in tech, there lots of women engineers; so they are combining their efforts from engineering into tech businesses. And the other thing is definitely entrepreneurship. I foresee that there will be more SMEs booming, and more entrepreneurships appearing right smack in everyone’s faces in the next 1 to 2 years, I think.
And here’s what she has to say to all women on this very special day…
