Bold and Becoming’s 8th webinar was on “Women Empowerment and Resilience”.

We were honored to have the brilliant actor and an accomplished corporate leader in the Advertising industry, Mr. Iresh Zaker as our guest speaker, in our 6th webinar on “Women Empowerment and Resilience”.

We started our discussion with one of the crucial questions: what are some of the misconceptions about women empowerment? In which Iresh Zaker shared a discerning misconception that women need to behave or act a certain way specific to their gender. Whereas he believes that women are equally talented and capable of doing things as men.

Our next question was:” what does a healthy support look like? The actor shared about his fatherhood answering this question. He painted a healthy support by explaining how he and his wife take turns in taking care of their daughter and supporting each other. He emphasized the importance of paternal leave in corporate culture. As a society, new fathers should be supported and promoted to take paternal leave to bond with the newborn and support the new mother.

We discussed the effects of disparities in household work on children and young members of the household. Mr. Zaker believes that a household is a responsibility of both the husband and the wife and hence the household chores should be shared equally as well. Mindfulness, acknowledgment, and active participation in household activities can be some key ingredients in abating such long standing disparities and building a kind and compassionate next generation.

About practicing resilience during stress and challenges in life, the versatile leader shared his insight on resilience by first defining it; To him resilience is the power to bounce back and persist after any bad situation. Exercising and reading braced him through his challenges such as low self-esteem and imposter syndrome. First step of resilience is to be kind and compassionate to ourselves, he shared. And “keep doing what you are passionate about,” he added later.

There is this scenario of doubting women’s capabilities and competencies in different sectors. Iresh Zaker believed that it was a way to practice and maintain patriarchy. From toys to cartoons, from academic major to movies, gender stereotypes and disparities are seamlessly injected into us from childhood to adulthood. Unraveling these will need continuous exercise and application of our awareness and unbiasedness. Unlearning our deeply rooted societal and cultural gender stereotypes is the first step to the right direction.

While sharing about his unlearnings in adulthood, Zaker shared his ideation and notion regarding his self acclamation as a “liberal” human being. To which, he realized his threshold of liberalness still needs some improvement where he decided to conduct enhanced research before opining or jumping into conclusions. Our conscious practice of adding compassion and sensitivity in our daily conversations; Along with the cultivation of our talents, skills and emotional well being can navigate us to a more resilient community; a more resilient planet.

What are the things you practice for building resilience? Let us know at boldandbecoming@gmail.com.