Female Leadership & Family Engagements

By Nkemngong Efuetji Mary

The summit united corporate women of distinguished  repute to share professional experiences, challenges and aligned strategies to enable novice corporates navigate the challenges that be. In a keynote presentation, Ola Cameroon’s administrator general Cyrine Draif, urged the participants to be creative, value and acknowledge people’s differences and devise strategies to incorporate these varied temperaments to their space. Humility should be your watchword, she added.

Moderated by Ashu success, the second panelists included Al-Nita Mouen, Claire Dipita and Edmonde Djiokeng. These panelists discussed; Female leadership and family engagements

At the core of our work, women are caught up between building a career and playing our gender and sex roles to the home. Often, we are expected to manage every home activity and ensure every family member is satisfied before stepping out to the professional sphere. This often is assumed to take a toll on efficiency and corporate productivity. One benefit of female leadership however, is an increase in strategies to promote work-family balance. This is important for the development of an alpha clan likewise improving family’s living standard. Female entrepreneurship and the presence of women on management teams have a positive influence on the social motivations and achievements of organizations. In the second panel discussion at the November 2021 edition of women in corporate summit, panelist reiterated that many factors constrain women’s ability to participate on an equal footing with men and take up leadership positions regardless of their economic prowess. Institutional gender biases remain a challenge all women seeking equal participation and competing for leadership positions, equally the organization of political and economic systems. Skepticism and mistrust of women’s leadership skills, the stereotypes and prejudices about their role in society and lack of suitability for leadership roles and decision-making, are other major challenges for all women striving to get corporate.

Alpha Women have initiated their own organisations in a bid to strike a balance between leadership and family engagement. Though these are often sidelined from policy processes involving civil-society organisations, striking a relative balance between the rich and those lower down the social scale is the priority of an alpha clan. According to Al-Nita Mouen, Claire Pita and Edmonde Djiokeng, the alpha female is identified by several traits.

Fearless leadership

The alpha woman is not mediocre. She is a bold and positive leader who holds true to her outlined principles and deals with life’s challenges accordingly.  It is this fearlessness that allows leaders to embrace failure, learn from it, and try again, rather than being paralysed by cynicism, afraid of making a bad decision, or unwilling to admit mistakes and learn from them.

High emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the capacity to identify your emotions, understand what they're telling you, and realize how your emotions affect people around you and how it shapes your perception of others: People with high emotional intelligence are usually very self-aware. They understand their emotions, and because of this, they don't let their feelings rule them. They're confident. This allows you to manage relationships more effectively. We all have diverse personalities, wants and needs, and certainly varied ways of expressing our emotions. An alpha woman should be able to assemble her emotions, build her social skill and communicate with everyone she encounters accordingly.

Visionary and authentic

Defined visions guide your decision making. Visionary leaders are tasked with moving   towards innovation and cultivating a new direction for the organisation or society they belong. Therefore, leaders striving to scale up and take on new initiatives or re-evaluate their vision should be visionary.

Mary is a Masters of Science student in Journalism, University of Buea