IO Dutching the Patriarchy

IInternational Women’s day is celebrated all around the world as a sign for women still working towards gender equality. At InstaOffice, we bring together people from different walks of life and enhance their experience of coworking. The best way to network and collaborate at a coworking space are through their events and  InstaOffice, as the happiest coworking space, couldn’t wait for a better occasion to call upon 5 brilliant women who dared to have a dream and fight against all odds to achieve them.

On 10^th March, we hosted Dutching the Patriarchy with 5 women from different walks of life. We had Supriya Paul from JoshTalks, Neha M Sharma from IndusInsights, Shweta Singh from Lumis Partners, Shaifali Agarwal from EasyFix and Surabhi Verma from Sparsh for Children.

The discussion mainly revolved around the challenges faced in building and scaling ventures in Indian Entrepreneurial Ecosystem and how to overcome them.

We also engaged our guests in a very interesting activity! We gave them an A4 size sheet and asked them to write what the major challenge women are constantly fighting and conquering. And we had some amazing responses.

Here are some interesting snippets from the conversation:

• “I think there is a lot of talk around how difficult entrepreneurship is, but a lot of people don’t think about the flexibility it offers to you” – Neha Sharma

• “We try and focus more on tier 2 and tier 3 cities, as students and young entrepreneurs really do not get the exposure there” – Supriya Paul

• “One of my students is a gold medallist in Olympics.” Surabhi

• “Govt has created Skill India, and a lot of vocational courses. What needs to be done more, is to create more awareness in the society especially how the workforce is supposed to treat them” – Surabhi Verma

• “A large part of your story is based on external factors – so don’t give in too much to your external signals” – Shweta Singh

• “My work time, my health time, my family time, my self-development time and my social time – I try devoting equal time to each one of these things in my day, and this is what constitutes work-life balance for me.” – Shaifali Agarwal

• “My advice to women entrepreneurs is that it’s a journey, just go with it. Don’t overthink too much ” – Surabhi Verma

• ” Well, the issue that I struggled a lot with was not being able to say out my ambitions out loud – not having an open dialogue about it.” – Shweta Singh

• “The problem that I always had was that was I always scared to ask – be it from my mentors or investors. Don’t be afraid to ask.” – Supriya Paul

You could watch the whole panel discussion here:

The evening ended on a happy note with customised mementoes for each one of our speakers!

Women have come a long way. And an evening with these wonderful impact-preneurs was a testament to the fact that women were not, are not, and never will be the weaker sex – and with the progressive society we are a part of, it is not an unacceptable fact for anyone anymore. With this, it’s not just women, but the society that has won.