South Asian Women's Leadership Forum and the Missing Pakistani Women

February 27, 2006

The South Asian Women’s Leadership Forum (SAWLF), invited me to speak on a panel this past Saturday February 25th. SAWLF brought together the largest gathering of South Asian women professionals in history, 350 women or so attended. Attendees and speakers were extremely varied, interesting and accomplished; including the CEO of Pepsico, Ms. Indra Nooyi. It was a wonderful, eye opening event which provided a terrific networking and show casing opportunity.

I took my 13 year old niece with me and for her it was an amazing experience to be amongst so many successful role models and to imagine the options she could have in her future. She also saw many of us sharing ideas and offering to help each other.

I was rather dismayed to notice that few Pakistani and Pakistani-American women attended this event. I could be mistaken and could have entirely missed the Pakistani representation in such a large gathering. But I think the numbers were negligible. The panel I was speaking on had a huge attendance and we were swarmed afterwards by Indian, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan women who are interested in social change initiatives. Not a single Pakistani woman was amongst them as far as I could tell. Again, I am happy
to be proven wrong.

If anyone else was present and can correct me I would be most pleased. If not, I would really like to know why Pakistani-American women chose not to attend (It was a very widely publicized event)? I for one would love to see this change and am happy to tell the SAWLF organizers how better to reach out and improve Pakistani women’s attendance.

If I am right on the low attendance then I think Pakistani-American women are missing out on a tremendous networking opportunity, as well as an opportunity to highlight their accomplishments to a broader and larger audience.

Here is the link for those who might be interested to attend future events:

http://www.southasianwomen.org/

Fawzia