Behind a successful woman is her community

by Laletha Nithyanandan, Published TODAY, 8 Jan 2013

To mark the start of a new year, I accompanied my mum to a Hindu temple. 

As I watched her light the oil lamps, I noticed numerous other worshippers all lighting up their own. There were hundreds in total - each and every lamp symbolising a person's prayer, hopes, and wishes for a good life, and my mind wandered to "Damini" - the young Indian woman who lost her life after being raped and abused. 

I started to mull over the numerous news reports that have been coming out since the attack, highlighting the pervasiveness of abuse against women. It is sobering.

It got me thinking about being a woman in Singapore. I started a business as a young woman - at a time when it was not normal for women to be in business. 

There have been times when someone would walk into the office and, after seeing me, they would leave stating matter-of-factly: "A woman? I am not working for a woman." 

Many times, the person saying this would be a woman herself.

But at the same time, some of my best champions in life were men. I could not have come this far without their support ... without them backing me up. 

My business partner at that time was a man and somehow every client we met would assume that he was the boss and I was his secretary, but he always stood back and announced proudly that I was in charge of the company. And I remember the number of clients who fell silent after this proclamation.

DAD'S LIFE LESSONS

As a young girl, my father used to say that I could be anything I wanted to be ... even Prime Minister of a country, and somewhere deep in my heart, that message sank in and stayed there. He was pretty special, especially for that time in the early 1960s when I was a child. 

My father set the example, he helped my mother cook meals before they went to work, he ironed our uniforms and polished our school shoes when we were young and he always said that everyone needed to know how to cook and do housework. There was no separation of tasks like "boy's tasks" and "girl's tasks". My brother would sweep the floor and run errands just like me and my sister. 

One day, I had a friend over and she noticed that my dad had brought in the clothes that were drying outside and was now folding our clothes. Till this day, I remember her exact words; she said: "Wow! Your dad takes the laundry in? My dad would never touch our clothes, especially our underwear."

When at the age of 20, I wanted to start a business; my dad sold his life insurance policy and gave me the money I needed to start it. From the banker to the printers, they were all men - men who believed in me. I think about how different my life would have been if I was born into a family that believed that girls were inferior. 

My daughter, who is turning 18 this year, wants to take a gap year and travel the world on her own. I love watching her fresh approach to life - it is all new, bright and shiny for her, and in some ways I do not want to taint it by filling her head with fear of these sorts of crimes and making her fearful. There is a fine balance and I do not know if I have found it. I do worry whenever she goes out and am not fully at ease till she is home - and this is in safe Singapore!

CHANGING MINDSETS

There are many kinds of abuse in this world and abuse in itself is about taking someone else's power or choice away from them. But a much bigger crime is what we do when we hear such things - most people want to hear the gory details and then pretend they are not there. 

I believe that we perpetuate this ugliness in the world by ignoring it. We create it by the way we look the other way when we hear of such things.

I know I used to say that it is not a part of my reality and I foolishly believed that, by not thinking about it, it will not be a part of my reality! Or even worse - by accepting it as a fact of life - "this is the way it is". 

But it does not need to be this way. 

Our individual beliefs and values have a lot to do with our collective belief as a society. My father's belief changed my life and the way I raise my children would change another's life.

So each of us have a part to play in this - in how we raise our children and our community's children. 

It is in the little things - how we divide tasks in school or at home between boys and girls, or how we speak about girls. Things like "don't cry ... you are not a girl" - utterances we take for granted but have a deep and lasting impact. 

I, too, believe strongly that the abusers of that 23-year-old woman must be punished appropriately, but I also believe we cannot only focus on punishment.

We need to find ways to lift people's thinking - to transform the way women are viewed both big and small. There are many people doing such great work in this area, and we need to think about how to support them, how to spread the word and how to play a more active part in educating society as a whole. It does not matter if we are in India, in Singapore or anywhere else in the world.

Laletha Nithyanandan is the founder of Behavioural Consulting Group. A businesswoman since 1979, she started Business Trends the Talent Solutions Company at the age of 20, expanding the business to 17 offices across Asia before selling the business to Kelly Services Inc.