Jackie Glenn from our Vision Sponsor EMC and Wim Elfrink from our Host Sponsor Cisco opened our Advancement of Women India Conference with warm words of welcome to 200 women from dozens of companies. The setting was stunning in Cisco's gleaming headquarters.

One of India's most powerful marketing executives, Jesse Paul from Wipro gave the first keynote, asking our audience to seek self-actualized happiness instead of just focusing on professional success. Among her seven principals were:

  *Create life cycle goals. Have role models who are just 1-2 years older than you and reach for their level as you stretch your goals.

  *Live life as a "to do" list.

  *Specialize in your area of work so your expertise will differentiate you and add value to your career.

Lim Shoon Yin from Shell reported the findings of the Gender Diversity Benchmark Report for Asia, a survey created by Community Business for the Diversity and Inclusion in Asia Network. This study is available at www.communitybusiness.org.

The study reports that of the four Asian countries included, India has the lowest percentage of women participating in the labor force (28% vs. 44% for China, 41% for Japan and 40% for Singapore). Of the Indian companies who submitted data, women's participation in the company's workforce averaged 26%. The number drops to 9% when measuring what percentage of employees in senior positions are women.

From our panel of super successful executive women moderated by Priya Chetty from Standard Chase Intl:

Rajini Ranganath from ANZ Operations discussed women as change agents, and advised us to ask ourselves a provocative question, "why am I here? Why did I get this job?"

Vasantha Erraguntla from Intel advised us about ZBB, Zero Based Budgeting where you choose the 5 most important things to get done. And you make sure your own development is one of those 5 top things.

Madhu Manjunath from EMC told us her personal story of determination to succeed, and about a book her company published called The Working Mother Experience.

After lunch we were enthralled by the brilliant Professor Indira Parikh, who has spent decades studying women leaders. She told us a graceful fable about how we determine our path through choices we make. She walked us through an exercise to analyze our own skills and where our paths might lead if we recognise our true skillsets and what we are missing. Dr. Parikh told me that a skill I didn't name in my own exercise was institutionalizing change-- building institutions that can last.

On my own panel on worklife balance  Srimathi Shivashankar from Infosys gave challenging suggestions and Dr. Shailaja Sharma from Shell spoke of her own efforts to build an important career while raising two children now 9 and 13.

The last segment of the jam packed day was an "open mic" session.  The attendees took eargerly to the microphone and expressed their ideas and concerns about their own advancement and that of all Indian women. This session closely related to Deepika Bajaj's morning segment where attendees broke into small groups to discuss key issues they face. The report out on these animated discussions is available on our website.

At the open mic session we continued some of the same themes:
   *Infrastructure issues in Bangalore  such as long commutes, especially due to traffic,  that take away from family time. Lack of child care options, with unreliable domestic help and no widespread system of child care centers.

   *Changes in the family structure with married couples living on their own instead of with the husband's parents. This creates financial pressure on young families and adds to child care problems since the in laws are not living in the same house and providing free child care. If the in laws disapprove of their daughter in law working, the situation can become untenable.

   *Stigma felt from using work/life programs.
   *Vibrant discussions of whether balance can be achieved and what words to use to describe the struggle to meet all the obligations a woman feels.    

   *Families sometimes assume the husband's work is more important than the wife's and can become unco-operative or qithdraw support if the wife continues to work.

   *The role of male co-workers. Several men in the room expressed strong support for women in their companies and asked how they can help us. These were welcome words strongly applauded.

   
The day's work was brilliantly emceed by Dr. Rohini Anand from Sodexo and Tracy Ann Curtis from Cisco. They provided expert guidance to the attendees on how to think about what was said and how to capture the strength of the day to move forward in our own efforts to succeed.

We are all so grateful to each of our speakers,  participants and organizers for combining your voices and talents to create a brilliant conference in India!! Thank you to Jack Mollen from EMC for his visionary support of this project over the last two years. I send my deep thanks to Cisco, Sodexo, Shell, and McDonald's for providing financial and intellectual support. Supriti, Deepika Bajaj, Shanuj Sherief, Radhika Muthukumaran, Lijo Johnson, Randall Lane, Edwina Mays, John Sequera and many others were essential in making this event a reality.