Even in this 21st century, the word ‘women empowerment’ needs to be re-emphasized. Whether a woman works at home or outside, she must take care of everything in her surroundings. Yet the contribution of her towards her family and work sometimes remains unrecognized. The challenges she has to face in her everyday life are not addressed or discussed. Because of continuous negligence, she becomes demotivated and demoralized at one point of time. With a view to ensuring women empowerment and increasing the number of women employees, Bikroy.com – the largest marketplace of Bangladesh has created a forum, ‘Moner Janala’ in association with ‘He for She’ campaign of The United Nations. As part of this forum’s activity, Bikroy has organized an inspiring event for the female employees on June 24, 2018 at Fusion Hunt restaurant located at Banani, Dhaka. These events have been organized in every quarter for the last 3 years in Bikroy.
This June, Moner Janala forum invited Shahnaz Munni, Chief News Editor, News24, Private TV Channel to attend the session along with all the female employees of Bikroy were present at the event.
Through this forum, female employees of Bikroy can share any thoughts or feelings at ‘Moner Janala’ forum. This forum is continuously working to reduce gender discrimination and encourage active participation from female members. It has three advisers including Naj Hussain, Rehenuma Islam and Eshita Sharmin. Male employees can also share their opinion at this forum. After each event, effectiveness of this event is measured through survey and constructive feedbacks received from here are considered and if required corrective measures are taken in the next event.
Bikroy is one of the few organizations of Bangladesh, which is working to ensure more women participation in workplace and the result is quite encouraging. According to Rehenuma Islam, Head of Human Resource and Administration, the ratio of female employees has increased by 7% than the previous year. The friendly work environment encourages more and more female employees to step in Bikroy.
Shahnaz Munni, Chief News Editor, News24, Private TV Channel said, “Sometimes we cannot speak our heart out in this society. But I’m really glad to see that Bikroy.com has provided an opportunity for their female employees so that they can speak their heart out.” She mentioned about the workplace, “We face a lot of ups and downs in our workplace but still we have to continue our life by struggling with it. Due to work pressure, sometimes we think of quitting our job but it may not be a good decision. We have to survive with our own qualifications, skills and good behavior. We have to maintain our responsibilities while doing our work.” While speaking about her career, she also added, “The beginning was not easy. I had to face many challenges to start my career. In this case it is very important to balance our indoor and outdoor works.”
Rehenuma Islam, Head of Human Resource and Administration said, “‘Moner Janala’ is a platform for our female employees where they can open up about their feelings related to the work environment and any other challenges they face in the workplace. Also, we focus on the development of our female employees and how they can plan for the work-life balance. We do invite different established female guest speakers from time to time to share their stories and give our employees scope to get motivated to face the challenges of daily life as a female to achieve their career goal. This time we have invited popular and successful journalist Shahnaz Munni and she has delighted us with sharing her stories and obstacles she had faced so far and how she overcome those to reach such an important position of the journalism industry. I believe this time again this interactive session will serve its objective and we will continue to do such sessions for our female colleagues.”
Eshita Sharmin, Head of Marketing and Ad Sales of Bikroy said, “’Moner Janala’ is a tradition of Bikroy. As a female employee, I feel very proud to be part of it. Here, we can always share our thoughts in Moner Janala. This time the session brought the topic that all the work we do at our workplace is very important. Our contribution is significant for our workplace, whether it is small or big. Bikroy’s contribution in building its female leaders is remarkable.”
