Career women skirt traditional gender traps

By Yogita Tahil Ramani

JAKARTA (JP): Living true to their nurturer trademark, some career women take pride in exercising their soft skills as mediators and whispering important tidbits into the right ears. The irony? Men are still the ones seated in the tall, cushioned seats.

Women in the workplace, an issue as feminist-oriented as Madonna opting for the garb of a nun, was the topic of a recent seminar held at the Regent Hotel, Jakarta. It hardly had the sensationalistic edge of the Material Girl draped in vestal- virgin garb, but the noteworthy gist of each talk given did enough to garner the complete attention of every woman and man attending the seminar.

Women's magazine Femina and Vaseline jostled to put together the enlightening working women's seminar-and-fashion-show package on behavioral tactics and professionalism in a man's world.

Speakers were Hermawan Kertajaya, entrepreneur and economy columnist of Gatra and Swa Sembada magazines; Eileen Rachman, director of human resources consultancy firm EXPERD and Femina's career-column consultant; and Irma Hardisurya, who is a color and fashion expert, Miss Indonesia 1969, as well as Femina's beauty and fashion columnist. Astronomy graduate from the Bandung Institute of Technology, Karlina Leksono, was the moderator.

Talkative charmers armed with company-profiting ammunition, some office women partake in every meeting possible with intentions to smoothen conflicts and critical creases marring a company's image or profiting potential, Eileen said.

Some wait for the right time -- they consider it thoughtlessly selfish to voice opinions when another is being frequently suggested. Some are ridiculously pessimistic about people accepting their suggestions. Others believe in procrastinating for quality work.

Then there is the matter of tact, and being brutally blunt, even as others resort to being callously cruel in the name of efficacy. Another option is the adoption of a self-prioritizing defense mechanism -- women pull out all the stops when their words are challenged or a threat is seemingly around the corner.

"Most of them have the best in mind for the company. Promotion however, eludes them," Eileen said on interpersonal relations.

The talk given by Eileen on the working-environment-and- interpersonal-relation nexus alongside the crucial need for assertive behavior, was both informative and broad-based.

Personal instances, even insightful anecdotes, were injected into the lecture on adopting assertive attitudes. Eileen emphasized on conveying thoughts, ideas and opinion with tact, confidence and a professionalism that edges on educated risk- taking and constructive criticism, rather than unnecessary apprehension.

It would be no surprise should most of the seminar participants claim to having thought the familiar expression "it takes a man to know a woman" (or something along those lines) during the talk of Hermawan Kertajaya.

He began with the old tale of office ladies trudging through life, faultlessly living up to all expectations and never getting anywhere. Hermawan stressed initiative being the career woman's middle name, as work was multifaceted and required an extensive range of behaviors -- maintaining a single role alone was a very short-sighted view of advancing a career.

Perceptively witty and biting remarks were not lost on the audience, as they chortled through his husband-wife "customer- retention" theory and candid expressions like "young guys are forever promising and never delivering, older guys never promise, but always deliver".

Laughable quotations by famed author John Gray and funny anecdotes of two differing worlds -- pragmatic men were from Mars and honest-to-goodness women from Venus -- had the audience in laughing tatters.

Hermawan defined segmentation -- targeting and positioning as zeroing in on strengths -- as working towards the noted aim and devoting undivided attention to it. In a sentence, being dynamically different is a characteristic of indispensability. He added that researching backgrounds of competitors was crucial for making the needed revisions to career paths.

Irma Hardisurya was focused. She spoke of the right fashionable style. She elaborated on each piece of clothing with such ease and alacrity, everything on the walking closet seemed like office-wearable chemises.

"As many women prefer fitting into what is in, the trick is not straddling, but finding a balance between fitting in and revealing one's individuality," she said.

Question-answer sessions were a little dreary, except one question by a female reporter trying to find the right clothing answer for a closed-room meeting and a boat ride down a river.

"I really don't know how to fit in both schedules in the same clothes," sighed the middle-aged Suara Pembaruan reporter.

The recommendations may be seen in the brightest light once applied practically. Quantum leaps of demure fashion, knife- gutting instincts and professionalism are well on their way in this era twinning feminism and masochism. Just as footwear befits the new woman of the 1990s -- they look deadly, but fit like athletic shoes.