“What are the keys to success in the professional world?” is not an uncommon question to hear in our workspace. This is particularly relevant with over 50% of our working community consisting of young, ambitious professionals at junior levels, ready to burn the midnight oil and do whatever it takes to progress their careers. An age old answer we have heard is to work hard and master your craft. But if this is truly all it takes, how is it that working women in the US - who are on average more educated than their male peers - work longer hours, receive less pay and are less likely to make it to C-level positions? To mark International Women’s Day, we explore just one of the many reasons why women are still underrepresented in today’s workforce, including in Cambodia.
Research suggests that the ability to ‘self-promote’, or openly acknowledge one’s achievements, plays an important role in career progression. It is also for a very straightforward reason - if we don’t tell others about our accomplishments, how will anyone know about them?. “We tend to think that our hard work and achievements should speak for themselves but that is not always the case,” said Sereyrith Chhour, ISI GROUP HR Manager. “The reality is that no one, not even our managers, have 100% visibility into what an employee contributes to both the team and company. This is why it’s so important for employees to highlight what they’ve done well during their performance review. Ultimately, managers require employees’ input in order to move forward and make decisions,” he shared. This is easier said than done especially in contexts like Cambodia, where one of the many unwritten rules includes denying compliments when given, let alone boldly talking about accomplishments.
“No one likes a bragger…”
“It’s not bragging if it’s based on facts,” said Anna Vainer, founder of the #IamRemarkable initiative. “A lot of women grow up hearing that they shouldn’t brag, that it’s not nice or modest, but actually if you’re stating facts it’s not bragging, it’s just telling the truth.”
With this belief plus the discovery of the statistics that shows both men and women don’t like women who promote themselves, Anna launched the #IamRemarkable initiative with ‘fact-based self-advocacy’ as its core principle. She designed the initiative to challenge social perceptions around self-promotion, upon witnessing how talented, successful women around her could not bring themselves to talk about even one thing that made them remarkable when asked. Recognising similar dynamics in Cambodia, our co-founder Zoë worked with multiple stakeholders to introduce the initiative here in 2019, in our mission to enable Cambodian female professionals to shatter glass ceilings and thrive in the workplace. Since then, we’ve reached over 80 women of diverse backgrounds in Phnom Penh, and this is only the beginning.
Workshops @ the Canopy: #IamRemarkable 2020 edition
At the heart of the initiative is a 90-minute workshop, featuring tools and practice sessions that provide women an opportunity to practice techniques to promote themselves in a safe space. Participants were asked to reflect on some of their proudest achievements, acknowledge them and really say it aloud: “#IamRemarkable because... ”.
Whether it was about surviving a mental health episode, or recognising the strength and resilience needed to be a working mother, or picking oneself up from past failures of choking on stage to now representing their organisation to doing frequent public speaking engagements, everyone’s experience was insightful. What was fantastic about the workshop was that it allowed women to take control of their narratives, acknowledging their accomplishments proudly, factually, and unarguably.
Our society is changing, perhaps not quite fast enough. The positive impact of gender diversity in the boardroom is getting more recognition. Yet decades of women living by "hard work will speak for itself" has not brought the number of female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies past 10% in 2019. Team Raintree feels now is the time everyone should speak for their hard work. While the current public health situation has changed our event plans for 2021, we will still be pursuing new ways of providing training opportunities to our community (including the free resources below!).
FREE resources + training
Are you excited to get started on your fact-based self-advocacy journey? Fabulous! Join us and explore an abundance of free resources HERE (we recommend this downloadable #IamRemarkable Week Online Challenge as seen HERE to get the ball rolling) or take part in the Google-designed course HERE and their latest online training HERE. If you wish to join Team Raintree in our next edition of the #IamRemarkable workshop series, subscribe to our newsletter below to get the latest of news and announcements in your inbox.