America.gov asked businesswomen in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India about their accomplishments. Then we asked their male employees or business partners to describe working with a woman.
Ali [last name witheld] is an employee of Habibi’s. He holds a technical job at Check Up Co.
Masooma Habibi, left
The most important accomplishment for me was starting a new kind of business, one in which women had not participated in much before. I have hired 22 people. That means 22 families are better off. I have had a role in my society. I did something for my own life and also took a step to reconstruct my country.
My staff is important to me. They are the rock of my company. I manage people of different ages, different levels of education and from different cultures.
When I employed some technical people, at first, they didn’t want to accept me as a boss who would ask about their reports and remind them of their responsibilities. They thought, “She is not a good woman; she is a woman who wants to do men’s jobs and is very crazy.”
I searched for a solution. I asked them about their families and understood that their women and girls are not allowed to work outside the home. I knew I had to change their ideas in two ways – first, change their ideas about my ability to be a boss and second, change their ideas about their women and girls.
I started to use a lot of the work of these technical people, to ask them about projects, to seek their input in managing our company and many other things. I worked with them. If I controlled them, I controlled them like a friend. I tried to make a very good working environment. After some days, I saw their respect — for each other and for me — increasing. They saw me as a boss who really wants to help them. They were employees who came to me to get their pay, but soon they told me that they could wait if I couldn’t pay their salaries on time. I couldn’t believe that!
But I still had the second set of ideas to change. I told my male employees that it would be better for them to send their women to get an education, because their wives can manage and raise their children better with an education. Their daughters could be leaders in businesses, in hospitals, in schools … changing the future of their country and that of their families. Fortunately, most of them accepted my ideas about their families.
Ali [last name withheld]:
One of my friends told me about a job as technical person. I was very happy to find out about the job. But when I saw Ms. Habibi, who came to speak to me about the job and to interview me, I laughed in my mind, saying to myself, “She is my boss? She controls this company?” In my mind, she was a stupid woman. I wasn’t really thinking.
The company accepted me. I told myself, “Hey, Ali, you are free. No one will control you.” So I started to work, but I didn’t want to give Ms. Habibi reports or to participate in monthly meetings. I thought, “These are just stupid works that she wants me to do.”
But after a few months, she changed all of my bad habits — in my work and also in my private life. She works hard and always encourages other people to work hard to do all things the best way, encourages them to change their ideas and to make a new life for themselves. That is not easy in Afghanistan.
Ms. Habibi has always looked at me as someone very important for the company and has asked me about my ideas regarding the work even though I was just a technical person who didn’t have a high position. I understood that while I don’t have high education, I am a person who is responsible.
She surprised me and I surprised others. She was the reason I sent my wife, who has five children, to get primary education. I am proud of my wife and myself because we are thinking about our children, and our children are future of this county.
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