India has many empowered women

CHENNAI: The importance of women and empowerment was the focus of the 57th college day celebrations of the Justice Basheer Ahmed Sayeed College for Women. Speakers at the function stressed on the need for women to gain financial independence through education, and gain the ability to support themselves should the need arise. Widely known as the SIET College till recently, JBAS College was started with an aim to boost education not just among Muslim women but women from all communities, noted Faizur Rahman Sayeed, Correspondent of the college. He underlined the central role of women in culture and society, even as he called for continued development in empowering women.The function was presided over by Consul General of the USA Consulate General at Chennai, Jennifer McIntyre, whose speech w as welcomed with rapturous applause, as she began with the Arabic greeting ‘As-salaam Alaykum’. She noted that women were making great strides everyday in India, the US and around the world. She spoke of the progress of the India-US Women’s Empowerment Dialogue, which recently concluded its third meeting.She recounted her experiences discussing women’s issues and empowerment with Indian women students and told her audience about a question posed to her by a student from Coimbatore, whether Indian women we-re more empowered than American women considering the number of woman leaders in India.“I certainly agreed with the young woman that the-re are indeed many empo-wered women in India,” she paused, as the crowd broke into applause, “but I noted that there continues to be a strata of women in the United States and India who have not been given the opportunity to realise their full potential.”She took the examples of Indian-origin American astronaut Sunita Williams, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and Biocon CMD Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and asked the students to emulate them in approach. “There are three reasons for their success. Firstly, I think it’s important to note that they are really good at what they do. Secondly, I think all of them have continued to be true to themselves. And third, all of them are contributing back to their communities and societies,” said McIntyre.She then felicitated staff who  had recently retired fr-om the college and gave away prizes to student achievers.