In the hills of Nepal, a mobile mason, Madhukala Adhikari, relentlessly supports families to rebuild houses after the 2015 earthquake, while Aminath Waheed, the only female taxi driver in the capital of Maldives, has been the victim of vandalism on many instances, and yet she continues to work for herself, inspiring young south Asian women to overcome barriers that confines them to have hope. There’s a reason IDA, the World Bank’s fund for the poorest countries, sharply focuses on opening more economic opportunities for women. Powerful, independent and influential women in South Asia prove that addressing gender gaps is the key to boost shared prosperity and social welfare. From various walks of life, they continue to break glass ceilings with their achievements, proving that age is just a number. From someone who grew up in South India, women being heard and making big changes, resonates with me personally.
A new year, a new list, but the names of the top influential women in South Asia have barely been modified. From listings such as ‘Forbes Asia’s Power Businesswomen List’ and ‘Forbes 50 over 50’, here are some South Asian women who will always be an inspiration, who get things done when they dream of it, because of their passion and courage that help them believe that they can and will.
Maria Ressa
“The more I was attacked for my journalism, the more resolute I became,” said Ressa in her Nobel acceptance speech. As a 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner, she is one of the very few women to hold this prestige for her selfless work in safeguarding press freedom. She founded Rappler, an independent multimedia news organisation while being a veteran investigative journalist and bureau chief of CNN. Her intensive coverage of President Rodrigo’s drug war brought her several threats and now faces jail time for over 100 years, and yet it does not deter her from her path to endorse and stand by the truth.
Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol
Suwanmongkol assumed office in 2019, and ever since, the Secretary General of Thailand’s securities and exchange, has been dealing with fraud and insider trading with an iron fist. Being one of the most significant personalities in the world economic setting, she is the first female head and fiercely steers Thai capital markets into the new era of digitisation, while maintaining its stability amid unparalleled global disruptions from viruses to blockchains. To her, gender is no obstacle. Indeed, she believes that traditionally feminine traits like empathy prudence and an ability to listen patiently and compassionately make women a great fit for leading roles.
Nirmala Sitharaman
Sitharaman’s meteoric rise is an inspiration to all South Indian women. When Varthaman, the wing commander in Pakistan was captured, all eyes were on a lady – Nirmala Sitharaman – as she was heading the world’s third largest defense force with more than a million personnel. She is now serving as the minister of finance and corporate affairs in the Indian Parliament and her ascent from being a simple middle-class girl who began working as a saleswoman in London, to being ranked in the Forbes annual list of the ‘World’s 100 most powerful women’ for the fourth time in a row this year, is awakening.
Adi Utarini
Melinda French Gates wrote for the Times magazine profile of Adi Utarini, “Today, almost everyone in Yogyakarta knows someone who has had dengue. Utarini herself has survived it twice. Dengue, however, may not survive her”. As one of Indonesia’s most influential people of 2021, she is a specialist in tackling dengue disease and has seen exceptional success with her strategy of releasing mosquitos inoculated with a bacterium that transmit deadly viruses like dengue. Working with an international team, her groundbreaking study was the first to drive down massive disease rates in community settings, making it one of the biggest triumphs of global progress.
Reshma Saujani
As the founder and CEO of the Marshall Plan for Moms, Girls Who Code, Saujani is a lifelong activist, having spent decades fighting for girl’s economic empowerment, closing gender gaps in the tech sector and advocating policies to support moms impacted by the pandemic. As a board member for Harvard University, the international rescue committee and with an extensive background in law, she was the first Indian American woman to run for the US Congress. In one of her interviews, she says “there needs to be a world where moving in and out of the workforce has no penalty and women don’t need to opt out due to corporate policies or hide their motherhood at work”.
So many women have brought down gender barriers, creating ripples throughout the Asia-Pacific region, becoming pioneering examples in their fields and grabbing the global spotlight. Although Asian women are still a minority force in the powerful women’s community according to the listings, it is clear that they are not being spoken of as much as they deserve to be.