Salma: Focus on performance, not gender

Dar es Salaam. The concepts of value and priority are familiar in business organisations. However, not many people can tell what they mean exactly.

Briefly: a ‘priority’ is something that changes, due to outside influences and demands, while ‘value’ is something which outside influences can’t change.

Understanding this difference is crucial if an organisation is to enable women to climb to top managerial positions.

It is on this basis that organisations need to cultivate the culture of appreciating the achievements made by women at their work-places. This would motivate other women to achieve bigger goals by working their way up the ladder of leadership.

The founder of ‘Binti Wetu,’ Salma Ishaq, tells the Season 2 of Mwananchi Communications Limited’s Rising Woman Initiative that an organisation must ensure it recognises the value of work rather than the worker’s gender. If you do this, she says, it becomes much easier to open doors for more women into leadership roles.

Salma is the chief executive officer at Binti Wetu, an initiative that was started in 2021 and consists of 10 people whose task is to promote awareness on particular needs of children, women, indigents and people with disabilities for the purpose of supporting them.

Among other things, the initiative has assisted 100 children suffering from cancer to get health insurance cover under the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), thereby readily accessing health-care products and services. The initiative has also highlighted adolescent girls and young women’s talents; organised fund-raising events with the view to empowering girls in sports, and conducted “return to school” campaigns for school drop-outs.

After her secondary school education in Arusha, Salma joined college in Arusha Region where she graduated with an Advanced Diploma in Business and Information Technology.

Salma always knew in her heart that she had a calling to supporting girls so they would succeed in life by achieving their dreams.

Reflecting on her life, she says society as heavily male-dominated, especially when it comes to decision making on crucial matters.

She notes that women were not always appreciated on what they were capable of doing, including holding leadership positions. She wanted to change this and help fellow women realise their potentials.

“My experience so far is that support does not come out easily, even from people you depended on. All is due to the way women leaders are perceived in society. Some even try to bring you down as you strive to find solutions to problems facing society. People who strongly believe that women are not capable of handling certain tasks will always be there. it will take time to change the mindset. However, determination is my main pillar that keeps me going pursuing my goal,” says Salma.

Her journey, she says, has always been like a roller coaster, but she has never thought of quitting.

“There were moments I feared that probably I would not be able to achieve something in life, but, thanks to my mother’s support, I remain strong and committed to my cause of helping fellow women realise their life dreams. I now take threats as challenges, and hence this helps me organise my mind in a way that pushes me forward,” clarifies Salma.

Describing how she keeps her determination alive, she says: “My mother, Fatma Simba, is my main mentor. She provides me a shoulder to cry on, she lifts me up when things get tough, and always reminds me of my goal of helping fellow women achieve their dreams.”

It is not uncommon for leaders to develop their own leadership styles. This very much depends on a myriad factors like experience, personality and unique needs of the organisation. Hence, it is crucial for one to identify their leadership style to help shape their guiding philosophies of leading their subordinates so that the ultimate goal of the organisation would be realised within the set time-frame.

For her part, Salma explains that she prefers consultation leadership style in guiding her team, because it’s a fair type and always looks at and considers feedback from team members before a decision is made.

She says she finds this style as being important in building team-spirit and unity, plus they all own the decision passed and hence are all accountable to it.

“I love giving people the chance to express their ideas and views. I love empowering everyone around me, and it gives me joy to see them taking their tasks more responsibly,” she shares her leadership philosophy.

A growing proportion of women is breaking the glass ceiling, and those who hold leadership positions attribute their success to such factors as education, competency, commitment, aggressiveness and availability of work opportunities.

Responding to the question why some organisations don’t seem to strike the gender balance in top leadership positions, Salma argues that it is probably because some men feel insecure when they have women bosses.

“Some people don’t believe in women because they feel threatened, while others feel like women are out of place in the workplaces, but I’m convinced that an organisation that embraces gender balance has better chances of achieving their goals than those that don’t,” Salma pontificates.

Refering to Binti Wetu, Salma says both genders are given equal opportunities to work. Everyone has the same rights as the others.

“At Binti Wetu, we value people for what they do for the initiative, which has nothing to do with their gender. When they perform well, they are rewarded for that, and it is not because of their gender,” Salma explains.

She insists that it is important to empower girls and women to play leadership roles because of the general mindset dominating in society, that is, the thinking that women were inferior compared to men.

“Let’s teach women to be confident and believe in themselves and knowing who they are and what they want. We must do this starting from a young age. We also need to continue educating the entire society about this matter,” says Salma.

According to her, nature gives women the capacity to handle multi-tasks at one go. Building from this notion, she argues that nature has made women natural leaders in most of what they do.

“My call to fellow women is that we need to gather strength, lift one another up and commit to pursuing excellence in all that we do. We should not allow inferiority complex to get the best of us, but rather strive to realise our big goals and dreams.

“At Binti Wetu, our motto is: ‘Binti na ndoto zangu na kujiamini ninaweza’: roughly ki-Swahili for ‘As a girl, I have my dreams, and believe I can do it’. We use this to help girls realise that their lives are important, and that they must believe in themselves so as to make positive impacts in society and help bring about positive change.