Increasing women's representation in leadership, one girl at a time: Aditi’s changemaker journey

This story was written by Aditi and edited for length and clarity. 

I grew up witnessing experiences of gender bias in three generations of women in my family. When I noticed the terrible depth of disparities between men and women, it made me indignant and engendered several questions about how unfairly women are positioned in society. I sought out answers for ways to abolish these boundaries and saw the best way to do so was by enabling women to support each other, lift each other up, and help each other grow. 

I am Aditi, founder of Empowerette. Empowerette’s aim is to reduce the gap of gender inequality in leadership spaces and increase women's representation. We enable this by working with young rural girls through a one-to-one mentorship program for developing leadership and decision-making skills, building individual agency and capacity; while focusing on emotional well-being. The values behind the idea of Empowerette are rooted in my upbringing. I always learned from my mother the necessity of acknowledging our privileges and the crucial responsibility of passing this acknowledgement on. I feel it is important for young girls to become policymakers, representatives, and stakeholders in decision-making and leadership spaces as they grow up. 

With the goal of giving young girls the power to lead and after carefully outlining the mentorship program, I reached out to my peers to build an initial team of five members which has since grown to twelve. We sought out support from our parents to help us identify the specific campus for the mentorship program to be conducted at. One of the challenges was having to convince the campus authorities to allow us to organize the activities. Many authorities didn't give the required attention because everyone who joined the team was a young person. However, the biggest challenge we faced after starting the mentorship program was changing the mindset of the young girls who'd benefit from our work. The young girls we were mentoring never realized that a world waiting for their potential to arrive exists. It took us patience and many efforts to make them break internal and perceived barriers and believe in the endless possibilities that await them.

Our weekly mentorship sessions involve several one-to-one and group activities for building empathy and confidence, and improving communication and career skills. The community that we have been building through Empowerette involves women role models who can be a constant source of inspiration for the young girls. We are now working on expanding the mentorship program in more small towns in India and developing a network of professional female leaders who can guide our mentees in their career aspirations. This allows successful women to become allies to underprivileged girls who look up to them. But most importantly, it forms a supportive peer community where sisterhood can flourish.
 
My vision for the world is for it to be a safe place where women would no longer have to fight for a seat at the table. I want to see equality foster itself in revolutionary ways with young rural girls at the forefront of shattering glass ceilings. This can happen only when we make combined efforts with our power of youth and become trailblazers. Changemaking for me is not a selfless act of kindness, it is a responsible act of duty. To create an impact, young people need to look at the world with a lens of intersectionality because changemaking isn't supposed to be selective, it needs to be inclusive. For the future to be shaped as we want it, every person needs to be a catalyst for change to find better and bigger ways that break our barriers and lift up humanity.