“Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” – Sara Blakely
Project management is receiving prominent attention globally in all sectors because of the important role it plays in structuring the way an individual or team should organize and manage resources that are necessary to complete a project from start to end to successfully reach the desired goals. The demand for project managers should not mislead us to believe that project management skills exclusively belong to professionals, successful business leaders or giant male-dominated construction corporates. In fact, every woman should invest in project management skills irrespective of your career status. It does not matter whether you manage a small creche, are a CEO of a fashion company or sell muffins from your home-based kitchen – at some point you will be involved in an activity or a project that has a beginning and end; such as hosting a fund-raising event for the creche, launching a new fashion product, or building a new bakery to expand your muffin business. Therefore, as a key decision maker, it is important that you are empowered with project management skills to be on top of your game.
Irrespective of gender, a project manager must have appropriate skills and capabilities
Bernadette Felix, Director and Owner of Felix Higher Education (FHE), unapologetically advocates that more South African women should capture the project management market in all sectors and break barriers by becoming the leaders in this field.
She manages a training service offered to corporates, and her success is in customizing projects to satisfy the needs of each organization.
She says, “I treat my service delivery to each client as customized projects to ensure that the organization achieves its desired goals through the performance of their staff”.
FHE, without a doubt, supports the idea that having the appropriate skill sets and capabilities that are required to be a project manager is the vanguard to successful projects - irrespective of gender. However, greater balance between men and women can be experienced if at school level; teachers and career advisors alert female students that they can enter the male-dominated industries to pursue a career in project management.
Gender balance value is supported by the Global Leadership Forecast 2018 which reported that companies with greater gender diversity were 1.4 times more likely to have demonstrated sustained, profitable growth.
South Africa’s success stories
South Africa has its success stories of women project managers that demonstrated perseverance and boldness to conquer the male dominated project management industry. Yet male project managers still earn 8% more than female counterparts (Project Manager Average Salary in South Africa: 2021).
Here are some noteworthy success stories:
Zeenat Ghoor, Director of Aspire Consulting Engineers, undaunted by the challenges of operating in a traditionally male-dominated industry, started her own construction and consulting engineering practice working primarily with skilled disadvantaged artisans. She started her company by constructing new buildings and renovating homes. Today, the company attracts projects worth hundreds of millions.
Linky van der Merwe is well known in the project management community as an author and consultant. She humbly gained her initial experience as Project Management Administrator in the Financial Services Sector in 1996. With perseverance she used her experience to evolve as a Project and Program Manager in different industries including IT, Telecommunications, Retail IT and with Microsoft Consulting Services. She has partnered with ITM Platform to distribute a simple yet extensive project management software in South Africa to enable small and medium companies to support their strategic and operational project initiatives.
Yvonne Moela is the Chief Construction Project Manager at Gauteng Department of Human Settlements and owns Glam Dazzler Events. She has been involved with various construction projects, such as construction of schools, security installations at Klerksdorp Prison and construction of over 10 000 RDP houses in Naledi, Soweto and Soshanguve. In spite of the many discriminating challenges she experienced, she never gave up but continued to be a success story.
FHE believes that these successful female project managers (and many others not mentioned in this article) are a force to reckon with, because they:
According to Maltzman and Shirley (2020) Pike Sahra Ozguler, an internationally recognized project manager, conducted interviews with female project managers in 17 countries and on the issue of gender differences, it was pointed out that women had to work harder than their male counterparts to get the work done and to get recognized for their achievements.
Evidently, the global culture of female project managers working harder than male counterparts has significantly started to break barriers despite many social challenges.
References
DDI World Global Leadership Forecast 2018 (online)
https://www.ddiworld.com/research/global-leadership-forecast-2018#
[Accessed on 21 January 2021]
Harrin, E. 2020 Inspiring Women in Project Management: Linky van der Merwe (online)
https://www.girlsguidetopm.com/inspiring-women-in-project-management-linky-van-der-merwe
[Accessed on 24 January 2021]
Maltzman. R. & Shirley. D. 2020 The Perspective of Women Project Management Professionals (online)
https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/64458/The-Perspective-of-Women-Project-Management-Professionals
[Accessed on 20 January 2021]
Moela, Y. M. My Journey as a Female Project Manager (online)
https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.projectmanagement.org.za/resource/resmgr/Events/Yvonne_Moela.pdf
[Accessed on 23 January 2021]
Project Manager Average Salary in South Africa 2021 (online)
http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?
[Accessed on 21 January 2021]
The Workspace 12 of South Africa’s Top Women Entrepreneurs (online)
https://www.theworkspace.co.za/blog/12-south-africas-top-women-entrepreneurs
[Accessed on 24 January 2021]
