What is pink content you ask? Well, Sairee Chahal Founder at SHEROES, has the best answer to this question. In fact she came up with this word to describe the deluge of topics we get access to, when we type the word ‘women’ on Google. It’s either related to fashion, relationships, jewellery, cooking and such. Not dissing it, but categorizing women’s preferences only in frilly and fluffy topics, is also a way of putting down their aspirations.
What is SHEROES? Is it about women empowerment. B******t! Pardon my language, but women don’t need to be empowered. We at SHEROES firmly believe in this and the thought lies at the core of our work. So what are we doing?
Career platform, yes. But, what is the difference among other such job portals and SHEROES. Well, to begin with we are not just a job portal. It’s a community for women.
6th iMedia Brand Summit 2016 featured a keynote speech by the SHEROES inceptor, Sairee Chahal. Excerpts from the talk.
“Careers for women were never linear.”
Coming back to the content on digital medium, information related to women is always hovering around their love life, relationships, fashion, makeup and jewellery. Lack of a conducive environment for nudging women, to realise their career aspirations, has enabled a superficial work domain for them.
One of the contexts to setting up SHEROES was women never talk outrightly about their careers and ambitions. When men get together their conversations steer to their jobs and careers, but we have not been conditioned to do so. Therefore, the need for SHEROES. The idea is to build a community, which enables a platform for sharing their doubts, queries and aspirations.
Difference between Community and Network
When we say that SHEROES is an ecosystem, we mean that it is a living, breathing system which is not rigid in nature. As Sairee points out in her speech, network has a hierarchy which is set in its ways. On the other hand, a community is fluid in nature and the participants can don different hats depending on their role at a given time and in a particular scenario.
That is the USP of a community. At times we might be the advisor, or help-seekers or just an on looker. Commonality of purpose, interest and common value system defines the idea of building community
4 lifelines of SHEROES
Mentor piece | Career Helpline | Talkshop | Jobs
Sheroes.in has been designed keeping the value of community at its heart. The 4 major features are as follows:
Mentorship piece: Normally when you feel stuck in the rut, after expending your energy and talent in a job, career seems like a burden. But, connecting with people who have gained experience over years, can help you out with their expertise.
Career helpline: A career helpline which runs on SHEROES app, powered by real coaches and real counsellors women are finding real time response- 7am to 12 night--365 days in a year. This is the space where women can bring down their guard and put up any queries related to their career. Seek help and guide others in need as well.
Talkshop: Access to content which is not pink in nature. Again, no offense to people who consume content of such nature. But, we believe that women want to talk about their careers and aspirations. But there wasn’t a legitimate platform to do so.
Actionable content relating to the professional voice of women. The idea is to give access to working women to pieces, which will be helpful and actionable in nature.
Jobs: Tangible job opportunities for women. Providing a slew of job options, which is custom-fit according to the needs of women professionals is the need of hour. And, we are working relentlessly towards that goal.
As Sairee Chahal puts it, if we were a gender-equal society, SHEROES would not have been relevant.
Here’s the video of the speech, and write in to us your views on the points said out loud by the SHEROE herself.