Eleven Indian women are among the 25 Asian ladies who have won the Women Icons Award in Singapore for dedicating their lives to social work. Women empowerment and childcare remains on the minds of these women, who came from a number of fields for the award organised by Business Excellence & Research Group Pte Ltd and supported by Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. Among the award winners was Vandana Sharma, who served for a decade in the Indian Armed Forces, broke several stereotypes around Women in Uniform and ventured into the corporate world. She mentors a lot of young start-up founders on building effective organisations. Sharma’s contribution during the 1999 Kargil War has been recorded and commended in the Military History of Army Ordnance Corps. Keeping her Women Empowerment campaign is Revathi Siddharthe Roy, who holds a Masters in Economics degree but drove taxi for 10 months in Mumbai to support her family after her husband died in 2007. Roy now runs a training school, Zaffiro Learning, for women to learn to ride two-wheelers and serve as “last mile” delivery person for e-commerce companies. She has already put 120 women with two-wheelers for making deliveries for e-commerce companies in Mumbai and Bangalore in the past six months. Joining in the awards was Dr Srimathy Kesan, who motivates children into Aerospace and Aeronautics subjects at her Chennai-based company, Space Kidz India. Kesan draws children to science with the aim of building a pool of scientists in the coming year, saying India’s pool of scientists was depleting as more and more students were opting for engineering or medical studies. Dr Kesan aims to have an aerospace research park in India, building on her working relationship with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the US and the Russian Space Agencies. Can we expect such yeoman services in Jammu and Kashmir where women yet are to make some mark in the society as achievers?
