Kavita Gurung, 102120513.
Overview Of The Points Discussed
The topic for our panel discussion held on 18th June 2013 was “Need of women leadership in a civil society”. In the present context, we can see that most of the people are always emphasizing on Gender Equality to maintain peace and stability in a society. Also, there are lots of civil society organizations working for women empowerment. However, some of these organizations have failed to solve the core issues of women. So, the major points addressed in the panel discussion were: the problems and issues related to women, present situation of women leadership in the NGO’s, stereotypes present in the women leadership, barriers that obstruct women from being a leader, the causes for why there is a huge gap between men and women, solutions to overcome the issues related to women and finally some suggestions to increase the women leadership in a civil society.
The Process
Planning : The panel discussion was planned as usual – four of the group members would be the panelist and one would be the moderator. One week before the panel discussion, we made the proposal outline for it where we mentioned four different sub-topics for four different panelist and the extra questions that might be raised in the middle of discussion. We followed the proposal outline and started researching on each subtopic. I was the moderator and I had to make sure that there would be coherent and flow in the speech of each speaker. Also, I needed to make sure that each of the speakers does not speak too much as the time allocated for the discussion was only half an hour which makes 5 minutes for each panelist. As usual, it was planned that the panel discussion would start with the introduction of the topic followed by the introduction of the four panelists. Then, the first panelist to share his/her thoughts would be Karma Dolma Gurung followed by Uma Salma, Pon Samboth and Tara Moktan respectively. At last, the moderator would conclude the statement of all panelist in some few sentences and then the floor would be opened to the audience for the question and answer section.
The points and arguments covered in the panel discussion were: Despite of several civil society organizations working for women empowerment, women are still facing problems somehow and somewhere, the core issues related to women, the major cause for why there is a huge gap between men and women. The resolution to the issues related to the women was covered by the last panelist – Miss Tara where she gave some suggestions to increase the women leadership in the society. Some of it were: by capacity building, by increasing the literacy rate, etc.
The Implementation
Talking about the satisfaction, I believe our performance was quite satisfactory. All speakers delivered their speech coherently and none of them spoke neither too much nor too less. One of the strengths of our panel discussion can be the visual aids that we used during the discussion. One of our panelists used the statistics and presented it in a slide which I think is a strong point for us as I did not see the others doing so. Moreover, I was satisfied with my group members who were from Nepal, Cambodia and Bangladesh. It was a great pleasure working with them where all of them contributed to the fullest to meet the satisfaction of each member. Talking about the weakness, I would say that our topic might have been very common as there were so many other groups talking on the same topic. So, the topic was not so captivating.
Learning and reflection of the panel discussion
From the panel discussion, I acquired a lot of new things – The Old Boy Network from Mr. Samboth which excludes girls from participating, some facts and figures from Ms. Karma. Furthermore, the most interesting thing was to get an idea on women empowerment from friends who were from different cultures than us. It helped to me to understand how different people’s views are due to our difference in culture and growing environment. This kind of discussion is merely vital as it helps us to work in a team and support each other. For instance, when one of the friends cannot answer in the question and answer section then he/she would surely be supported by the other members. In our discussion, we received only one question and we managed to answer it well.
Also, it was a new experience for me as it was my first time being a moderator and I think I did pretty well. The panel discussion certainly also helped me to understand how a good moderator should be as I quite often used to research on it as moderators are the key person in any discussion. In overall, I would say that the panel discussion helped me to learn new things and work as a good team.
Conclusion
In today’s context, we can see that “Women Empowerment” has become a very hot topic. Whenever students are asked to perform panel discussion or persuasive speech, they would go for Women Empowerment, and indeed it is very important. Women who consists of almost half of population also play a vital role in bringing a change in the community and uplifting the socio-economic status of the country. With the opportunities provided, women have been able to prove that they can also be the good leaders of the country, inspiring so many young ladies. For instance, Hillary Clinton – Secretary of States, United States, Sonia Gandhi – President of Indian National Congress, Dilma Rousseff – President of Brazil, Jill Abramson – Executive editor of The New York Times and the list goes on. However, there are still some problems which prevent women from being a leader like discrimination, illiteracy which should be eliminated from the grass-root level and the major solutions can be by capacity building, educating women about their rights, providing them more and more opportunities, walking in the path of empowerment. If we all can eliminate this sort of discrimination, problems and work for better humanity then only we can call ourselves a truly educated person.
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