By Laudia Sawer, GNA
Tema, April 8, GNA – Sixty per cent of the workforce of the SIC Insurance Company PLC are made up of women, Mrs Cynthia Kwarteng Tufuor, Tema Regional Manager of the Company has revealed.
She said due to the natural qualities of women, they ventured into the insurance industry as the work involved marketing and convincing clients to roll onto existing schemes.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency on the prospects of women in the insurance industry, she said such qualities included good listening skills, the ability to easily create relations, as well as persuasive skills.
She stated however that even though 60 per cent of the staff were women, only 35 per cent which is in the minority were in leadership positions and only four out of 16 management positions were occupied by women with three being area managers.
The Manager with oversight responsibilities over the Volta and Eastern Regions said it was about time that conscious efforts were made by women to push themselves into corporate leadership by upgrading their knowledge and skills in whatever profession they found themselves.
She stressed that a well-educated woman that possessed all the required skills, knowledge, confidence, and ability to excel could grab leadership opportunities whenever the need be.
Mrs. Tufuor said, “Women who are empowered with the knowledge and skills will be more productive and well-honoured at whatever working field they find themselves, if women can uphold their skills, they will rise to the occasion when they are called upon.”
Women’s participation in leadership roles, she noted helped in the advancement of gender equality and affected both the range and quality of policies formulated for the betterment of society.
She urged women to support and encourage each other and serve as mentors for the younger ones to aim high, and lack of mentorship made most women to veer off their chosen careers to others.
Mrs. Tufuor said if women who had gone through the process of reaching the top could carry others along, most fields of professions would have a good number of women in leadership in the next five years and beyond.
She encouraged mothers, married women, and young girls who might have gotten pregnant in their teenage years not to use that as an excuse not to excel, stressing that “pregnancy is not an excuse, you still make it.”
