During 14th Tehran International Project Management Conference (24th & 25th of Feb 2019) attended by more than 1000 professionals, there was a panel dedicated to “Women in Project Management”.

An interactive workshop was held before the panel time slot, to test the field and see how the audience looks to a series of competencies among genders and the following results were extracted:

The panel was managed by Ms Reyhaneh Kazemi, PM advisor at OIEC Co., Mr Gholamreza (Kami) Safakish, IPMA Vice President of Young Crew and Dr Hani Arbabi PM Professor in Tarbiat Modaress University of Iran.

Lecturers invited to stage
Ms Marzieh Shahdaie, the former Deputy of Oil Minister and Executive Director of Iran National Petrochemical Company. Ms Shahdaie discussed her personal experience and carrier, especially focusing on the impact of women participation on sustainable development of a country and relations between gender gap and GDP index of a country. Women participation status in the Oil and Gas industry around the world and the advantages of contributing more women in project management based on their inherent competencies were also discussed.
Mr Saeed Marjovi, a founder and former CEO (as well as former chairperson of an EPC contractor), who as an entrepreneur hired 14 women out of 30 most critical managerial job positions in his company. Mr Saeed presentation: “Experience of Women Participation in a Project Based Organization”, dealt with the PM competency framework and emphasized the personal part as the most important dimension. He also highlighted the most important competencies of women in project management (based on his company’s 20-years experience), and they were elaborated and supported by different statistics.
Prof. Dr Yvonne Schoper, from the University of HTW Berlin (delegate of Germany at IPMA´s Council of Delegates), talked about how the German workplace looks into gender gap. Dr Schoper started her speech with a description of future trends in project management, followed by common misleading and gender stereotypes, and also reviewed the status of Women in Project Management in Germany. This was also followed by interpretation from the survey results as well as solutions to engage more professional women in the project management sector, worldwide. A very short and quick questionnaire was filled by the audience and the following info was extracted from 68 filled forms out of which 63.5% female and 36.5% male. The summary of the survey asking for the most influential description of women in the workplace is outlined in the following table:

And as the summary

The survey depicts that “women’s willingness” and “women’s personal skills” are the most effective factors in promoting women in the project environment. Both are in the category of personal factors. The majority of the results of the survey imply that the impact of “personal factors’ is contributing to women’s empowerment.

Gholamreza (Kami) Safakish
IPMA Vice President of Young Crew