Women from Four Countries Find Unity amid Cultural Distinctions

Left to right: Sweksha Tripathi (’19), Alina Karimova (’18), Vasiya Krishnan (’18), Chenjie Ding (’19), Giovanna Santos Chapini (’19), Kayla Carpenter (’19)

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By Carolyn Gray Anderson

Considered by many the hub of the Pacific Rim, Los Angeles is nothing if not one of the most international cities on Earth. UCLA Anderson is a magnet for students pursuing careers with global companies — including women from across the U.S. and the world who work in diverse industries.

On March 8, UCLA Anderson highlighted the school’s global reach by convening a panel in honor of International Women’s Day. Representatives among the student body from India, Russia, Brazil and China participated in an informal chat with Kayla Carpenter (’19), president of the UCLA Anderson Women’s Business Connection, to reveal surprisingly unified experiences as women in their home countries and here in the U.S.

Giovanna Santos Chapini (’19) grew up in the countryside of Brazil and was reared by parents she says “set the bar really high for us” by setting a good example of supportive partnership in marriage. Her mother is a professional woman she remembers as having serious career focus and among her siblings, one sister is a doctor and the other owns a production company. She said that the gender pay gap remains a problem in her country. She experienced this first hand when, despite succeeding well in her job working for an American company in Brazil (whose board of 20 included only one female member), she found out she was being compensated less than her male co-workers.

The panelists discussed a set of universal stigmas. For instance, the term “feminism” is often understood negatively and women who vie for parity in the workplace might encounter misogynist responses, whether outright among colleagues and superiors or in an insidious, institutional way.

Santos Chapini said Latin American women are becoming more aware of these struggles and how to make progress past them, changing the character of International Women’s Day in Latin America. As in India and China, it is recognized as a celebratory day that often has a commercial emphasis like Valentine’s Day. It’s now becoming more overtly political, assuming the form of protests or demonstrations.

Chenjie Ding (’19) trained as a journalist, studying in Shanghai and later pursuing her master’s degree at Columbia University. Originally from Hangzhou, Ding said her grandfather, who traveled widely when she was a child, once brought her a Mickey Mouse T-shirt from Disneyworld, her first connection to the U.S. It was the first Chinese female journalist to report news from Iraq, however, who inspired her to commit to an international career. This journalist was not sent by a Chinese news agency, Ding said; instead, she bravely embedded on her own and reported news from a war-torn country.

Ding said, “I always knew I wanted to come to the U.S. A big surprise for me was how many ways people can live their lives here” — meaning, a person can succeed professionally and personally, irrespective of financial constraints, compared to China. Meanwhile, having worked for Forbes in China and a media startup in the U.S., Ding said that although they’re very different cultural experiences, both have merits. “I wouldn’t choose one over the other,” she said.

All the panelists said they experienced some degree of familial or cultural pressure to conform to roles or practices expected of women in their countries. Sweksha Tripathi (’19) — whose father worked in the Indian government and moved the family many times in her youth — said her parents were always supportive of her aspirations but traditional in their beliefs about dating and marriage. Vasiya Krishnan (’18), from Bangalore, felt the same pressure from extended family. As the only daughter in her family, she felt doted upon but also scrutinized by the wider society. She enrolled at Anderson, she said, because “I would like to have a much more diverse peer group.”

As women from foreign countries, they agreed that Anderson has provided a welcoming experience, a place they can feel at home. Santos Chapini shared that her initial concern was the language barrier, saying (in perfect English), “Wanting to be vocal and heard in another language is important.” And, on International Women’s Day, the statement resonated with any woman trying to find her voice in the conversation around gender equality.

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Comments

[Vikas Sharma]

feeling Good to see Indian women On this list.

Sweksha Tripathi
Vasiya Krishnan

Thank You Carolyn

[Claudio Chapini]

Congratulations. Father of one of then