By Umer Nangiana
Most men land here with jobs in hand. Most women, however, just have to follow their husbands or fathers, often leaving their jobs behind. On arriving in Qatar, most of them face boredom and idleness as finding work is not easy.
While work opportunities may be ample, finding some and more so the suitable ones however, takes time. And it is bound to take even more time if a woman decides to do it all by herself as the job market is different in Qatar compared to many countries in Europe and Asia.
Therefore, how to make the process smooth and swift? What to do in the meanwhile? Such were the questions facing Carolin Zeitler when she arrived here from United Kingdom seven years ago. Having gone through the experience, she came up with an initiative a year later to help women struggling to find answers to these and similar questions.
Beginning with a small group of women working together on multiple issues, Carolin and others decided to expand the initiative and they went on to form a community called How Women Work (HWW) in Qatar. Big participation in their first conference proved they were right. There was a big need for it.
“Soon after I came here I realised that there was nothing for professional women. I wanted to fill that gap,” Carolin told Community in an interview, talking about her initiative and how far it has gone to help women looking for jobs, planning to start their businesses or simply intending to re-invent themselves.
“The first conference in 2010 was borne out of this small group of women and we had already more than a 100 participants for the conference so it made it obvious that there was a need for this sort of thing,” added Carolin.
Starting from a one-day conference once a year, it expanded to a 2-day conference once a year besides incorporating smaller events such as HWW Jobseekers’ conference, workshops, mastermind groups and other such events happening all round the year.
For those professional women struggling to find suitable jobs or any jobs at all, sometimes for over six months, said Carolin, the HWW teamed up with recruitment agents and HR professionals. Doing a conference twice a year on ‘how women find work,’ the community helps women figure out how to apply for a job in Doha and what is different in Doha than elsewhere.
So what is different here?
“There is a lot of emphasis on face-to-face communication or personal interaction. Sending an email or applying online is, for instance, a waste of time,” said Carolin, with a chuckle.
“This is one of many things that we tell them, for example, besides how to write their CVs so that it does not take a lot of time getting to the essential information and things like that,” said the HWW founder, adding that it lets the women benefit from the experience of the community’s partners who have been working here for a long time and know what the companies are looking for.
The community also offers coaching, one-to-one on issues that women struggle with. “I am a therapist by profession and then I developed into a coach over my professional life. The coaching services I do myself and for a lot of other things we have volunteers,” explained Carolin.
“It is really a transformational experience. If there is something that a woman wants to work on, a particular issue that she is struggling with at this moment in time and she wants to do something about, she spends a few hours with us and she will see a big transformation,” Carolin claimed. Hundreds of women, both national and non-national, have already benefited from the community’s help rooted in the notion of sisterhood.
From her observations in Doha, Carolin explained how the trailing spouses who come here with their husbands find it difficult despite having all the expertise and experience from their previous jobs. May be that job is not needed or they are catered for only a certain nationality.
“It is quite different here. What you can do depends very much on where you come from so if you are, for instance, a massage therapist from Europe, you are going to have a problem because you won’t find work in your field,” elaborated Carolin. “So you have to find something else. You have to be creative, re-invent yourself,” she suggested.
About the national women, she said, they mostly face the problem of not finding jobs in the fields they studied. Thanks to HWW, both nationals and non-national women can learn and improve their chances of finding work or may be reinventing themselves.
Or else, they run the risk of finding a big gap in their CVs besides being bored and staying idle at home. “If you do not have children specially, there is really not much to do. Most people live in service compartments and there you really have nothing, not even cleaning to do,” laughed Carolin.
The workshops during the conferences are repeated throughout the year for women to gain knowledge on learning or improving their soft skills through coaching. However, the HWW founder said at the end of the day it all depends on the individual. How much is she willing to re-invent herself, to be flexible about what she wants to do and how urgent it is for her to do something determines the success rate.
“You can always find some work if you want to. But if you are going to say, No, I only want to do this job specifically and for this much money and for those times, then, yes, you are going to make it hard for yourself,” she cautioned.
The community is not all about conferences and workshops. It also allows women to think about them. Twice a year, they go for Yoga retreat out in the desert. The whole week from Thursday afternoon until Saturday afternoon, they stay in the desert. At their camp, the women indulge in a mix of yoga and coaching focused on letting them think about themselves for a change. The HWW founder observed that most women are always busy thinking about their families, their jobs, everyone else but themselves.
“For a weekend, they get to get out of town, get to get away from everything to just think about themselves and what they want out of life and how that works with everyone around them. They think about their jobs and how they fulfill the duties that they have at the same time and get what they want,” said Carolin, explaining the purpose and benefits of the yoga retreat.
In the morning, they have sunrise yoga before breakfast followed by some coaching and a long lunch break. Some more coaching and an evening activity follow. “It is very much like sisterhood and really being there for each other,” added Carolin.
The retreats are held in the winter and during Ramadan when they go to Sealine Beach for the ladies who are not fasting. Those fasting can join others in November. They are now planning to start one in January, too.
Carolin is also the author of a book, How Women Succeed; Inspiring women to create their own success. It came out of the conference, she said. How? There is a conference magazine and part of the magazine is stories and articles at the end of it. In 2012, they had so many stories that they could not put them all into the magazine.
So they decided to make a book out of all these success stories. On the whole, the book has 20 success stories from women from all around the world. Eleven of them were residents of Doha at the time including two local-basedQataris.
The book comprises different sections having a success story followed by some reflective questions after each story, and then a “Your Turn” section which is a self-coaching section at the end of each story. All the proceeds from the book sales go towards providing free coaching for women in need.
“We have done free coaching sessions in Al-Khor in cooperation with the Social Development Centre and we are going to do a free coaching session for breast cancer survivors in cooperation with the Cancer Society this October,” revealed Carolin, the author and composer.
Living in Doha, it is a great opportunity to re-invent yourself and to try something different from the careers that you had before because often you get an opportunity to get into something that is related to your field but may not be exactly the same, Carolin said.
“Here I find organisations are more open to that for example, than say, back in Europe so you could start a new career here,” she observed.
In late August and early September, HWW is coming up with one-day coaching events on “how women succeed.”
