Executive Vice President for Stakeholder Relations at Sibanye-Stillwater-South Africa, Thabisile Phumo, has advised women to quit being afraid of failure and accept it as a part of them.
According to her, most women are afraid to fail when they need to accept and appreciate the narrative of failure, “because it is part of us and it helps us become better people.”
Speaking at the 2024 edition of the Females In Tech conference (FEMITECH) themed, ‘Inspire Inclusion’ she said, “Women are afraid to fail and if we want to be seen and do different things in the world of technology, we are going to have to begin to appreciate the narrative of failure because in failure there’s advancement, in failure there’s development”.
She mentioned that in her country, when they talk about women working together they talk about the analogy of bangles.
“As we say, if you want bangles to make a beautiful noise, you have to wear a lot of them on one hand and start tinkering them so they can make that noise. The women of Africa represent the bangles, the unfortunate part is we are all wearing a single bangle on our hands,” she said.
She appealed, “if we want to make a difference in the field of technology, then women need to stop being afraid to fail and just do what is expected of them.
It is one thing to believe that today as we speak about AI, 2-3 years from now AI is not going to be a thing, something else would have come up and therefore how do we come together as women of Africa and begin to be bangles in one hand,” she added.
She urged all the women of Ghana on behalf of the women of the South, “we are not in different continents,
South Africa is part of Africa and Ghana is part of Africa. Can we start talking so that we can give the 4th Industrial Revolution a run for it’s money. We need to begin to see ourselves beyond our positions, status and beyond our jobs if we want to make a difference”.
