While Rahman, a mother of three, has climbed to the top of the fund rankings, her performance hasn’t put her on equal footing when it comes to day-to-day interactions with male colleagues.
She says the differences are often subtle. While men can crack jokes with each other at meetings, Rahman feels compelled to maintain a “proper” demeanor. That means limiting how much she smiles, putting her handbag in just the right place when she sits and keeping a personal distance from colleagues.
“You can never appear frivolous because you just won’t be taken seriously,” Rahman said.
Home Life
Like in many countries, women in Pakistan are also expected to take on most of the responsibility of raising children. Rahman says that limits her ability to network with clients after working hours. It also means dealing with feelings of “overwhelming guilt,” such as the time she found herself stuck in a board meeting instead of caring for her child at home with a 102 degrees Fahrenheit (38.9 Celsius) fever.
“Even a one-time allowance for something child related lowers you in the eyes of men in the workforce,” she said. “It’s probably also a key reason why so few women don’t continue after they have families.”
Rahman, who lives with her husband’s family and relies on her mother-in-law to look after the kids when she’s at work, makes a point to come home for lunch each day. She leaves the office by 6:30 p.m., juggling calls and e-mails from work with her household chores.
Growth Prospects
“When I go home, there’s no concept that I’m a CEO,” said Rahman, whose husband runs his own logistics company. “It’s about there’s no bread, we’re out of eggs, the laundry isn’t done.”
Even with the challenges that come with being a female CEO in Pakistan, Rahman shows few signs of slowing down. She plans to boost assets at Alfalah GHP, Pakistan’s eighth-largest money manager, to levels that rival the industry’s biggest firms in the next few years by marketing her funds to individual investors through branches of Bank Alfalah Ltd., the fund unit’s parent company.