A prominent neurosurgeon recently recounted how she was surprised by the reactions of new patients who expected a man to come in. This assumption is common in male-dominated professions.
Specialized financial jobs such as accounting, investment banking, engineering, architecture and medicine are the jobs in which Kenyan women are making steady progress.
This was well reflected in the poll that led to the selection of this year’s Top 40 Women Under 40 award winners.
About 35 percent of the women who made it to the top were in finance, engineering and medicine.
This marks a slow shift from the previous Top 40 Women Under 40 list, which was mostly from professions such as marketing, law and human resources.
In those early days, the awards were reserved for doctors, especially general practitioners.
A closer look at this year’s profile reveals the steady rise of smart women who are able to stand on their own and make an impact in male-dominated sectors of the economy and in developed countries such as the UK.
The list includes women in specialized medical fields such as endocrinology, neurosurgery and hematology.
We also have chemical process engineers at major companies like Rolls Royce in the UK, a nuclear scientist, tech geeks, and aerospace engineers.
As is the tradition with the Top 40 Under 40 Awards, the selection process maintained the spirit and belief of the survey to discover unknown gems across industries and resist the temptation of holding an annual showcase of the best known.
Judges took four hours-long sessions to sift through 1,998 entries, questioning at least 387 of them, checking their backgrounds and comparing each one with competing candidates before coming up with the final list.
The authors verified the age of each candidate, while deleting some at the last minute when they failed to meet the criteria while questioning the information provided in the nomination forms.
Ultimately, a list emerged that represents the evolving face of corporate Kenya: the growing number of women in leadership positions at major companies such as Safaricom and East Africa Breweries Limited.