Spotlight on women in the industry on jury day

The Women to Watch Awards seeks to honour the women who lead and inspire excellence in the printing and packaging sectors. The awards reflect PrintWeek’s commitment to promoting gender equality in the industry.

Charmiane Alexander, digital editor at PrintWeek and WhatPackaging? said, “I never felt that my gender placed me at a disadvantage, but one change I have been noticing is a significant increase in the number of women in the industry over the last 10 years and that’s great.” She added, “But the industry needs role models. Also we need success stories which we can celebrate.” Which is why we are hosting the premier edition of Women to Watch Awards

The jury day began with a brief of the all-women jury by Charmiane Alexander and Disha Chakraborty. Followed by briefing of the entries and the process by Ramu Ramanathan of PrintWeek, the Jury Day will follow esteemed members assessing and evaluating each of the samples received in 12 different categories. 

The jury will examine at a total of 70 entries across categories such as; educator of the year, business leader of the year, factory champion of the year, R&D captain, rising star of the year, fintech leader, designer of the year, mentor of the year, sales champion of the year, young business leader, packaging person of the year and publishing person of the year.

Disha Chakraborty said, “There is a perception when I studied print at SIES Graduate School of Technology that women are good for costing and HR. Even when we visited factories we saw women in the accounts department. But some of the best shop floors around the world have young women in charge. I think advances in tech have eliminated some of the heavy lifting and you do see more women in production now. Print needs strong links with design and schools so we can attract many more young women like me into the sector. Young people want creative jobs so we must offer them success stories that motivate them about our industry.”