March 8th was the 112th International Women's Day, and the goddesses of our Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen offices and operations team gathered together to have a sharing session to answer questions, share and discuss. This event was proposed by GEN's Administrative Committee, but the origin of the topic of discussion goes back to the conversation between Ms. Dong Xue and Ms. Wang Weiwei, a family member of GEN who works in the education industry, during the Spring Festival this year. This conversation focused on women’s career path, choice of life partner, handling of intimate relationship and parenting anxiety, The representative of "Women's Friends", Mr. Zhao Kefeng, who got a deeper understanding of "her power" from their conversation, volunteered to host the event as a male representative. All the women in different stages of life talked about relationships, careers, looks, security and children (and of course, yesterday's entertainment gossip about flash marriages) in the event.
Women's leadership is GEN’s signature culture
Ms. Dong shared that during two interviews she participated, different interviewees mentioned that the cultivation and emphasis on female leadership at GEN was an important factor that helped them pay attention to GEN and look forward to joining the firm. This was a great encouragement to the female employees of the firm, and also showed the younger generation's pursuit of female leadership, freedom and respect.
Women's leadership is a distinctive part of the GEN's culture, and the firm has been named an "Up-and-coming Employer" in the 2022 HR Tier Top Employers list. In GEN, the status and satisfaction level of female staff is high, with nearly 70 staff members, 70% of whom are women, and 53% of the partner group are female lawyers.
Career choice and growth for women
As a "serious" conversation, career choice is an important topic. As all others, female lawyers in GEN are also faced with the question of how, how long and where to go on their legal career path.
Ms. Zou Wen shared her journey from being a judge to a lawyer. Women often need to consider more when facing career transition, such as how to balance work and family, spouse and children's feelings, etc. It is the most difficult decision to make when considering any change of career path. Once decision is made, female lawyers would follow their heart, but also have the advantage of being sensitive and gentle, which makes them more diligent and better at interpersonal communication at early stage of transition, so they can better seize the opportunity to achieve the perfect transformation.
Ms. Ning Min shared her experience of "starting as a lawyer, changing to an in-house, and returning to be a lawyer", encouraging young people to let nature take its course and not to be afraid, as different choices have different opportunities, and there are landscapes everywhere in life.
Love secrets revealed
When ladies get together, love is a constant topic. In addition to sharing their love secrets and brainstorming for the goddesses who want to get out of singleness, they also talked about social topics such as "freedom of love" and "how to face marriage push", which set off an active moment of dialogue.
The way to get along in an intimate relationship
With the question of "how do female lawyers choose their partner - peers or amateurs", we discussed and shared how to handle intimate relationships with spouse and family members. Ms. Dong Xue shared an anecdote about how her husband, who is also a legal practitioner, went from "not understanding" to "feeling the same way" in the face of the intense work pace of female lawyers. Ms. Ning shared her experience of losing many debates with her spouse engaged in technical work, which gave us a deeper understanding of whether the profession affects intimate relationship.
The reason for appearance anxiety
The topic of appearance anxiety triggered by "a crow's feet" made girls of different age groups talked about the status symbol of appearance and clothing and the root cause of appearance anxiety, from skin care and medical beauty to sports and fitness. Ms. Xi shared her insights on appearance and dressing confidence. As a new era of independent women, women have the economic strength that is not inferior to men, and the reason why girls love beauty is no longer because they need to please men, but they like to please themselves alone. Ms. Dong Xue shared her confusion and breakthrough in the face of postpartum body anxiety. Accepting the changes in appearance brought by age and accepting herself after maturity and growth is the best way to deal with anxiety.
Ms. Wang Weiwei, a family member of GEN, shared her journey of breaking her anxiety about her appearance, that the shining point of women is not only their appearance, but also their "independence" and "self-confidence", which are the labels of women in the new era. Ms. Zou Wen encourages women to boldly reject appearance discrimination and show their confidence in the new era.
Security and self-confidence
A young female lawyer shared her insecurities about making mistakes and the future of the profession, and others said they "felt the same". Senior attorneys and partner advisors shared their experiences and breakthroughs on this topic as "past generations". Ms. Lv Pei introduced her experience of breaking through the illusion of "insecurity" with concrete examples of her work, and encouraged all that with the accumulation of work experience and life experience, women can have more and more self-confidence, and can face the moment of "insecurity" more directly. Security comes more from self-growth. Ms. Dong Xue told the audience from her parenting experience that "security" is a common human need, regardless of gender, but women are better at expressing their pursuit of security. She also mentioned that the confusion women face at different stages of life is often more common than different, and encouraged everyone to communicate more, learn more, and gain the power of growth through sharing.
At the end, GEN also thoughtfully distributed holiday gifts for all female employees - hand cream sets, reminding each female employee not to forget to take good care of themselves in the hardworking!