Om Swasti Rastu. Women should dominate. A family dominated by women is much happier than a family dominated by men. You know the reason? When a man dominates, the women become unhappy. When they become unhappy there is nothing that can make them happy and so they make everyone around them unhappy. So it is better that she dominates. In her dominance the family becomes happier.

Women need to dominate in politics too. Wherever women are dominating in politics the country is prospering. Ibu Yohana and the Honourable Mayor of Surabaya are examples. When women dominate corruption decreases. I have heard several stories of how Surabaya has prospered and how living conditions have improved in the past few months. When women dominate in politics there will be less war in this world. Women should also dominate in the economic field. There are very few women who are taking lead in the economics. I am happy there are some here on the stage and some in the audience. Iman is one such woman here who has started her own entrepreneurship and I am glad you are all setting an example.

Women should also dominate in the religious field. Perhaps if women come forward in the religious and spiritual field there will be less violence, conflicts and terrorism in the world. One more thing that women have to note is the intellectual dominance that is needed. Family, emotional sphere, economic sphere, political sphere and the intellectual sphere. These are the five areas where women must take their due positions. And don’t ask men to empower you or anyone else to empower you. You have the power. You simply have to assume it. You simply have to walk with it and do what is needed.

Intellectual dominance is in the field of science and arts, architecture and literature; here women have to come forward. They are not yet in the level of competition. Though there are pockets of excellence here and there, generally women are more emotional. They are more into arts but not so much into the literary field.

These days the old concept that is gone, ‘Men are from the Mars and Women are from Venus’ no longer holds good today. Today it has become a unisex world. Men have the qualities of women and women have qualities of men. It is a shared world of shared of shared values today.

Why I say dominance is because on a practical level when we see women as the boss of a family, generally people are happier. She has the skill to bind everyone together. And if the unit of the world, the family, becomes stronger and family values are well founded, then we will find that the happiness factor also is on the rise. Today it is not just the GDP, it is the GDH that matters a lot - Gross Domestic Happiness. All this hooliganism, the problems that we find in the society is because of broken families. The mothers have not paid enough attention to their kids and those kids when they grow older they create havoc in the society and they themselves are miserable and make others miserable also. So I feel women have a big influence in building the character of a man.

Another aspect of leadership is the ability to listen. I think a woman has the natural gift of listening and to see things from the other person’s point of view as well. Mind you, I am not saying that everybody has these tendencies or qualities, these are the potential in a lady. A lady has more potential and tendency to hear and listen and see the other person’s point of view than men. So the emotional nurturing and the intellectual exaltation both is possible when right training, right guidance at the right age is made available. If opportunities are available women can be very good entrepreneurs. And again here I would say that don’t sit and wait for someone to come and give you an opportunity. You take that first step and look for entrepreneurship. So be prepared to dominate at home, dominate in your workplace, dominate in politics and be in a dominating position in the religious and spiritual field because these are the four pillars, aspects of society. If any one pillar of the society is not strong then the society cannot be a happy society, a good society.