Shahnaz Goni was ecstatic, when on September 30, she took over as the chief engineer of the Power Development Department becoming the first Kashmiri woman to rise to the top in the department. After all it was her day. In this freewheeling interview she talks to Kashmir Life correspondent
“I will never forget the day when I took charge as the first woman Chief Engineer Commercial and Survey, Power Development Department (PDD), J&K” says Shahnaz.
Her love for Maths early in her life made her to opt for a career in engineering, which at the time was almost a no go area for women in Kashmir.
Born in 1958 at Jammu in a family of lawyers and doctors, Shahnaz was the first engineer in the family. After passing higher secondary with science subjects, she joined Regional Engineering College (now National Institute of Technology) Srinagar in 1975. She had qualified the entrance test in the first chance. Then there was no engineering college in Jammu.
“We were only two girls in a batch of 150 students in REC. Initially, we were very reluctant and scared. But as the days passed we coped up with all challenges and were at par with our male colleagues,” she recalls.
Shahnaz graduated in 1980.
She started her career with a short stint with Horticulture Produce Marketing Corporation (HPMC), as Assistant Manager. However, she says, she was always interested in working in the field.
She married in 1982. She has a son and a daughter with her lawyer husband. Her son is a lawyer and daughter, a doctor.
In the winter of 1984, she got selected through Public Service Commission and joined the PDD. She was also the first women Assistant Engineer (AE).
Shahnaz worked in different wings of the department in Kashmir from a 1984 to 1993. From State Load Dispatch Centre, System & Operation Wing for transmission System, Planning and Design Wing for Project Engineering to Standardization and procurement of material and Inspection Wing for inspection and quality control.
She says that exposure to different fields and her commitment towards work developed a “multi-faceted personality” out of her. When armed militancy broke out in Kashmir she was posted in the Maintenance and Rural Electrification (M&RE) wing of PDD. “I had to look after the most volatile parts of old city. At that time even men used to get scared to venture out of their homes. My colleagues would be shocked on seeing me work in a routine manner without any fear,” she says. “Luckily that passed too and left behind lot of memorable moments.”
However in 1993, she migrated to Jammu. She calls it a challenging phase as she had to “create a space for her as nobody knew her” and she was the “lone women working in the department”. As Superintending Engineer (SE) Electric Purchase Circle-I, Jammu she worked in the Procurement and Material Management Wing for seven years and three years as AEE, Assistant Ex-Engineer.
The male dominated field also had surprises for her. One of the officers refused to work with her, just “because she was a woman”. She took it as a challenge. “I don’t believe in posing problems but I try to look for solutions. That bitter experience inflicted me to work harder and prove myself,” she says.
Incidentally, after few years the same officer was quite impressed to see her work in the field. “When he praised my work and repented his mistake of gender discrimination, I felt very happy. That was something which made me even more proud for being a woman.”
When asked about how she feels of her elevation as the first women chief engineer, she giggles, “I am fortunate to have winged flight to the destination I had set for myself. That makes me feel very proud.”
Shahnaz feels that the feeling of being weak has created a lot of limitations in women in this field, thus hindering their growth. “One should learn to command the subconscious mind to embark on a path to success. Woman is not weak, but she needs to believe in her own self.”
For all her achievements and success, Shahnaz gives credit to her parents and husband. “My journey was full of challenges and a reflection of life as I encountered people of different shades; of ones who reached out and gave a helping hand and others who were mere onlookers to our struggle,” she says.
