Throughout a career in the automotive industry, Pranapda Phornprapha said she’s experienced a lifetime of workplace misogyny.
After spending most of her life forcing herself to meet men’s expectations – even in organizations run by her family – she now thinks it’s high time the working world adjusts to women’s.
“I’m in the automobile industry, where 99% of people I work with are male. I realized that instead of being myself, I had to pretend to be a man in order to toughen it up and work with them,” she told Coconuts Bangkok yesterday. “But it dawned upon me about two years ago that I wasn’t using my feminine energy, and that no matter how hard I tried, I was never going to be part of the boy’s club.”
Thus, while in the midst of a midlife crisis and at the end of her rope, she founded Dragonfly360 in February. Since then her “event-based social movement” dedicated to empowering women has reached out to establish relationships in the private sector with organizations looking to address their company culture.
On Saturday, Dragonfly will hold what it says is Southeast Asia’s first gender equality summit to get more corporations committed to inclusion and confronting cultures rooted in misogyny – but with more of a festival vibe than a UN talk-fest.
The Dragonfly360‘s founder said she wants attendees to feel “empowered” at the event where renowned speakers – including local and international celebrities, politicians and business leaders – will speak about the importance of inclusiveness and diversity.
“Everybody can make a difference whether big or small. …When things are wrong and there’s injustice in the world like gender inequality, then someone has to say something – so why not me, why not you, why not all of us? Everyone has self-worth, and no one can take it away if you don’t allow them to,” 43-year-old Pranapda said.
She added that it’s as much about improving bottom lines as principle.
“We’re trying to breed more people to push this agenda because it’s important, socially and economically – there is evidence that gender equality will increase productivity everywhere and that’s just positive for our country and the region,” she said.
A Star-Studded Message
Pranapda, who holds a number of executive-level positions in firms owned by her family’s Siam Motors Group, said her goals for the event are three-fold: bringing more companies on board, raising public awareness of the issue and networking various stakeholders.
More profile and buy-in means more influence. Dragonfly so far this year has won commitments from companies to change their internal practices and cultures to be more inclusive, she said, as well as be audited for their success in doing so.
“Many big companies including Central, Yamaha, Bangkok Bank, Adidas and KBank have committed to changing their corporate policies,” she said.
The event’s schedule also includes a live video chat about Hollywood beauty standards with British actress Jameela Jamil, best known as Tahani Al-Jamil on NBC comedy series The Good Place, and a session led by Hawaiian-born actress Maggie Q, who played the lead on the series Nikita. They’ll appear alongside Thailand’s Araya “Chompoo” Hargate and Woody Milintachinda.
There to participate in a discussion of toxic masculinity with other male industry leaders will be former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. At 5pm, Pannika Wanich, an MP from the progressive Future Forward Party will sit across from her ideological opposites Chitpas “Tant” Bhirombhakdi Kridakorn (Democrat Party) and Watanya Wongopasi (Phalang Pracharath) to hash out one thing they can agree on: gender inequality in politics.
Pranapda said she didn’t want the summit to be the typical sit-and-listen-to-speakers type of deal but rather to feel “almost like a festival.”
“Think of it as a mini-Wonderfruit,” she said, adding that the popular festival’s founder, her brother Pranitan Phornprapha, suggested the event should be entertaining as well as deep and serious.
“There will be social enterprises giving out free massages. There will be tattoo parlors. We’ve hired artists to create artworks just for the event. We want people to engage with the art, Instagram it and drive the message to the mass,” she said. There will gourmet food by award-winning female chefs.
A Women’s Movement for Asia
Pranapda decided to use her influence to address Thailand’s patriarchy and sexism – whether it’s the government saying what they should wear to “solve” sexual assault or by making short school skirts illegal – about two years ago while she was in New York.
“So I took a one year sabbatical and moved to New York with my son because I basically had a midlife crisis,” she said.
There she was introduced to its vibrant and busy women’s empowerment movement.
“But I felt like it was preaching to the choir because if you compare a New York woman to a Thai woman, they’re empowered in a whole different way,” she said. “When I came back, I realized that Asia really needed this and that there is a dire need, especially in Thailand, where a few people have started doing small things to do with women’s empowerment, but nothing on a big scale.”
It was after she returned that she founded Dragonfly360 in February this year.
Since then she’s been enlisting companies and recruiting allies. Pranapda said she was surprised to come home one day and find her maid asking about the company – she’d heard it mentioned by none other than Vatanika (who, if you don’t know, occupies the same loathed-but-obsessed-over status as whichever Kardashian comes to mind).
Pranapda is OK with courting contentious personalities if it helps the cause.
“They have power and a purpose. I know a lot of them are controversial but they have the power to drive the message down to the people who need it the most, which is the grassroots people … or for lack of a better term, the lower-income people,” she said.
But Pranapda is aware that Western-style campaigning – being aggressive and hollering about feminism through a bullhorn – isn’t the best way to spread the message in Asia. Not scaring people off means repackaging and redefining the message in a different way for Asian audiences, she said.
“For example instead of saying ‘the future is female’ like in the American women’s movement, we want to promote the phrase ‘the future is feminine.’ Because right now there’s a huge under-representation in the feminine energy – things such as empathy, gentleness, humility, sensitivity, vulnerability. These are feminine strengths that are ignored, though they are qualities that actually make for a very good leader in the corporate world.”
The name, she says, owes more to metaphor for inner female strength than the flappy swamp insect.
“Dragonfly, in this case, is actually a dragon that realizes and releases her potential to be able to fly again,” she said. “That’s what Dragonfly360 is about. It’s changing your mindset from ‘I cannot’ to ‘I can.’”
The Dragonfly360 event runs 8:30am to 6pm on Saturday at the Centara Grand at CentralWorld in Bangkok. Tickets start at THB8,000 and are THB5,000 for students. Find the event schedule online.
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