Kalimat Group CEO Launches PublisHer Chapter in South Korea to Empower Female Publishers

Bodour Al Qasimi launched the PublisHer platform in South Korea as part of a plan to give female publishers in the country a bigger platform to speak out against gender inequality.

on Jun 20, 2023

Kalimat Group CEO Launches PublisHer Chapter in South Korea to Empower Female Publishers | Frontlist

Bodour Al Qasimi, the CEO of Kalimat Group, has announced the launch of a PublisHer chapter in South Korea. Bodour created PublisHer as a global project to assist female publishers in taking on leadership roles in the male-dominated publishing sector.

Bodour Al Qasimi said she founded PublisHer four years ago so that "female publishers could get the recognition and professional success they deserve" at the first-ever PublisHer gathering in South Korea, which took place during the 65th Seoul International Book Fair, where Sharjah is being honored as the Guest of Honour.

"Female publishers are far too frequently excluded from senior management and leadership positions in a field where women are typically employed in greater numbers than men," she claimed. When I started my publishing career more than ten years ago, and even now, I don't understand this system. Our colleague Flavia Brevin revealed that she had never worked under a female supervisor in her whole career till we started the PublisHer chapter in Brazil last year.

The CEO said, "What's frightening is that these stories won't be the exception even in 2023. That is why I founded PublisHer.

This is also true for the South Korean publishing business, where 4,175 men and 5,356 women make up the general book publishing sector, according to a K-Book Trends Report released last year.

In light of this, Bodour Al Qasimi launched the PublisHer platform in South Korea as part of a plan to give female publishers in the country a bigger platform to speak out against gender inequality, examine the publishing industry, and uncover implicit biases, discrimination, and systemic resistance to change.

Bodour Al Qasimi ended her keynote by quoting from a Fast Company piece about the difficulties faced by women in leadership, which said that "the only way for women to advance in their workplace is to change the culture from 'We want what you are not' to 'We want what you are."