Event management and public relations for an ordinary person appears to be a profession filled with glitz and glamour. One sees the bright lights and well-dressed people, smiling for endless camera clicks. Yet, the ordinary eye only wanders as far as the stage and the performance put up, the production team sitting silently backstage is often missed.

"The work hours are far from flexible," says Fariha Rashed of Pitch Media, challenging the general notion about this field. "Even when I’m on a vacation or a break I have to be constantly connected to the workplace through my phone. You constantly have to be available for crisis management. Most of the events and activities take place in the evening so the work hours are naturally longer."

"It’s not as if one can roll into office when one feels like it or choose not to answer the phone if you don’t feel like it," says Selina Rashid Khan of Lotus PR and Client Management.

Event management and public relations is a field that constantly demands the attention of those venturing into it. It demands long hours, sleepless nights, and being constantly on the go to put up a show. Women are usually discouraged from joining such professions because their first priority is thought to be their home and family. Yet, it is through all this that women have emerged successful and victorious in this profession. Not only have women emerged successful, they are amongst the pioneers in these fields.

For Selina Rashid Khan of Lotus PR and Client Management, it took six solid years of working day and night to build a team before she could start a family. "I’m fortunate to have a solid team and business in which I put in a good six years of work night and day before I started a family and also an office where I can bring my son along, which helps," she says.

For women who were amongst the first to step into event management and public relations, gender was the last thing on their mind. For them, the challenge was in helping people realise the value and importance of the work they were doing.

The biggest challenge before Khan was to establish the notion of public relations, independent of event management and advertising. "When Lotus was introduced in 2007, there were no PR firms to my knowledge offering PR and Image Building services only, everything was always linked to an event or to one’s marketing budgets. To break away from that practice and explain what PR is, and then to establish a place for it in Pakistan was a huge challenge," says Khan.

Rashed says her stepping into this industry was natural. "Being a diplomat’s daughter," she says, "it was always easy for me to engage with people and cultures. While studying fashion design at Pakistan institute of Fashion and Design (PIFD), I was always more attracted to the marketing and business aspects of fashion so I went on to pursue a degree of Mass Communication at Kinnaird College, which allowed me to become more focused on what I actually wanted to do."

For Mehreen Rana, head of Origami, the venture into event management started when she walked into J & S Event Management for a reference letter and ended up getting a job there since they had an opening. She realised that what she wanted to do was give the youth a platform to express themselves and their talents. Now, as head of client relations at J & S and pioneer of Origami, she feels "there is no distinction in this field [event management and PR] on the basis of gender".

Throughout their careers, being a woman has not hindered or stopped them -- "If anything, people are more responsive to me being a woman," says Rana.

This notion is seconded by Rashed who says "a woman is taken more seriously. You have to command respect and there is no problem."

The fact that these women have come up as successful entrepreneurs is commendable, but the appreciation of their success cannot be based on the fact that they are women who have become successful. What they need to be celebrated for is becoming pioneers in a field largely undeveloped.