At an early stage in her career, Carole Berndt, winner of the 2011 Women in Banking and Finance’s Award for Achievement, stood on a mountain in Hong Kong and was asked to quote on the risk element of turning the side of the mountain into an airport. She duly quoted, the site was purchased and developed and is now Hong Kong’s Chep Lak Kok international airport – a story which reflects Berndt’s geographically diverse career, first in insurance and now in banking.
Read the rest of the story here.
My final article for theglasshammer on the issue of women on boards is now available and describes some of the measures taken to increase the number of senior female leaders. It starts:
Britain’s biggest companies have more than doubled the number of women they are appointing to boardroom jobs since Lord Davies, the government’s champion of female board representation, told businesses this year that within four years a quarter of senior bosses should be women.
FTSE 100 companies have recruited 23 women to their boards this year – representing about 30% of total board appointments – after Davies said they should sign up to a voluntary target of 25% board representation by 2015.
Read the rest of the article here.
Pictured – Helena Morrissey of Newton Investment Management, a founder of the 30% Club.
Namaste from India, where I’m now three weeks into my current trip, which has included undertaking some fascinating interviews for my book, Mother India, as well as volunteering for local children’s charity Educators’ Trust India.
Read more about all of that over at The Gender Blog.
I’ve also been asked to contribute some material to this autumn’s International Leadership Association conference, which will be held in London in October. I’ll be part of a panel discussing the diversity and cultural implications of globalisation – an issue which creates interesting debates for leadership and talent management teams.
Should leaders be the same worldwide or should they have distinctive talents and characteristics based on their location? Is there one leadership brand for a company, or many?
What’s your perspective?
I’ve been serving as a judge for Women in the City‘s 2010 Woman of Achievement awards over the last few months, and the winners of the individual categories (aimed at women in accountancy, law, insurance, financial services, facilities management and architecture) were announced last night.
Each of the six women now go forward to the final stage, which one of them will win on November 26th – and one of the prizes is a fully funded leadership course at the London campus of the Chicago Booth Business School – a pretty fabulous prize and potentially career and life changing for the winner.
I was very pleased to see two women whom I have the privilege to know very well at last night’s event; Carol Paterson Smith, who I profiled here earlier this year for the GlassHammer, was a shortlisted contestant in the Finance category, and Pam Jackson of PwC (a contributor to my 2007 report The Leaking Pipeline, and here’s a link to the short profile I wrote about her on the PwC website) was a very popular winner of the Accountancy category.
(c) Reuters
Here’s an extract from my article:
As the global economy slowly emerges into a brave new post-credit crunch world, statistics from Catalyst, McKinsey, the University of Cranfield and others indicate that the last three years have seen little change for women in business, and there is certainly still no evidence that the leaking pipeline will fix itself – so has the time now come for more direct action?
Q is for Quota
Viviane Reading, who heads up equality and equal rights in her role as the European Union’s Fundamental Rights’ Commissioner, seems to think so. She has warned that, unless more board room seats are filled by women by the end of 2011, she will use new powers under the Lisbon Treaty to impose gender quotas at the European level, meaning that privately owned British companies (and others from countries which fall under EU legislation) would be required to more than double women’s representation from the current 1 in 10 number of seats now occupied by female board members.
Quoted in the Daily Telegraph, the Commissioner hopes that her ultimatum will change both the European business culture and the gender mix and has suggested that she does not “… rule out the possibility of legislation in this area.”
Is 40% the magic number?
Similar legislation already exists elsewhere in Europe, most noticeably in Spain and Norway, who have both passed laws in recent years which require companies to apply a minimum 40% board room quota for women; additionally, the BBC reported in March 2010 that France, Italy and the Netherlands are considering similar measures. In the same article, Europe’s largest telecoms firm, Deutsche Telekom was highlighted as a rare example of an organisation which has voluntarily introduced its own quota system to make sure that 30% of its upper and middle management positions are held by women by 2015 – the first major German firm to do so.
Mostly men: engaging men in culture change
11 Sep(c) emberin
Earlier this summer, I wrote and edited a white paper for emberin, around the significance of teaming with men for success and how getting the opposite sex on board with gender diversity and change programmes was the only real way to make progress.
To support their work, emberin undertook a survey of male Australian business leaders and asked them some tough questions about their attitudes, behaviours and views on gender diversity.
Here’s an extract from the paper’s Executive Summary:
Earlier this year, the New York Times published an article entitled The Feminism of the Future Relies on Men. The author argued that twenty-first century programs focused on increasing gender diversity will only succeed if the men in the company are on-board with the idea in ideological terms and also support it in practical ways, suggesting that:
“The feminism of the future is shaping up to be about pulling men into women’s universe — as involved dads, equal partners at home and ambassadors for gender equality from the cabinet office to the boardroom.”
Gender diversity is now no longer about women smashing the glass ceiling and forcing their way into the men’s world; instead, it’s time to reverse twentieth century thinking and ask: what do the men want, think and feel about gender diversity? And if men listen to other men – how can we help to change the way in which they think and speak when it comes to levelling the playing field?
emberin, as Australia’s leading gender diversity consultancy, is already very aware of this school of thought and has undertaken pioneering, award-winning work to support the concept that we call Mostly Men. We know, via our qualitative research and our feedback from emberin programs such as my mentor – mastering gender leadership, that getting the guys on board and creating great male role models for other men (men who leave the office on time, men who promote and support women, men who convert their male colleagues to these behaviours) can make a real difference in Australian corporate life.
In 2008 emberin conducted the first Australian piece of qualitative research on the view of senior men who were champions of gender diversity. In conjunction with Telstra we then created a program for men. In the last two years almost 2000 men have completed that program and we have received significant feedback from them as individuals.
This report shares our findings with you and forms a pioneering piece of research on the current state of men in business in Australia today.
(c) emberin 2010
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For more on this line of thought, click here to read an excellent article on theGlasshammer.com in which they pose the question:
“Would you want your daughter to work here?”
- and then go on to suggest that, for men in the corporate world, answering “no” to that question has to mean that they need to be part of the solution. A senior partner from Deloitte US continues with her belief that considering the question helps senior men see the work environment and culture from a very different and personal perspective.
Tags: Articles, Australia, Collaboration, emberin, leadership, men, research, theglasshammer