I did not know that women use 20,000 words every day, while men use only 7,000.
But I did know that half a billion women worldwide are still illiterate and 41 million girls are shut out of school gates because of poverty and prejudices.
This video makes a strong point about the advantages of female education in the developing world.
Educating girls is important and makes a lot of sense in both economic and geopolitical terms. Is the solution to the problem of female illiteracy going to come from governments? Or is social entrepreneurship going to provide the answer?
This week, I will be following the live video streaming of the Skoll World Forum on Social Enterpreneurship broadcasted from Oxford and I’ll be looking for ideas.
All you hear these days is talk about the economic crisis. It is difficult to think that people could be interested in topics not related to the current atmosphere of gloom and doom.
I feel that what people need most these days is comfort and inspiration.
She believes that when doing business, you might fail 80% of the times. But you will succeed 20% of the times and, ultimately, this is what counts.
Here is her advice to professional women:
• Women are often not sufficiently clear about their vision. Dreams have to be combined with tactics.
• Women also need to have full clarity about their brand and what they stand for.
• They need to understand that being an entrepreneur is about discipline and overcoming the feeling of isolation.
• Inspiration is important. Visualise where you want to be and what you want to do!
Wanna know what to answer when asked about the crisis?
How about this: “It’s Dubai, Shanghai or … Goodbye!”
The post-subprime doom is forcing businesses all over the Western world to exit the comfort zone and venture into new regions.
And the message from the Middle East is one of change and hope.
Forget the stereotypes.
Middle Eastern countries have been introducing ambitious reforms aimed at progressively closing the gap between genders and giving women a wider role to play in the development of their economies.
Thirteen years ago, Egypt had only one association of business women. There are now 22.
In Saudi Arabia, 1/3 of all bank accounts are held by women. Women own 40% of the country’s businesses through silent partnerships.
According to a survey conducted by the US law firm DLA Piper, 71% of the men in the United Arab Emirates are in favour of women working. While only 18% of the women think that women should stay at home.
Even if growth in the Middle East is expected to drop from 6 to 3% in 2009, these developments speak of a new dynamic.
One that is likely to turn into a major trend in the years to come.
I am leaving for Paris tomorrow where I will attend the Arab International Women’s Forum conference , “From Partnership to Prosperity: Women in the Arab World, France and the International Community”.
The program is exciting. It includes great topics like how to help women leaders manage an internal investment portfolio and the formation of biotechnology clusters in the Arab World.
She rose to fame during her years at the TB clinic of the Harlem Hospital Center in New York.
While working with poor and socially isolated patients, she developed a new approach based on a family dynamic that would help them complete their treatment. Within one year, the TB treatment completion rate at the clinic had jumped from 11 to 89% and El-Sadr became famous for her “surrogate family approach”.
Reading this got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be great to use social media to create surrogate families to support socially-isolated AIDS patients?
Watching Obama’s interview last night on Al Arabiya was like watching a clip from another planet.
Finally!!!
Time magazine calls it “an unprecedented reach-out to the Muslim world”.
I was delighted to hear Obama talk about the years he spent living in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country.
This is what we need at this moment in history. This kind of connection and ability to relate to people in other parts of the world, their way of living and thinking.
It is amazingly encouraging to hear a US president use this language :
“My job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect.”
I have enjoyed writing in our book about the way in which journalism is changing in the Arab World and the important role Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are playing in this process.
It was incredibly smart of Obama to choose Al Arabiya for his first interview granted to a TV channel. This move sets a precedent in international PR.
It is a new kind of outreach we are witnessing, one that lowers barriers.
I hope Obama’s PR strategy will help people understand just how important communication is for the success of peace-making efforts.
Until recently the female economy was the Holy Grail of the business world.
Not any longer.
More and more organisations are coming out with studies demonstrating the cost of untapped female talent.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has just released a video on Closing the Gender Gap.
It features academics, politicians and business leaders sharing their views on the future of the female economy. Haifa Al Kaylani, Chairman of the Arab International Women’s Forum, a network I belong to, is one of them.
All agree that the gender issue is a business issue. Closing the gender gap would result in 9% GDP growth in the countries of the European Monetary Union, 8% in the US and 16% in Japan. Growth in the BRIC countries would be even higher.
I love the story one of the interviewees told about the female president of Iceland, who -eight years into office - was travelling around the country and discovered that children under eight thought only a woman could be president. This is what we call “power of the mirror”.
Queen Rania of Jordan has launched her own channel on YouTube to help project a more truthful view of women in the Middle East and to fight stereotypes.
Eighty per cent of new hires in the United Arab Emirates are women.
More and more wealth in the Gulf is being managed by women. No wonder, international banks are after them and continue to open special branches geared to women’s needs.
Writing is a solitary business. And I might add, writing a book is a super-solitary business.
I have been spending so much time in my mind lately that I am not sure where my body has been.
A friend of mine was walking in the centre of Munich on Tuesday and saw somebody who looked like me.
He e-mailed me to let me know. I read his message and had to think for a minute…was that really me? …Had my body been wandering across the Channel and towards the Alps?
Although I have been feeling kind of lonely today (the bird outside my window is still in its nest… which is reassuring), I am very excited about my book.
I particularly like the part in which I explore new leadership styles and their impact on communications.
Thirteen per cent of the companies in the Middle East are owned by women. They are usually bigger than male-owned businesses and employ between 10 and 50 people. Research found that they use technology and on-line communication more than male-owned companies. It also discovered that female managers treat employees like family and have a much more democratic and participative leadership style than their male counterparts in the region.
This is one of the new leadership phenomena I will be exploring in my book.
Sometimes one person is enough to turn a conference into the experience of a lifetime.
Widad Ibrahim grew up in Sudan on a farm owned by her grandmother.
She used to sell eggs at the side of the road. This is how she developed her business sense and how she got the idea to start selling apartments in Khartoum.
One business led to another and Widad now owns one of the largest industrial groups in Sudan with 800 employees. Her Bee Group includes gas stations, an oil company, an aviation business and a property development company.
I was sitting in a conference room at the World Bank with tears in my eyes. Something in that story sounded close to home. My grandmother, who used to manage a farm in post-war Italy, would have been very proud of Widad.
What an incredible story!
And there is more.
In 2002, Widad asked the male-only Businessmen Union in Khartoum to give her a room where women entrepreneurs could meet. In 2006, for the first time in the history of Sudan, a woman was elected to join the Union.
Widad visited Grameen Bank and got the idea to start the first micro-credit bank in Sudan. Her Family Bank, set up with other Sudanese business women, has more than 35 million US$ in its accounts.
During the train ride back to New York, I couldn’t shake Widad’s face from my mind. Her colourful hijab and the beautiful henna drawings on her hands and feet. Such an inspiring presence.
I am so fortunate to have heard her story. It is one that I will continue telling, again and again.
I landed in Doha the other night and getting out of the plane felt like being embraced by a giant warm force. It went right through the essence of my being, warming up not only my London-weather-battered bones but also my soul. Deserts are such spiritual places.
And the spell continued on my connecting flight to Dubai. I watched a fellow passenger in the row next to me reciting his prayers. The small light above his seat shining on the beautiful Arabic characters of his book and the sleeves of his djellaba forming a snow-white aura around it.
I imagined his prayers merging in the air with those my 100-year-old grandmother in Italy recites every time I fly. Words in two very different languages travelling to the same place.
I have to admit the shopping spree I embarked on yesterday afternoon at Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates was somewhat less spiritual.
So I thought I would buy myself a book likely to make me think: Creating a World Without Poverty by Muhammad Yunus. My readers know how fond I am of Prof. Yunus and will understand that I could not wait to be back to the hotel to open the book.
I sat down in a corner of the mall and began reading….
As expected, I did find something that made me think. In the list of things he would like to see emerge by 2050, Yunus writes:
“Everybody will read and hear everything in his own language. Technology will make it possible for a person to speak, read, and write in his own language while the listener will hear and the reader will read the message in his own language. Software and gadgets will translate simultaneously as one speaks or downloads any text….”
I don’t doubt this is likely to happen. I am only thinking of all the hours I spent learning the languages I speak and how much the experience has become part of who I am.
Will people stop learning languages in the future? Will technology replace the effort to understand other cultures? Or will it make it easier?
|
