It’s so exciting! My friend and fellow CWN member India Gary has been included on the Powerlist 2010, a list of the 100 most influential black people in the UK.
Her citation describes her as “one of the most senior black women in UK banking.”
Awareness of the business case of diversity seems to be growing these days in Europe – also thanks to fierce competition coming from emerging economies.
One of the main points Bieneosa Ebite and I made on Monday during our talk at the CIPR is that homogeneity leads to blind spots.
Organisations need diverse teams if they want to be able to look beyond the conventional frames of reference and innovate.
PAWA is creating a platform for women from across Asia – from Japan to Iran – to share ideas, talk about common concerns and mentor the next generation.
A number of highly accomplished female business leaders these days come from Asia. Thirty five per cent of the 50 top women in world business featured on Saturday in the Financial Times come from the region.
At the launch, I enjoyed listening to Sonia Lo. Sonia was born in Korea and has worked in international finance for Google and United News and Media. She is the founder of London-based Chalsys Capital Partners.
Her advice to professional women is that “pushing a closed door sometimes is not the answer”. Sonia uses self-esteem as her strongest motivator.
I just learned on Twitter that today is Interdependence Day, the idea being that what one person does has an effect on the entire world.
I guess we really learned that lesson during the subprime crisis and its aftermath, which is still wreaking havoc.
It is not surprising that, with the international banking community still traumatised, microcredit is experiencing a revival.
Given its high repayment rates and social character, the microfinance industry is attracting a new influx of private capital with institutional investors transforming microcredit institutions, previously run like NGOs, into more formalised entities.
Good news for the poor and in particular for women?
Not so sure.
Women’s World Banking (WWB) has been studying this phenomenon and is warning the microfinance world against the dangers of the “mission drift” this transformation is causing.
WWB has discovered that the percentage of women clients served by formalised microfinance institutions tends to decline after their transformation.
In the fourth year after transformation, the average percentage of women borrowers usually drops from 77 to 60 per cent. This is due to lenders migrating from their original mission to serve low-income clients towards generating profits for their new shareholders and maintaining high-interest rates.
Women in the developing world, who are often illiterate and own no collateral, are the most vulnerable client group.
Microfinance works. It provides communities with viable structures. The challenge of the coming years will be to make sure that it remains true to its roots. For multinationals operating in the developing world this challenge represents a unique opportunity to become involved in new type of initiative with the potential of ending poverty.
We all know what fairy tales can do for comfort. How about what they can do for women?
I met last week with Laura Albornoz, the Chilean Minister for Women’s Affairs.
Her National Service for Women (SERNAM) is doing a great job training girls from a young age to consider professions traditionally regarded as “unsuitable” for women. SERMAN has published a series of booklets of “alternative” fairy tales.
In “My friend from the blue planet”, a star tells the story of Cuca, a girl who wants to be an astronomer and goes on to become the first person on Earth to see a brown dwarf star. It is based on the life of Maria Teresa Ruiz, the first person to graduate as an astronomer from the University of Chile and the first woman to receive a PhD in astrophysics from Princeton University.
Chile, which elected its first female president in 2006, is doing great work to fight stereotypes against women.
It was wonderful to have the opportunity to discuss with Laura and with my fellow TIAW member Ingrid Antonijevic, Former Minister of the Economy of Chile, the role played by international women’s networks in telling the stories of successful members and converting these experiences into concrete advice and encouragement for other women.
Never before have I felt so pround to be a writer and a story teller…
Photo: thanks to Patricia Andrade (from left to right: Silvia, Laura and Ingrid)
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?
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.
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Her citation describes her as “one of the most senior black women in UK banking.”
