Improving gender balance generates innovation and brings strong business results, says Mercer.

Pakistani schoolgirls use rods to learn some characteristics of architectural engineering during a school class in Lahore in May. Pakistan is trying to bridge the gender gap highlighted by the Global Gender Gap Report 2013. [Amna Nasir Jamal]

LAHORE – Pakistan, recently named the second-worst country in terms of gender equality, is working to improve its image in terms of women's right and equal opportunity.

Of 136 countries listed, Pakistan ranked second only to Yemen in terms of gender bias issues, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2013, which was published October 26.

The index focuses on the economic, political, educational and health sectors and provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across regions and income groups and over time.

"Women's empowerment is not a sudden phenomenon," Dr. Waqar Masood Khan, federal finance secretary, told Central Asia Online while commenting on the report. "It might take longer for these girls to taste empowerment at home, but the economic prospects created by their hard work ultimately revealed the value of their labour."

Encouragingly, Pakistan ranked 64th when it came to political empowerment of women, having a history that includes a female prime minister, the late Benazir Bhutto.

Improvement of education

One way to boost the country's gender-equality index is through improving education for girls, advocates said.

"Education is the need of the time," Punjab School Education Department Secretary Abdul Jabbar Shaheen said. "No nation can develop without investing in girls' education because they constitute half of the human resources and skills of the country."

While talking about the report specifically, which tagged Pakistan as the eighth worst in terms of equal access to education, he pointed out to recent progress in the field, particularly in Punjab and Sindh.

Lahore has 20,001 boys' schools, 18,040 girls' schools and 1,564 mixed schools, educating more than 2.1m boys and almost 1.8m girls, he said, citing a 2012 Lahore primary school census.

"The local and federal governments are working to provide better education facilities," he said.
"Since 2003, they've provided free textbooks and a monthly Rs. 200 (US $1.86) stipend for girls in classes 6 through 10 in 15 low-literacy districts," he said.

Effective legislation

Pakistan has much to be proud of in terms of women's political power, Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Memon said, noting its ranking in that arena.

The women's parliamentary caucus, a bipartisan group of woman parliamentarians, is trying to pass legislation that would set aside 10% of seats in parliaments and union councils to female candidates, he added.

A number of laws meant to harness the economic potential of half of the country's population and to improve women's standing in society have taken effect.

They include the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices (Criminal Law Amendment) Bill. It prohibits depriving women of their inheritances and forcing them to marry someone or a copy of the Koran simply to settle a dispute.

The Protection against the Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act 2010, National Commission on the Status of Women Bill 2012 and an amendment to the Criminal Law Act (section 509) all provide additional safety nets for women, Memon added.

More than 9m women have entered the workforce during the last decade, Waqar said. "Young girls from the lower and lower middle classes are exposed to a new world when they come to work," he added.

For the government, the Millennium Development Goals remain a top priority, as do other international commitments on women's empowerment that it is pursuing, he said.

The government is striving to develop the economy, enable Pakistanis to live better lives and foster gender equality, Waqar said, citing the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2012-13.

 By Amna Nasir Jamal

What If the Biggest Obstacle for a Woman is the One in her Mind?

Credit: harrykeely

Women, by many accounts, have all the makings to be on top. More than 70 percent of high school valedictorians in 2012 were women. For decades, more female students than male students have graduated from college. Afterwards, more of them than their male counterparts—some 53 versus 47 percent—claim entry-level management jobs, according to a report by McKinsey Research

But somewhere along the line, the numbers drop for women: to 37 percent for mid-managers, and even lower, to 26 percent, for vice presidents and up. Women head slightly more than 4 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Ten years ago, women held 14 percent of these companies’ board seats; today, it’s 17 percent. A slow burn if ever there was one, that’s for sure. While there’s no longer a question of whether a woman can succeed in “a man’s world”—of course she can, and does—these numbers indicate that either the glass ceiling is thicker and lower than we imagined, or that younger women on the way up are finding a way out.

Or, quite possibly, both.

Unreached female potential is not for lack of desire. In her book Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives, Anna Fels writes that starting in childhood both genders have remarkably similar desires for achievement. Both boys and girls dream of accomplishment, recognition, and honor requiring work or skill. They grow up wanting the same things.

“Both boys and girls dream of accomplishment, recognition, and honor requiring work or skill. They grow up wanting the same things.”

Nor is it for lack of confidence. Research, including studies out of Cornell, has long found that women and girls, more than men and boys, tend to underrate their own performance. But that’s changing. A new study conducted by global communications firm Fleishman Hillard and Hearst Magazines, titled Women, Power & Money, found that younger female employees entering the workforce are more likely to perceive themselves as equal to, or better than, men. They see themselves as stronger communicators, and better at recovering from setbacks. 70 percent of Generation Y women in the study described themselves as smart, compared with only 54 percent of men.

We know that there are plenty of obstacles facing women in the workplace: Primitive maternity-leave laws, slow turnover at corporate boards, from which many (men, mostly) don’t retire until the mandatory age of 72. There’s also the fact that although more women are working outside the home, they’re still expected to carry out many of the domestic duties. Although the number of stay-at-home fathers—about 154,000, according to the 2010 Census—is on the rise, women still carry out more of the domestic work, according to a report by Pew Research Center. What’s more, there is an unconscious bias that remains prevalent in many workplaces. After all, women continue to receive less pay for equal work than their male colleagues, and less of other things, too.

Recall the story of transsexual Stanford neuroscientist Ben Barres, who has noted that as a man he is treated with more respect and interrupted less often. Barres recounted how he once overheard a faculty member say, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister’s.” The “sister,” of course, was when Ben was Barbara. Look, too, at the introduction of “blind” orchestra auditions, in which candidates are evaluated from behind a screen. Since implementation, the percentage of women hired by the top five U.S. orchestras has risen from less than 5 percent to 34 percent. It’s hard to expect more when society tells women, over and over, to expect less.

“Persistent bias felt or perceived at any point in a woman’s career can erode her own ambition by causing her to feel less confident about her skills and abilities.
She then strives for less.”

But what if the biggest obstacle is the one that remains in women’s minds? In her much-discussed book, Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg writes that fewer women than men aspire to senior positions, big paychecks, and high-powered careers. They don’t even try. Could women be imparting this “unconscious bias” on themselves? Could bias, in fact, happen not only from the top down but also the inside out? It can. Persistent bias felt or perceived at any point in a woman’s career can erode her own ambition by causing her to feel less confident about her skills and abilities. She then strives for less. She doesn’t get the promotion or the raise not because it’s given to a man, or because she somehow doesn’t measure up, but because she’s voluntarily taken herself out of the running. It’s not confidence or ability that women are lacking, but ambition they’ve lost—or let go of—along the way.

Ambition relies heavily on a belief in one’s own potential, which means that studies like the Fleishman Hillard one show there’s movement afoot. A generation of women coming to the workforce with a strong sense of their own competence bodes well for continuing high aspirations. The good news is that, as Fels writes, ambition isn’t something that, once extinguished, is gone.

by Dr. Peggy Drexler

http://shriverreport.org/what-if-the-biggest-obstacle-for-a-woman-is-the-one-in-her-mind/

Beyoncé's Gender Equality Short Essay

Beyonce is a talented artist, musician, mother and wife but she is also a talented writer as well. The singer wrote a very passionate short essay about gender equality in the USA. (Photo: Instagram/@beyonce)

We need to stop buying into the myth about gender equality. It isn’t a reality yet. Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes. But unless women and men both say this is unacceptable, things will not change. Men have to demand that their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters earn more—commensurate with their qualifications and not their gender. Equality will be achieved when men and women are granted equal pay and equal respect.

If women received pay equal to their male counterparts, the U.S. economy would produce $447.6 billion in additional income. 

Humanity requires both men and women, and we are equally important and need one another. So why are we viewed as less than equal? These old attitudes are drilled into us from the very beginning. We have to teach our boys the rules of equality and respect, so that as they grow up, gender equality becomes a natural way of life. And we have to teach our girls that they can reach as high as humanly possible.

We have a lot of work to do, but we can get there if we work together. Women are more than 50 percent of the population and more than 50 percent of voters. We must demand that we all receive 100 percent of the opportunities.

By Beyoncé Knowles-Carter

UK 'leading charge' for equality

Prime Minister David Cameron visited the IGas shale drilling plant oil depot near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, on Monday

Britain will "absolutely lead the charge" to promote equality for women around the world during 2014, Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

Mr Cameron said the UK would use the "moral authority" which it has gained by meeting the United Nations aid target of 0.7% of national income to push for progress on issues ranging from sexual violence to women's property rights and female genital mutilation.

The Prime Minister co-chaired a UN High-Level Panel on development priorities for the years after 2015, which last year named gender equality and the empowerment of women as one of the 12 key goals which the international community should pursue.

The panel's report set out examples of targets which could be adopted by the UN, including the elimination of all forms of violence against girls and women, ending child marriage, ensuring equal rights of women to own and inherit property and halting discrimination against women in political, economic, and public life. 

Speaking to the House of Commons Liaison Committee, Mr Cameron hailed the work of Foreign Secretary William Hague in leading the fight against the use of sexual violence in conflicts and International Development Secretary Justine Greening in tackling female genital mutilation.

Mr Cameron said: "There is a huge opportunity this year for Britain to absolutely lead the charge on women's equality, on women's empowerment, on the empowerment of girls and women worldwide.
"We have got so many things coming together. We have got William Hague's excellent work on preventing sexual violence in conflict. We've got the fact that I co-chaired the High Level Panel, which gave women's empowerment and equality such a high profile.

"We've got what the Development Secretary is doing on female genital mutiliation. We've got the fact that we are carrying forward an enormous commitment on health and on family planning.

"I want to bring all these things together - adding in proper property rights for women worldwide, the right to inherit property, women's entrepreneurship, all of these issues - and use the moral authority that Britain has got in the world from meeting our commitment to the 0.7% aid target to say 'We really want to make huge strides forward right across these issues in the year ahead'.

"I think we've got every opportunity to do that."

Mr Cameron added: "If you look at the appalling things that are done against women and against girls in conflict situations, from Kosovo and Bosnia to the Congo, there has been an unbelievably ghastly and depressing drumbeat of this through the history of the last 20 to 30 years.

"It's full credit to the Foreign Secretary that he has decided to use Britain's diplomatic, military, Foreign Office, aid budget, everything to corral all of this together to raise the profile of the issue but not just to talk about it, to get 138 countries to sign up to a declaration and then to use what we do have - in terms of action as well as words - to send teams of experts into situations like Kosovo, like Bosnia, like the Congo to try and have an effect on the ground."

With British combat troops set to withdraw this year, the Prime Minister told the MPs that progress on women's rights would not be the main measure of success in Afghanistan, but insisted it was an important consideration.

"The test for our presence in Afghanistan overwhelmingly has got to be what the National Security Council set out, which is that when we leave, is Afghanistan capable of maintaining security and preventing the re-emergence of terrorist training camps without the presence of foreign troops?" he said.

"That is the top line of what we are trying to achieve in Afghanistan, that is what we should measure overwhelmingly. Underneath that, I absolutely agree ... the role of women in Afghan society, the number of children going to school, the accessibility of medicine, access to health centres - all of that is important."

The Prime Minister was challenged about the lack of prosecutions for perpetrators of female genital mutilation in the UK.

He said the Crown Prosecution Service was considering six cases.

"This is an absolutely unacceptable practice, it is illegal in the UK, it is illegal for anyone in the UK no matter what their culture, their background or anything else, it is illegal full stop, end of story," he said.

An NSPCC helpline on the issue received 132 contacts, 55 of which were referred to police, he added.

Mr Cameron said the problem was getting victims to come forward and give evidence.

"It's not an acceptable situation, we know this is taking place, we know we have a problem, we have passed a law but we haven't had prosecutions," he said.

"I think we need to keep working at this and understand what more we can do to encourage people to come forward."
© Press Association 2014

Diversity - Empower Women and Recharge the World

 
Muhtar Kent:Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at The Coca-Cola Company

Our future depends on women. All around the world, women entrepreneurs, women innovators, and women leaders in business, politics, academia, and culture are transforming societies and the global economy. And they will continue to do so. 

Why? For starters, women represent the fastest-growing, most dynamic economic force in the world today. Women now control more than $20 trillion in global spending. That means women have an economic impact 50 percent larger than that of the United States and more than twice the size of China and India’s economies combined.

In the United States alone, women-owned businesses account for nearly $3 trillion of the gross domestic product. In fact, if American women were measured as a separate country, they would have the fifth-largest economy in the world!

Of course, women’s entrepreneurship extends far beyond our shores. The truth is, it’s soaring around the globe. Worldwide, 1 in 11 working-age women is involved in entrepreneurship. And the highest percentages of women business owners are in markets you might not expect. 

In Thailand, nearly 20 percent of working women are entrepreneurs. In India, the number is 14 percent. In Argentina, it’s 12 percent; Brazil, 11 percent; Mexico and Chile, 10 percent. And these numbers continue to increase.

We have also seen that when women rise in their communities, the communities themselves rise to new heights of prosperity and health. Over and over, studies have found a direct correlation between women’s empowerment and GDP growth, business growth, environmental sustainability, improved human health, and other positive impacts. 

So as the world seeks ways to accelerate growth across a global economy that is struggling to emerge from recession, the solution is right in front of us: Empower women, and you recharge the world.
Creating a climate of success for women is smart business—and not just for consumer-products companies. Today, it’s smart business for every company and every country.

In the years ahead, women’s economic participation and entrepreneurial growth will drive the world’s economy. It’s no longer a matter of “if” but of “to what heights.” All of the exciting growth projections for various countries and regions will hinge on greater empowerment of women.

The upward trajectory has already begun. And yet around the world—and across America—we still see too many roadblocks for women: cultural, educational, political, and financial.

Those of us in business, government, and civil society—what we call the “Golden Triangle”—must work together to knock these barriers down. As we do, we will give more women the chance to access financial resources, move into positions of leadership, and start their own businesses.

When it comes to empowering women, the implications for companies, communities, and countries will be vast and profound. Our overall success will, in large measure, depend on the success of women.

If we all do our part, I am convinced that future historians will one day look back on our time as the dawn of “The Women’s Century”—a century that is more open, more hopeful, and more prosperous than any that has come before.
---
I thought I would share with you an essay I was honored to contribute to The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Pushes Back from the Brink, just released by Maria Shriver, the Center for American Progress and RosettaBooks. This important, highly informative eBook is available for free download through January 15. — Muhtar

How Empowering Women in IT Can Spur Economic Development

Tae Yoo

Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Cisco

 

The catalyst of Cisco’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) vision, Tae Yoo leads the company’s social investment programs in education, healthcare, critical human needs, and economic development.

It's a startling pair of statistics: When women are able to earn an income, they typically reinvest 90 percent of it back into their families and communities. And, for every year a girl stays in school, her future earnings will increase exponentially. 

These numbers, from the World Bank and the Council on Foreign Relations, respectively, highlight a simple, common-sense truth: The more time a girl spends in the classroom, the higher the return on investment for her time, and the beneficiaries are stronger families and communities.

Over the past two decades we've seen significant progress made in promoting girls' education around the world. Thanks to ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, among other actions, there is a greater understanding among developed and developing countries that women play a vital role in society and the economy, and that role is significantly enhanced when they are educated. And, the longer a girl stays in school, the greater the impact. The Council on Foreign Relations finds that "one additional year of primary education alone can increase a girl's future wages by 10 to 20 percent, while an extra year of secondary school adds another 15 to 25 percent."

There are still millions of girls and women -- especially in developing countries -- who don't have the information, resources or skills they need to be part of the global economy. Keeping them out of the educational loop -- for social, cultural, or economic reasons -- means that half the population can't contribute to their community's economic growth. 

One of the most compelling arguments for encouraging the education of girls, particularly in developing countries, is this: Education enables jobs, jobs are a source of economic growth, and economic growth is a key to development and stability. 

As educated girls become women, they can transform local communities and act as role models for younger girls. And, according to the World Bank's findings, when women reinvest that 90 percent of their income back into their families and communities, it is most typically spent acquiring "food, health care, home improvement and schooling for themselves and their children."

But, we mustn't only be educating girls in basic literacy. 

We should be preparing them for the jobs of the future, particularly in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) sectors. Over the past decade, new technologies like smart phones, tablet computers and cloud computing have transformed the way we live and interact on a global scale. We can be certain that future technology will continue to play a defining role in all our economic futures. 

In fact, computer networking skills are, according to the industry analyst IDC, "the global currency of 21st century economies," but there is a significant shortage of people equipped with these skills. ICT careers are in high demand everywhere at the moment and are expected to continue to be an important part of global job growth. Jobs in the public sector are increasingly dependent on technology and more and more government services are available online, in developed and developing countries. Women who have ICT skills can help develop and deliver these services, even in places where the sexes are traditionally kept separate. 

Equipping a girl with even rudimentary ICT skills can make a difference in her productivity when she grows up, and this is especially true in developing regions and even in jobs that are viewed as "low-tech." 

For women who produce handicrafts or textiles, for example, knowing how to access the internet can be an efficient way to get to market -- whether selling locally, regionally, or even internationally -- and can offer a pathway to microloans and other banking services, especially in remote areas that may be far from brick-and-mortar financial institutions. 

Similarly, women who are involved in agriculture, which continues to be a major part of rural economies throughout the developing world, can use basic ICT skills to access online resources that help them discover new techniques, anticipate weather conditions, understand crop pricing and so on. Women who have the devices and the technical know-how to access and navigate the internet can learn how to produce larger, healthier crops and will reap the economic benefits in the process.

Since girls and women represent 50 percent of the world population, enabling them to participate in their local economies helps broaden the employment pool. The world needs thinkers, leaders and doers more than ever, so neglecting the minds of half the population means a lost opportunity to benefit from their ideas, contributions and actions. Educating girls and women and equipping them with ICT skills offers a clear return on investment for society: stronger families, stronger communities, stronger economies.

This post is part of a series sponsored by Cisco and its partners promoting women in STEM. 

Challenging Patriarchy: The Changing Definition of Women’s Empowerment

By Donald Borenstein 

As more organizations in the international development community commit themselves to supporting women’s empowerment, it has grown increasingly difficult to evaluate what that really entails.  [Video Below]


“Everyone uses the word ‘empowerment,’” said the UN Foundation’s Alaka Basu at the Wilson Center on October 10. “It’s now such an overused word. You are empowered if you have a choice of 10 different shampoos in the grocery store; you are empowered if you have 100 kinds of cereals to buy; you are empowered by virtually anyone wanting to sell you something.” 

Basu argues in her research that effective gender equality initiatives need to go “beyond that way of looking at empowerment and ask, ‘what is meaningful empowerment?’”
 
She was joined by Wendy Baldwin, formerly of the Population Reference Bureau, for a discussion about the effectiveness of the international development community’s efforts to empower some of the world’s most marginalized women.

Is Increasing Choices Enough?

“If we are to assume empowerment automatically means gender equality, women’s rights, women’s strength – I think that’s a misnomer,” Basu said. “Empowerment in the…sense of just expansion of choices can occur in many ways which do not touch the patriarchy, which do not touch women’s status, and therefore to assume women are empowered…[and] ideologies have changed, doesn’t make sense.”

Basu said these “instrumental” empowerment initiatives are problematic because it is hard to determine whether or not providing new choices actually changes attitudes about gender roles and rights, even if they increase practical opportunities.

 

“How does expansion of women’s choices lead to outcomes in other fields?” she asked. It’s not clear it does, in some cases. “Data [in some countries] shows that women who are working are very good at achieving many kinds of gross reproductive health outcomes, but when you look at their attitudes…the majority of them still think it’s justified for a man to beat his wife…if she doesn’t produce a hot meal, or if she refuses sex, or if she talks to strangers,” she said.

When it comes to quantifying progress in empowerment efforts, there has been too much exclusive reliance on hard data, such as employment and health statistics, Basu continued. For example, lower rates of sexually transmitted infections can be misleading in places where women simply aren’t allowed to have sex. In addition to quantitative data, there is a need to include additional information about changing attitudes.

What Is Successful Empowerment?

Baldwin applauded Basu’s message about expanding the traditional approach to empowerment, urging organizations to “unpack the concepts” behind their goals to determine what they define as successful empowerment.

The idea of women’s empowerment is not clearly defined. For example, organizations should ask themselves when they start employment initiatives whether they are addressing working in the house or out of the house, in the formal sector or the informal sector, Baldwin said. “What is it about having that job or that income that makes a difference when [women] come home?” For organizations making these decisions, “it would be extra helpful to actually understand how these concepts knit together so that you would have half a chance that pushing on this part of the concept is actually going to give you the effect at the other end that you want,” she said.

In Basu’s eyes, empowerment is best defined as an expansion of agency throughout women’s lives, not in individual sectors. “We mean expansion of choice according to [women’s] rules,” she said. “Even ‘bad’ behaviors can be an outcome of expanded choice.”

“It’s not just that with increased choice you can choose to do something or have something, but you’re also able to…choose something that goes against the norm,” agreed Baldwin. She pointed out, for example, the idea of finding better husbands doesn’t fit into the traditional empowerment narrative, and, in fact, runs counter to it in some ways. But by finding ways to encourage women to stay with men who do not abuse them and respect their rights, it is possible to foster attitudes of empowerment that go beyond economic opportunities. Such decisions help build empowerment beyond individual needs and create lasting change for multiple generations.

Baldwin said NGOs and governments working on women’s empowerment should plan their efforts with consideration for the source of empowerment. Are they merely adding additional options, or truly enabling women to choose for themselves? Without careful consideration of the difference, she suggested gender equality initiatives might struggle to find the results they aim for.

“Life Is Not a Randomly Controlled Experiment”

“Ideological change really requires you to question the patriarchy,” said Basu, “and here it appears a lot of these so-called empowering factors aren’t quite as effective as we think they are.” This does not mean there is no place for economic empowerment initiatives, she argued, but rather there ought to be greater consideration regarding their implementation.

For Baldwin, achieving better results from empowerment efforts around the world begins with self-scrutiny in the international development community. She advocated for a “mixed method” approach to evaluation that combines the usual survey data with qualitative research. “If we could structure our research to go back…and say ‘I didn’t ask you the right questions, can I ask you more?’” then we could reduce misinterpretations of purely statistical data, she said.

Basu believes that empowerment must be considered from all angles, not just in terms of commodities and economic choices: “Life is not a randomly controlled experiment – we need to have a storyline that links all of these issues.”
Basu’s research, still in progress, will be included in an upcoming white paper from the UN Foundation.

Photo Credit: Alaka Basu speaks at the Wilson Center, courtesy of Schuyler Null/Wilson Center.

Diageo's women empowerment initiatives

Diageo recently inaugurated the Women's Empowerment Journalism Awards to recognise and honour outstanding reporting of women's issues.

The awards are part of "Plan W: Empowering Women through Learning" launched last year to reach women of all socioeconomic profiles through training and skills development to empower two million women in 17 countries in Asia-Pacific over five years.

The awards programme aims to inspire, nurture and advance quality reporting on women's empowerment issues and to educate and empower communities across Asia-Pacific. The programme is open to journalists in 10 markets across the region.

Jayne Harvey, managing director of Diageo Moet Hennessy (Thailand), said last week that DMHT is passionate about proactively extending opportunities to women, both internally and in the broader community.

"In Thailand, around 40 per cent of our staff are women, and Diageo's global goal is for women to make up 30 per cent of our top leadership by 2015. As the first female managing director of DMHT, my Diageo journey is a practical demonstration of this commitment.

"In the community, we're proud to be partnering with the Mechai Viravaidya Foundation, and now through the WE Journalism Awards, we look forward to recognising journalists for the important role they play in shaping opinion on women's issues."

The first project is taking place at Nong Ta Kem village in Buri Ram. It consists of four core activities providing equity support and empowerment, gender and community empowerment, social enterprise farm, a Women's Economic Empowerment Loan Fund for women to develop their own businesses, and training to improve their skills.

Diageo became the first alcohol beverage company last year to sign up to the UN Women's Empowerment Principles to promote gender equality in the workplace, marketplace and community.

Count Me In's WVEC Small Business Competition Announces Women Veteran Entrepreneur Awardees

Select Entrepreneurs to Participate in Business Accelerator Program Aimed to Help Grow their Businesses and Strengthen Their Local Economies.

We look forward to working with this promising group of motivated military affiliated entrepreneurs as they grow their micro-businesses into thriving enterprises. 

New York City, NY (PRWEB) January 08, 2014 

Select women veteran entrepreneurs have been chosen as Awardees of the Women Veteran Entrepreneur (WVEC) small business competition for women organized by Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, the leading national not-for-profit provider of resources, business education, and community support for women entrepreneurs.

WVEC is an exciting new business growth initiative supported generously by Capital One for women veteran entrepreneurs designed to help them grow their businesses quickly and sustainably to improve local economies and job growth in their communities. 

WVEC aims to help women-owned businesses from across the country currently at $50,000 to $150,000 in annual revenues to grow to $250,000+ in revenue with support through the Count Me In Business Accelerator Program. That goal translates into $75 Million in new economic activity and 600-900 much-needed new jobs. 

The 23 Awardees each presented a two-minute pitch on their business at the WVEC conference and competition at the Capital One Conference Center in Plano, TX on November 19, 2013. Now each of these women veteran entrepreneurs have been invited to participate in Count Me In’s renowned nine-month Business Accelerator program, which provides intensive business coaching and education designed to help their businesses grow in revenues by at least 30% and create new jobs within 18-36 months. 

The program will commence in January 24, 2014 the Capital One Conference Center. Awardees will also receive a one-year legislative membership with Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP). In addition, three Awardees will each receive Jump Start Prizes, a $1,000 cash award to use in their businesses. 

The 23 WVEC Awardees are as follows:
-Cassondra G. Armstrong of Chef Cassondra Culinary Concepts
-Lisa Artman of The Skin Clinic, Inc.
-Tamiko W. Bailey of Bailey’s Premier Services LLC
-Lisa Belcastro of LR General Solutions
-Cary Broussard of Broussard Global
-Kesha Dirkson of KDE Public Relations
-MaryEllen Dorey of Dorey AromaTherapy
-Becky Feeley of Texas Carpet Baggers
-Peggy Foster of Raven Transportation
-Beverly Johnson of Aim
-Susan Jones of KLS Group
-Melissa Kelley of Backwise Massage
-Carole Lucio of Done! Fast & Fabulous Hair Color
-Elizabeth Naylor of Ebenezer Wellness
-Pam Parker of Born Again Bodies
-Amy Power of Power Public Relations
-Laura Renner of Hiring Coach Vernita
-Sneed of Lone Star Janitorial LLC
-Kaylin Song of Kaylin Song Chiropractic
-Artura Taylor of Taylor Distribution Group
-Terri Tomlinson of Makeup Training Academy
-Deborah Toodle of Elevated Evolution LLC
-Lameka Weeks of Height Goddess

“Our Women Veteran Awardees represent yet another group of women business owners who have the potential to truly make an impact on economic growth in our country,” said Nell Merlino, Founder and President of Count Me In. “We look forward to working with this promising group of motivated military affiliated entrepreneurs as they grow their micro-businesses into thriving enterprises.”
As part of its $800,000 commitment to support the WVEC program, Capital One has brought women veterans and business growth experts from across the country together to participate in two WVEC conferences in 2013. The inaugural WVEC Conference took place in April 2013 at their headquarters in McLean, Va. An additional WVEC event is currently being planned for the spring of 2014.
“At Capital One, we understand the value small businesses bring to local economies and through our partnership with Count Me In, we are combining our expertise in small business development with our commitment to help entrepreneurial women veterans grow their businesses –– a step that not only benefits them personally but also supports local economies and job growth.” said Sanjiv Yajnik, President of Financial Services, Capital One.

About Count Me In
Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence is the leading national not-for-profit provider of resources, business education, and community support for women entrepreneurs seeking to grow their businesses to million dollar enterprises. Count Me In launched the Make Mine a Million $ Business Competition to inspire one million women entrepreneurs scale their businesses to a million dollars in business revenues in the next decade by providing tools, skills, and the support of a nation-wide community of peers. 

About Capital One    

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Struggling Boards, the Answer May Be Closer than You Think

BY MELISSA SANDGREN

There is a scene in The Iron Lady film where the actress who plays Margaret Thatcher is walking defiantly down a marble hall; the camera zooms in on her solitary pair of high heels amidst a sea of squeaky parliamentarian loafers. Thatcher pushes open the door to the lady’s restroom only to find a lonely ironing board waiting to press the suit of one of the countless MPs whose loafers we have just seen on the screen. The leitmotif of the scene could not be clearer: this is a world where even the women’s bathroom is designed to support the men.

To those of us who live in Western democracies, these images—and the pronounced gender disparities they represent—may seem antiquated. Yet in the United States today, women constitute only 3.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs and hold only 16.1 percent of Fortune 500 board seats, despite the fact that they make up 51 percent of the population as a whole (Soares et al. 2011a). Contemporary boardrooms, both in America and abroad, are not nearly as far removed from Thatcher’s era as we would like to believe.

Throughout the history of the struggle for gender equality, moral- and fairness-based arguments have been used to advocate for women’s rights. Today, however, there is a new dimension to the gender discussion: corporate profits and performance. For more than ten years, Catalyst, a nonprofit focused on women and business, and McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm, have each tracked the effects of diversity on corporate performance. The research from each organization suggests that gender diversity in the boardroom is not only the right thing to do, it’s also good for business and, by extension, the economy as a whole.

At just 16.1 percent, the overall proportion of women on Fortune 500 corporate boards is low. A 2011 study by Catalyst found that women filled between zero and 18.3 percent of Fortune 500 company board seats (Soares et al. 2011a, Appendix 7). For women of color, the number is even worse. In 2011, non-White women held only three percent of board seats, and more than two-thirds of companies had no women of color on their boards at all (Soares et al. 2011a).

The dearth of women on corporate boards is not specific to the United States. Globally, women represent 9.8 percent of board members, according to a 2011 study from GovernanceMetrics International (2011), an independent firm rating corporate governance. Among industrialized economies, the number swings from less than 1 percent in Japan to 35.6 percent in Norway. Although the percentage of women on corporate boards in the United States is incrementally increasing—up from 15.7 percent in 2010 to 16.1 percent in 2011— at its current rate of increase, it would take more than eighty-four years for women to gain equal representation on boards.

However, there may be reason to think that things will speed up. Research by Catalyst and McKinsey & Company finds that, on average, Fortune 500 companies with three or more women on their board of directors—often deemed a  “critical mass”—substantially outperform companies without any female board members (Kanter 1977, cited in Carter and Wagner 2011). Over a four-to-five-year period across many different industries, these companies showed, on average, an 84 percent increase in return on sales (ROS), a 60 percent increase in return on invested capital (ROIC), and a 46 percent increase in return on equity (ROE) relative to their peers (Carter and Wagner 2011). Figure 1, courtesy of Catalyst, highlights the difference in companies with zero women on the board of directors (WBD) compared to those organizations with three or more (Carter and Wagner 2011).

Figure 1 — Difference in companies with zero women on the board of directors (WBD) compared to those with three or more (courtesy of Catalyst) (Carter and Wagner 2011).



Companies with women on their boards see gains beyond their balance sheets. McKinsey’s 2011 study identified nine key drivers of a company’s long-term health, including such factors as direction, leadership, and organizational culture. Its researchers found that companies with women on their boards performed better across all nine of these dimensions as compared to their male-dominated peers (Boardroom Diversity 2011).

At roughly the same time as the McKinsey study, Catalyst released a report demonstrating that companies with more equitable gender distributions tend to have higher levels of corporate philanthropy by a factor of almost thirty to one. According to researchers, every additional woman on a corporate board increased charitable giving by up to $2.3 million (Soares et al. 2011b). These findings hold true even when other factors like industry, corporation size, and baseline performance level are taken into account, suggesting that gender-inclusive boards are not only good for business and the economy but for society as well.

While this research may surprise the average consumer, many in the industry are familiar with the business rationale for incorporating women into the boardroom and, more broadly, into the company’s strategic initiatives. Today’s business leaders understand that women are a largely underutilized source of creativity, innovation, and talent and that these skills generally translate into an improved bottom line, increased long-term internal diversity, and a more socially responsible company. Yet in spite of the research, women are still woefully underrepresented in the boardroom. In today’s data-driven and profit-demanding corporate world, why have corporations not increased the number of women on their boards?

More of a Bottleneck than a Ceiling
Current research suggests that many factors may compromise a woman’s ability to reach the top. Rather than a glass ceiling the problem may be more of a bottleneck. After all, women hold 51.5 percent of management positions but only 14.1 percent of executive officer positions (Catalyst 2012). For companies to excel and stay competitive, they must address this impasse. But where exactly is it that women’s advancement is being held up?

In the Pipeline
A common response to explain the dearth of female board members and CEOs is that too few qualified women are present in the pipeline. This belief purports the absence is largely due to the fact that many women drop out of the workforce when they have children, and that afterwards, they either delay return or never return at all. To some extent, this is true. Myra Hart, a Harvard Business School professor conducting research on the school’s alumni, finds that women suffer almost no career setback at all when they leave the workforce for short periods of time. “The issue isn’t around three to six months maternity leave,” she told me one day in her office (Hart 2012). Hart finds the real career challenges occur somewhat later, “usually two to three years after the birth of a second child when the increasing demands of multiple schedules and more complex parenting issues result in women reducing their work commitment or exiting the paid workforce altogether for a period of several years” (2012).

She observes that, “Women with advanced degrees in business, law, and medicine are very likely to have partners who are also well-educated and have high earning capacity. Their families often have the financial wherewithal to live on a single income. Many couples perform a type of cost-benefit analysis and find the man’s career has a higher probability of financial and professional returns” (Hart 2012).

However, the logjam can be traced back to an even earlier point. A 2010 study by Catalyst that surveyed more than 9,900 alumni from twenty-six top-tier MBA programs in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Canada who graduated between 1996 and 2007 found the discrepancies between male and female career advancement start right from the beginning (Carter and Silva 2010). After controlling for parental status, experience, industry, and other variables, male MBA graduates still earned an average of $4,600 more than their female peers and were also more likely to be given a higher-ranked job. The study found that even when women and men started at the same level, men outpaced women significantly in climbing the corporate ladder and that “only when women were hired at mid-level or senior executive ranks were there no significant differences between the rate of men’s and women’s career advancement over time” (Carter and Silva 2010).

Outside Personal Networks
Embedded in the legacy of historically male-dominated industries, many companies may not realize their biases in favor of men. For instance, traditional methods of networking, coaching, or mentoring, which were developed when corporate management was almost entirely male, may not necessarily work for women.

Harvard Business School (HBS) professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter says that discrimination still takes place in the corporate world, though, unlike in past eras, this discrimination is usually informal and unintentional. Kanter summarizes this phenomenon in a 2010 HBS interview: “I think one of the hidden sources of discrimination that still goes on in many companies is sort of informal and behind the scenes. When there’s a discussion in a private conversation about, ‘Well, who are the people that we should put into certain positions?’ And then, ‘Well, she isn’t quite as dedicated’ or ‘We love the fact that she has a family, and we’re very family friendly; we don’t want to take her away from the family’ and so they don’t even give the woman a choice” (Kanter 2010).

Kanter is a pioneer for encouraging organizations to achieve a “critical mass” of women in their leadership structures. Her initial research, first published in the 1977 book Men and Women of the Corporation, found that when women held one-third of positions, it prevented tokenization and encouraged equal evaluation, allowing women to be perceived beyond their traditional gender-based roles.

Research from Harvard Kennedy School professor and Academic Dean Iris Bohnet corroborates Kanter’s four-decade-old-thesis on the importance of having two or more females on a company’s board. Bohnet recently analyzed the perception of “luck” and “effort” on performance-based outcomes. She found that performance was significantly lower when people had less access to information and consequently attributed their success—and the success of others—to mere “luck” (Bohnet and Saidi 2011). Thus, in the absence of social networks or people similar to themselves, individuals were less likely to succeed and more likely to attribute the success of others to factors outside of their control.

In addition, a 2008 study from Catalyst, “Advancing Women Leaders: The Connection Between Women Board Directors and Women Corporate Officers,” found that companies with multiple female board directors were more likely to have a higher percentage of women as corporate officers five years later (Joy 2008). This means that having women in the corporate ranks and the executive levels provides a signal, as well as an opportunity, for women to mentor other women.

By Our Own Individual Bias
Finally, there is an individual bias, shared by women and men alike, when we picture business leaders or elect board members. The youngest and first female partner of Goldman Sachs, Jacki Zehner, has written extensively on the underrepresentation of women in the corporate world. In a 2011 article, “Saying ‘No’ to All-Male Corporate Boards,” she argues that one indisputable fact about male corporate boards is that we, as shareholders, elect them (Keefe and Zehner 2011). While the board may be groomed from former or current CEOs, we have the opportunity to choose who we want to represent us. Even when we are not intending to be gender-biased, when we imagine a CEO or corporate leader in our mind’s eye, the image is almost always male. This bias seeps into our unconscious and stays, unwittingly perpetuating the gender inequality and “old boys” networks that continue to hold women back in corporations across the United States and world.

The Process, the Solution
Many international corporations already openly recognize the business case for diversity and are encouraging in-house methods to increase and promote parity. IBM, General Mills, Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola, McKinsey, and many others have internal initiatives to train and mentor women while simultaneously making diversity a key component in their company’s long-term growth (Spence 2010). IBM created the Women’s Task Force in 1995 to groom and promote female leaders, eventually leading to a 592 percent increase in female executives; General Mills currently sees five of its seven major divisions run by women, which is not surprising given that nearly 75 percent of consumer purchasing decisions are made by women; and Kraft recently implemented an internal coaching program specifically targeting high-potential women and people of color (Spence 2010).

While some countries, like Belgium and Italy, have recently passed legislation assessing fines on companies that do not achieve a specific critical mass of women within certain timelines, these kinds of policies would likely face a strong backlash in the United States. In recent years, American companies have tended to shun government interventions of all varieties, quotas have been viewed as discrediting merit, and incentives have been seen as biasing individual selections. If the European stick approach won’t work in the United States, perhaps the American government could offer carrots? The United States might consider extending tax credits to companies providing paid maternity and paternity leave or child care, along with other incentives for companies that are openly addressing diversity issues.

But achieving greater diversity ultimately comes down to corporate policy. Recent research from McKinsey finds that leadership is the crucial point for setting the tone when it comes to women’s hiring. A commitment from a company’s top-level leadership—particularly the CEO—to increase diversity is perhaps the most critical component to challenging the status quo. Given the skewed gender representation on corporate boards today, ironically, this leadership usually needs to come from a man (Boardroom Diversity 2011).

What should this leadership look like? To be successful the CEO must be openly committed to the issue both internally and externally. Companies must make public goals and hold themselves accountable through transparent performance measures. In addition to this top-level commitment, companies must also work to embed diversity into the fabric of their corporate culture. Paid paternity leave, diversity recruitment bonuses, and on-site day care are just three examples of how companies can work to foster diversity and increase equality in their corporate culture. But companies have to support these initiatives as well, and they usually need the buy-in from the CEO and the board to do it.

Long-term, sustainable corporate commitment is perhaps the most promising lead from the last decade of research. As one of five recommendations to “close the leadership gap” in business, “The White House Project Report: Benchmarking Women’s Leadership” (2009) specifically requests: “CEOs [to] develop a plan for advancing women onto their boards” and places specific importance on boards and companies to achieve the “critical mass.”

But the report is invested for more than parity’s sake: having women in the workforce increases economic growth. A 2007 Goldman Sachs report, “Gender Inequality, Growth and Global Ageing,” found that: “Closing the gap between male and female employment would have huge economic implications for the global economy, boosting US GDP by as much as 9%, Eurozone GDP by 13% and Japanese GDP by 16%” (Daly 2007).

In the current economic downturn, coupling equality with corporate strategy may improve both the corporate bottom line and the economy at the same time. Removing the last vestiges of Thatcher-era ironing boards within American business—especially the underrepresentation of women in corporate leadership—would do much to help us get out of the recession and revitalize the twenty-first century American economy.

References
Boardroom Diversity. 2011. SAIS Global Conference on Women in the Boardroom, Johns Hopkins University, 9 September. Video available (www.boardroomdiversity.org/2011/10/2011-conference-video).
Bohnet, Iris, and Farzad Saidi. 2011. Informational differences and performance: Experimental evidence, 29 November.
Carter, Nancy M., and Christine Silva. 2010. Pipeline’s broken promise. Catalyst.
———, and Harvey M. Wagner. 2011. The bottom line: Corporate performance and women’s representation on boards (2004-2008). Catalyst.
Catalyst. 2012. The Catalyst pyramid: U.S. women in business, January.
Daly, Kevin. 2007. Gender inequality, growth and global ageing. Global Economics Paper No: 154. Goldman Sachs.
GovernanceMetrics International. 2011. 2011 women on boards report. GovernanceMetrics International, 8 March.
Hart, Myra. 2012. Interview with author, 9 February.
Joy, Lois. 2008. Advancing women leaders: The connection between women board directors and women corporate officers. Catalyst.
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. 1977. Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books.
———. 2010. Women, ambition and (still) the pay gap. YouTube, 2 April.
Keefe, Joe, and Jacki Zehner. 2011. Saying “no” to all-male corporate boards. Huffington Post, 6 April.
Soares, Rachel et al. 2011a. 2011 Catalyst census: Fortune 500 women board directors. Catalyst.
———, Christopher Marquis, and Matthew Lee. 2011b. Gender and corporate social responsibility: It’s a matter of sustainability. Catalyst.
Spence, Betty. 2010. NAFE 2010 top 50 companies for executive women. National Association for Female Executives.
The White House Project. 2009. The White House Project report: Benchmarking women’s leadership.

This article was originally published in the 2012 edition of the Kennedy School Review.

Melissa Sandgren is a 2013 Master in Public Policy candidate at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, focusing on international and global affairs.

Women 'make better bosses than men'

The study found that when there were conflicting interests, women board members tended to make fairer decisions than men - Photo: ALAMY

Companies with female board members are more likely to make decisions that benefit everyone from investors to staff and not just themselves and other directors, the study added. 

Business school researchers said the findings show that having women in the boardroom is not just good for equality but good for business too. 

The study for the International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics surveyed 600 board directors about their approach to decision making and other corporate issues. It found that when there were conflicting interests, women board members tended to make fairer decisions than men. Female directors were more likely to consider how the decision would affect others, whether it is employees, investors or stakeholders for instance.

To do this, women on the board were also more likely to use others in the decision making process, which led to a much more co-operative feeling within the company itself. As a consequence, female influenced companies were generally more successful than male dominated ones, it found. 

The study was conducted by strategic management professor Chris Bart of Canada's McMaster University and Gregory McQueen of A.T.Still University in Arizona. Of the 600 board members studied, 75 per cent were male and it found men were more likely to take decisions based on rules, regulations and traditional methods. 

Women, however, were more likely to try new ways and 'more prepared to rock the boat' it said. Professor Bart said: "We've known for some time that companies that have more women on their boards have better results. 

"Our findings show that having women on the board is no longer just the right thing but also the smart thing to do. "Companies with few female directors may actually be shortchanging their investors." 

Britain's top businesses are making some progress in promoting women though they still have some way to go according to recent reports. 

There are now just seven companies in the FTSE 100 which have no female directors, of which five are mining companies. But a similar study from 2010 showed there were 21 of the 100 without a single female director, suggesting things have moved forward. 

Yet in 2010 there were only two female chief executives and although there were four by the end of 2012, two of these have since left their jobs as well. Gregory McQueen said: "Women seem to be predisposed to be more inquisitive and to see more possible solutions. 

"At the board level where directors are compelled to act in the best interest of the corporation while taking the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders into account, this quality makes them more effective corporate directors." Previous studies have shown that corporations with women on the board perform better and are less likely to go bankrupt.

Edited by Nadia Khomami