International Women’s Day: Women have come a long way, but have further to go
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Women have come a long way since 1903 and the suffragette movement. Female suffrage was a near revolutionary concept then. The UK achieved universal suffrage in 1918. In 1920, the US granted women the right to vote in the 19th amendment to the constitution. Since then, basically every country in the world has allowed women to vote. Some came earlier, while in others it took an occupying power to get there, as in Japan after the Second World War. Yet others came late, like Switzerland, where it took until 1971.
So much for the political landscape, which is only one side of the equation. What about the economy and society in general?
When it comes to the economy, women are still not faring too well. Women only hold 7.4 percent of CEO roles in Fortune 500 companies. In the UK, women make up 5 percent of FTSE 100 companies. In terms of executive committee members, they hold 23 percent.
These positions are about economic participation, but also about power. In 2008, Norway passed a law demanding that 40 percent of board members in any listed company must be female. Other countries followed suit, with France and Belgium legislating for this number to be at 40 percent or 30 percent, respectively. Germany did one better: While supervisory board level participation has been regulated at 30 percent, going forward at least one member of the executive board of large publicly quoted companies must be a woman as soon as 2022.
That lands us in the conversation about quotas. They may initially be helpful, but only as long as women are not typecast as “quota babes” and respected for what they can contribute, which should be self-evident since many studies demonstrate that companies with a diverse leadership team weather the ups and downs of the economy better than those which are white and male.
There is a question about how important supervisory boards are: On one hand, they help set the strategy for a corporation and they review operations, which gives them a say in the course a corporation charters and allows them to review principles of fairness.
On the other hand, the global headhunting firm Egon Zehnder argues that we have come a long way in terms of female supervisory board representation, but that in order for things to change more women need to be represented in the most senior executive roles. That is correct. However, to get there, women must be allowed to rise through the ranks and form an integral and important part of the leadership pipeline.
All of the above is important, especially since we all need models because “nothing succeeds like success.”
Increasing female participation in society often requires social engineering and political willpower as well as equal access to education. In other words, it takes a country’s or organization’s leadership and determination to get there.
Cornelia Meyer
Let there be no mistake, though, that these board questions apply only to the privileged few. Real life takes place at the grassroots level. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that women made up a disproportionately large contingent among healthcare workers, teachers, supermarket checkout clerks, etc.
This tells us that women still gravitate to the lower-paid jobs — the ones essential for our societies to function through the pandemic. Women make up 70 percent of frontline health care workers globally, but a much smaller part in health care management — 15 percent in Germany for instance.
Women also disproportionately lost their jobs. Women and minorities were on average harder hit by the pandemic, which boils down to economic power, or rather the lack thereof.
What can be done about the status of women in society more than 100 years after the inception of the suffragette movement?
Education and affording women fair chances are critical. Governments and legislatures have an important role to play here. They can turbocharge equal rights for women and minorities, and a fairer representation in politics, business and society. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are great examples. While women did not enjoy equal participation for a long time, governments enacted policies that catapulted women into prominent positions.
Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US is Princess Reema bint Bandar and the head of the UAE’s Space Agency is Sarah Al-Amiri. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many talented women coming up through the ranks in those two countries. Indeed, right now, the Kingdom and the UAE may well be the best places to be for career minded women.
Increasing female participation in society often requires social engineering and political willpower as well as equal access to education. In other words, it takes a country’s or organization’s leadership and determination to get there.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-general of the World Trade Organization, put it brilliantly in a Bloomberg interview when she reminded viewers that it takes not just women to give women more access, it takes men, too.
• Cornelia Meyer is a Ph.D.-level economist with 30 years of experience in investment banking and industry. She is chairperson and CEO of business consultancy Meyer Resources.
