A ways to go
Edition 78
My one regret this year was, I couldn’t make it to Iceland and the 2022 Reykjavik Global Forum - Women Leaders!
If you did, I envy you! The gathering was a reiteration of the power of women when we come together and have each other’s backs.
But as Rick Zednick, Advisor to the board of Women Political Leaders (WPL) which helps put the forum together, and who is also Chair of the board of Euractiv has highlighted to me — we’ve got a ways to go.
Here’s a snippet of the report Rick has shared, for our CB community! Thank our lucky stars that we have hope for the future with allies like him in our corner!
How does it work?
Released every year since 2018 at the Reykjavík Global Forum, the Reykjavík Index for Leadership is put together by WPL and Kantar Public and surveys around 14,000 people globally.
It tracks perceptions about gender and leadership — i.e., the extent to which men and women are viewed equally in terms of their suitability for positions of power. The Index runs from 0 to 100; a score of 100 means that across society, there is complete agreement that men and women are equally suited to leadership in all sectors.
What were the 2022 findings?
People don’t have much faith in women leaders. In some cases, trust in women leaders has actually fallen. It’s first time since the Index began that such a fall has been seen. Surprisingly, in addition to the depressing lack of progress (the needle hasn’t moved an inch since 2018) many of those drops in trust are in the G7 countries.
While we all know the phenomenon of Covid forcing women to step away from the workplace - the drop in trust in some cases did came as a shock to me.
For all the chatter about women’s empowerment, gender pay equality, Diversity & Inclusion initiatives - Here’s the hard truth about how suitable it seems we really are seen to be, to head companies. Across the G7 that number has dramatically dropped back to even lower than perceptions of suitability in 2018. And even in the country that most markets D&I and women’s empowerment - the U.S - we see what feels like the most shocking decline in trust in female CEOs.
If that didn’t depress you enough, there is where the report gets worrying. A picture speaks more than a thousand words.
The first line below really grabbed my attention and made me ask myself - Am I guilty of this too? Am I prejudiced against women leaders? Am I giving them all a fair shot?
And then there is the finding about the next generation!
This is the reality check we all need. We can either grab a glass of wine and cry into our pillows or take real action now, to make a change in how we are talking to our youth about the future and about gender.
If this statistic tells us anything - it is that we are failing in telling our stories. We are failing in making our case. We have not built a trust bridge that is strong enough to change hearts and minds - we might have actually done the opposite.
You can read a detailed analysis of the report at the BBC, or send me an email/message and I’ll share it with you.
Data doesn’t lie!
If you were of the inkling to think ‘Meh! This Reykjavík Index isn’t representative of reality, it’s only 14,0000 people surveyed. The world doesn’t think like that.’ Let’s take a look at the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and its monthly rankings of national parliaments for a quick reality check.
What is the IPU you ask? Well, it is a global organisation of national parliaments founded in 1889, with the primary purpose to promote democratic governance, accountability, and cooperation among its members (i.e., 178 Member Parliaments out of the 193 countries in the world.)
The IPU’s monthly rankings of women in national parliaments is one of the most accurate and eye-opening data sets you can possibly come across. This November’s data is predictably depressing. It shows the gap between men and women narrowing more slowly than hoped. So, in addition to not being on track for meeting any climate target, the world is not even on track to achieve gender equality in politics by 2030.
But I’m not here to depress you — Here are a few sunny and surprising spots in the world for us ladies.
Rwanda has been ranked the country in the world with most women in parliament as of 1st November 2021.
The East African country has 49 women in its parliament as against 31 men.
Cuba, Nicaragua, New Zealand and Mexico make up the top 5 for gender equality in Parliament. Most EU countries most do well for their gender ratios and are within the top 60. France ranks 36, Germany comes in at 44, the U.K. at 45.
Ok, I can’t resist sharing the depressing stats too!
The US falls short in these rankings too - at 74, well behind countries like South Sudan (55), Iraq (70) or even neighbour Canada (62)
And then there are the usual and unsurprising suspects — India’s at 144, Cyprus is ranked 148, Hungary at 150, Japan 165
Long ways to go indeed! And that is just in our halls of political power! Keep a tab, read more of the report and find your country’s ranking and performance at the IPU
The numbers don’t add up
We all know banking is such a boy’s club, but turns out its us women keeping the wheels turning in the U.S financial system. But, unsurprisingly once you start climbing the ladder the data sets prove it isn’t a rosy picture of women who can lead and do, at all!
A report by S&P Global Market Intelligence analysing the U.S. Labor Department's banking industry data and information reported by publicly traded banks could fool you into believing all those PR hype stories about empowerment and D&I! Fool you, if you only look at the headline that is!
Let’s start with the good news! Turns out the entire U.S. banking industry did pretty well hiring and retaining women last year.
They had more female employees than men in 2021. 56.3% of roughly 1.9 million total employees in banking and related activities were women, compared to 43.7% men!
In savings institutions, including credit unions, 69.8% of 289,000 employees were women.
Meanwhile, in nondepository credit and related activities, of 1.2 million employees, 50.7% were men.
Cause for celebratory headlines indeed!
But then comes the doozy data!
Less than 5% of publicly traded banks had female CEOs at the end of that year. That means only 10 public banks had female CEOs in 2021, leaving 337 public banks with male CEOs in the year. So, good enough to do the grunt work, but not good enough to lead.
Oh, and even if we make it to the top at the biggest banks, we don’t get paid as much as the men! Per the report:
“Looking at compensation at the top 10 public banks by market capitalization as of Dec. 31, 2021, First Republic Bank's Erkan ranked third next to the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp.
Jane Fraser, Citigroup's CEO since March 2021, was fifth, next to Erkan. Fraser was also the least paid and the only woman among the CEOs of the Big Four banks: JPMorgan, BofA, Wells Fargo & Co. and Citigroup. She was paid $20.5 million in 2021.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon received $84.4 million in compensation, BofA CEO Brian Moynihan got $23.7 million, and Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf got $21.4 million.”
You can read more of the S&P Insights here
Women making news
Peru finally got its first woman President
60-year-old Dina Boluarte a relative unknown was sworn in this week and not Keiko Fujimori, who had run for the office three times and lost. The former vice President was the running mate of her predecessor, Pedro Castillo. He was impeached by Congress following his attempt to dissolve the legislative body. Read more at the BBC
Isabelle Kocher’s got a new venture
Politics may have driven her out of Engie’s driver’s seat, but the former CEO of the French energy giant is on a new and blue/greener path. Isabelle Kocher has partnered with Vincent Kientz and set up Blunomy - a 120 consulting firm that is based in Paris, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Melbourne and Sydney. The firm guides clients (50% industrial companies, 50% banks & funds) to structure the transition of business models and supply chain to be decarbonized, circular, inclusive. And provide financial institutions with in-depth knowledge of industrial sectors to help reallocate their balance sheet and investment portfolio to the players concretely engaged in the green transition. Connect/Follow Isabelle on LinkedIn
Google U.K. & Ireland’s got a new boss
Debbie Weinstein is Google’s newest managing director of U.K. and Ireland and will be leading the tech company’s business in the region. Formerly Google and YouTube’s global advertising chief she will take up her new gig from March 2023. Read more at Ad-Week
Twitter is being sued, again!
Two women who lost their jobs at Twitter during mass layoffs after Elon Musk took over the company are suing, claiming that the company disproportionately targeted female employees for cuts.
The new suit, filed this week in the San Francisco federal court, said that Twitter which laid off 3,700 staff - intentionally laid off 57% of its female workers compared with 47% of men. The gender disparity was starker for engineering roles, where 63% of women lost their jobs compared to 48% of men.
Read more at the Guardian
2 men are better than 1 woman
The German football league is replacing its first female CEO with two men. Axel Hellmann and Oliver Leki are to take over with immediate effect from Donata Hopfen. She leaves her job as the head of Germany’s top two football divisions after less than a year in charge.
The league on Wednesday said it reached a mutual agreement with Donata to cut short her three-year contract because of “differing ideas about the further strategic direction of the company”. Donata’s instead suggested in a social media post she did not receive the support she needed from league members to make required changes to longstanding structures.
Read more at DW