Something's not working
Welcome to The Chief Brief. Every Sunday, I spotlight global, diverse, and innovative female leaders impacting the world around them. I curate and break down stories from across the world that caught my eye and help you connect with the women you should know, if you don’t already! Welcome to my passion project of building a globally aware and connected community of women leaders.
Happy Sunday!
This week European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde’s conversation with David Rubenstein caught my attention. As expected, there was a lot of chatter about the European economy, the ECB’s controversial decision to “trim” its emergency bond purchase program and inflation. Nothing she said about the broad issues of her mandate were a surprise. After all, she and other board members of Europe’s central bank had spent the last few days explaining the ECB’s position.
What did catch my attention was her blunt assessment of the world of finance. She said while she didn’t know whether to call it discrimination, “there is certainly disparity between men and women” in leadership roles in finance. Christine believes the efforts to narrow the gap just aren’t going far enough.
And that’s what has bothered me for a long time. That we have all this rhetoric - women’s groups, mandates for board seats, endless conferences celebrating the same 50 faces that made it to the top and how they did it, and the constant refrain about the lack of a “pipeline.” But dig a little deeper, beyond celebrating powerful women - and the solutions for removing the bottlenecks and creating a healthy pipeline are still as archaic as in the 1970s.
Let’s look at just Christine’s world for a second: Only one of the 31 central bank governors appointed across the world last year, was a woman (Vietnam’s the only one that broke the norm). In 2020, 1/5th of central banks had no women in senior positions, but 15% of all central banks reserved seats for women on their boards or their monetary policy board. And 54% implemented a “gender diversity programme.” The lack of impact is glaring, isn’t it?
Christine didn’t say anything we all don’t know. She just highlighted what we do.
“When I sit at my Governing Council table and I look around, I see 23 men and one woman in addition to me. If you look at the venture capital world, it’s the same. If you look at CEOs of large, international banks, it’s the same. If you look at parliament, you have a much lower representation of women than there are women in society. So something is not working.”
Perhaps the question we have to ask ourselves, and ask our employers, our investors and customers - Talking the talk is great, celebrating established powerful women is fantastic and inspirational for young women - But what about realistic steps to help women achieve career progression, raise funds and do what they need to do to ensure they are waiting in the wings, to have their time in the sun.
We can push for change in our organisations, but I believe the work really does start at home. Here are a few questions (some are harsh) that I’d like to think are good ones to ask ourselves, our colleagues, and our employers to ensure women’s leadership now, and in the future is more than a hashtag. That it goes beyond the great marketing schpeel that is “women’s empowerment”.
Are we reaching out for mentorship, or offering it to the women we think need it? Or are we calculating just cost/benefits for ourself?
Are we creating the environment where we aren’t punitive or judgemental about women’s multifaceted roles - be it as a carer, parent and career woman?
Are we looking hard enough, and thinking of every contact we know when we claim “I can’t find a qualified woman” for a role? Are we then generously suggesting those names, without expectation of a returned favour?
Are we sabotaging women by simply check boxing with a gender, when we do fill mandated diversity positions? Are we pushing them into roles that don’t suit their skills? Are we filling quotas with titles and roles that cannot have impact?
Are we truly diverse in our contacts, and appreciative of cultural differences or are we fooling ourselves that we are?
Are we really pushing the boundaries of our perceptions - be it for investing in founders or hiring that next employee?
I’d like to hope we all can do a little self-reflection and maybe, just maybe - the needle starts moving a little with each of us.
Must Watch
"The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations” with European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde. She talks about the EU's recovery from Covid-19, Bitcoin, Brexit, getting back to the office and discrimination against women. Recorded Sept. 13
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Have you met
Sima Sami Bahous. The new Executive Director of UN Women was appointed this week to succeed Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.
Here’s a little more about the woman who has 35 years of experience in championing women and girls, gender equality and youth empowerment. She is also a vocal advocate for quality education, poverty alleviation and inclusive governance.
Hailing from Jordan, Sima was most recently the Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations. She’s also served as Assistant Administrator and Director of the Regional Bureau for Arab States at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), from 2012 to 2016, and Assistant Secretary‑General and Head of the Social Development Sector at the League of Arab States, from 2008 to 2012. Sima’s been in two ministerial posts in Jordan as President of the Higher Media Council, from 2005 to 2008, and as Adviser to King Abdullah II from 2003 to 2005.
Tech stuff
Iceland’s largest VC is women led
Based out of Reykjavik and Copenhagen Crowberry Capital and has launched Crowberry II: a $90 million seed and early-stage fund aimed at startups in the Nordic region. A second close of an additional $40 million is planned for July 2022.
If you’ve got a game changing, truly disruptive idea, the fund’s three women founders are ready to hear from you. Hekla Arnardottir, Helga Valfells and Jenny Ruth Hrafnsdottir and their team may not back you just because you’re a woman - but you’ll be sure that your pitch is going to be judged for its merit, and not dismissed.
“An incorrect assumption is that because we are women, we are only interested in supporting female founders. As our investment record shows, we support companies because they are game changers, irrespective of the gender of their senior team members. However, we also benefit, as an all-female team, from a circumspection which means that we can see potential in businesses and sectors which are typically overlooked by others in our space.” - Hekla Arnardottir
Crowberry II’s Lead LP is the European Investment Fund. The EIF has contributed $23.6 million (€20 million) from the EU’s “InnovFin Equity” program making this the program’s first VC fund in Iceland. Other investors include Icelandic Pension funds, family offices and angel investors, including David Helgason, founder of Unity Technologies.
Crowberry’s previous fund (Crowberry I - $40 million fund launched in 2017), invested in startups in gaming, SaaS, health tech and fintech. It featured 15 companies - 33% of whom had female CEOs.
Femtech’s hot now
Carolyn Witte’s story sounds eerily close to mine. And she’s done something about it. It took Carolyn three years to be diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome or PCOS (my diagnosis took a tad longer), and even then she had to do a lot of the research herself (as did I). Her answer to the problem of putting women at the centre of healthcare? 4 year old start up Tia, which Carolyn cofounded with her best friend Felicity Yost.
Tia, combines in-person and virtual care for women. The New York-based company announced a $100 million Series B this week led by Lone Pine Capital. Existing investors including Threshold, Define Ventures and Torch Capital, among others, participated in the round, which values Tia at $600 million, according to a person familiar with the deal. Tia has raised $132 million to date.
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Policy matters
Conservative Somalia’s rare woman Presidential candidate
She is soft-spoken, a widow and mother of three. Parliament member Fawzia Yusuf H. Adam made headlines and broke barriers as the first female foreign minister and deputy prime minister in culturally conservative Somalia. Fawzia is now aiming for the country's top office as the Horn of Africa nation moves toward a long-delayed presidential election.
Her bid as a Presidential candidate is being met with skepticism in Somalia where women often remain marginalised. Complicating the matter further is where she hails from. Fawzia is from the breakaway region of Somaliland, a comparatively stable area in the north of the country that has sought international recognition as an independent nation for years.
State of the Union
It was on a different note to her inaugural speech (unsurprisingly) for Ursula von der Leyen. The European Commission President’s original plans having been pretty much derailed by Covid.
In 2021, her State of the Union speech focused on what to do next about Afghanistan, the controversial EU Defence forces, and justifying the heavily criticised vaccination roll outs across Europe. There was no mention of the U.K. or Brexit, but Ursula did talk China and caution around it. But frankly there was nothing in the speech to get too excited about. Ursula seemed eager to not announce anything that could get her, or the European Commission embroiled in the upcoming German Elections.
Her speech was so predictable that the most exciting story from the State of the Union was that two European commissioners, Margrethe Vestager from Denmark and Ylva Johansson from Sweden, brought some knitting to do as they listened (they both tend to do that in meetings anyway).
Caught my eye
Magdalena Mission
In the Philippines, the army’s operation ‘Magdalena Mission’ has armed beauty queens, actors and female media stars with more than photo shoots, ballgowns, a queen-like wave, sashes and talking points about world peace. Recruited by the Philippine army’s anti-communist task force – officially known as the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (no-one seems to have suggested a shorter name to the army) - these celebrities are using their social media clout as literal weapons to lure young ladies away from the temptations of armed communist revolution.
Becoming a beauty queen is an aspiration for millions of young girls in a country that has produced the second most number in the world. Using them as weapons against the world’s longest running communist insurgency makes sense. Government forces have been battling the Communist Party of the Philippines and its paramilitary branch, the New People’s Army, since the 1970s.
But critics believe Magdalena is sinister. The anti-communist task force is notorious for human rights violations and fake news. According to Philippine media reports, localities that received the most financing from the task force also had the highest number of extrajudicial executions and illegal arrests.
Scientific discrepancy
Shocker! Women’s share of international prizes rewarding research excellence is increasing, but still lags behind the proportion of professorial positions held by women, according to Lokman Meho, an information scientist at American University of Beirut.
His findings published in ‘Quantitative Science Studies’ examined whether gains in professorships for women have translated into awards honouring their work. The analysis of 141 highly prestigious international science prizes awarded over the past two decades included the Nobel prizes, the Fields Medal for mathematics and the Robert Koch Award for biomedical sciences. These were awarded to 2,011 men and only 262 women between 2001 and 2020. Ironically since 2001, 16% or 22 of the 141 available awards have never even recognised distinguished women. That includes two awards included in the analysis that are named after women! The cheek!
Gotham’s new Jewish superhero
Meet Whistle. She’s 16, Jewish and she is Gotham’s newest superhero. DC Comics has in the past alluded to Bat Woman’s observance of Hanukkah and had super-villain Harley Quinn portray a controversial version of Jewishness. “Whistle,” a new graphic novel by author E. Lockhart begins with a deep connection to the previously untapped Yiddishness of Batman’s Gotham. She even gets her superpowers - a heightened sense of smell and hearing and the ability to speak to dogs - outside a synagogue.
Afghan Women: Keeping tabs
To ensure we never lose interest and sight of the plight of Afghan women, or simply move on to the next outrageous headline - I’ll be doing my bit by reserving a space for weekly updates here on the CB.
Since the takeover on August 15, the Taliban has killed a woman for not covering her head, beaten up women in public for carrying out protests against them, and segregated female students from their male classmates in Kabul university. In this week’s news:
1. Taliban replaces ministry for women with ‘guidance’ ministry
So it begins: In Kabul, a new sign was up outside the Women’s Affairs Ministry, announcing it was now the ‘Ministry for Preaching and Guidance and the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice’.
2. Girls banned from secondary school
The Taliban have excluded girls from Afghan secondary schools, with only boys and male teachers allowed back into classrooms. Taliban officials say they are working to reach a decision on the matter.
3. #DoNotTouchMyClothes
Afghan women are taking to social media to share pictures of ornate traditional clothes in an online campaign against restrictions being brought in by the new Taliban authorities. The hashtags #DoNotTouchMyClothes and #AfghanistanCulture have gone viral. There’s fight left in these women - so support them!
4. Daring rescue
Israeli aid workers and the United Arab Emirates have completed a daring rescue mission that saw dozens of sportswomen, female rights activists and a singer at risk of Taliban reprisals spirited to safety in Abu Dhabi. Some 40 at-risk Afghans were evacuated from Kabul by bus in a nail-biting evacuation that involved passing numerous Taliban checkpoints
Must Listen
If you haven’t already, you must tune into season 2 of Alannah Weston, Chairman of Selfridges Group’s PODCAST “How to Lead a Sustainable Business”. In the series Alannah, speaks to inspiring leaders at the forefront of sustainability and business to find out what it takes to lead change and how businesses can put sustainability at their core.
This week’s Podcast features Dame Vivian Hunt, senior partner at the global management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company. She served as managing partner of McKinsey’s UK and Ireland offices from 2013-2020 and is a thought leader on productivity, leadership and diversity. Vivian is one of my personal heroes. She inspires me every time she opens her mouth! The woman literally drops wisdom in every word she speaks.
In the podcast she speaks to Alannah about the importance of businesses being open to innovation, stakeholder capitalism and the value of a diverse workforce.
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