POWER LADY: Managing Director Fonterra Nutrition, Sarah Kennedy.
It's a national holiday in dozens of countries, including Afghanistan, Armenia and Belarus, in honour of International Women's Day. However in China, Madagascar and Nepal, the holiday is only for women.
That's how Sarah Kennedy, the managing director of Fonterra Nutrition and Global Women board member, started her speech at a breakfast gathering organised by Westpac to celebrate the day.
Here's an excerpt of that speech on the theme for "International Women's Day: 2013, which is The Gender Agenda, Gaining Momentum. "
I want to raise some questions about the momentum, we think we have at the moment, and leave you with a call for action, how all of us individually or collectively can make a difference.
Firstly, let's celebrate, where in New Zealand we have come from.
As I am sure, all of you know, the much heralded fact, New Zealand was the first country in the world in modern times, to give the women the vote with the passing of the Electoral Bill in 1893.
This information was in fact hard wired in me, as coming from a family of four girls. My mother at election times used to pin newspaper articles about women suffragettes around the house and proclaim loudly to four indolent adolescents that women had both risked and given their lives for our right to vote.
I suppose this must have sunk in, or the threat of no food, as we all managed to vote each year. Not always to my mother's choice I may add.
Over the next 100 years New Zealand continued to clock up many firsts for women, ranging from the first women mayor (of Onehunga), to women in Parliament, to women Prime ministers, cumulating in 2001 being the first country in the world to have its five highest positions of power, all occupied by women at the same time.
That being:
- the Chief Justice, Sian Elias
- the Governor General, Dame Sylvia Cartwright
- the then Prime minister, Helen Clark
- the leader of the Opposition, Dame Jenny Shipley
- and Margaret Wilson as Attorney General
A fabulous way you could say to enter into the 21st century and one that people say we have let slip.
However, I think even, without these much publicised first's we have made progress.
New Zealand is known to be fair, and just society, the fundamentals for equal right are all in place: democracy, the rule of law and an independent judiciary free of corruption.
However going back to this year's theme, I would ask you - are we gaining momentum?
We know that the gender pay gap has stubbornly sat around 12 per cent for the last decade. That is you earn on average 88 per cent of your male counterpart, even though 75 per cent of young women leave school with at least NCEA level 2 compared to 66 per cent of young men, and over 55 per cent of students enrolled in tertiary education are women.
You might say "Oh but that is not me, my company uses non biased, international grading systems."
But be aware, the Department of Labour's Pay and Employment Equity Unit - aptly shortened to PEEU - did a pay and employment equity review in the Public Sector from 2005 to 2009.
All reviews except one found gender pay gaps, which varied from 3 per cent to 35 per cent. The work of PEEU was discontinued in 2009.
Go figure. Is this gaining momentum?
Many of you would have heard, or read about the extensive research from Catalyst, McKinsey and many others that showed there is a suggested positive correlation between the financial bottom line, measured in ROS, ROIC and ROE ie: profitability and the proportion of women their Boards and senior management.
The research companies do not argue a direct link, as there are so many causal factors, but more logically state these data points indicate that an organisation, showing this correlation is fishing from a larger pool of talent? - accessing a deeper knowledge bank and leveraging these resources throughout the business value chain.
So why in New Zealand do we still have less than 10 per cent of women on NSX boards and only just over 30 per cent of women holding senior management positions??
Which still makes me ask - are we gaining momentum?
So with a growing shortage of talent in New Zealand, [which is] also a country needing to lift its GDP through productivity and [with] research showing the positive linkage to diversity, isn't it about not "doing the right thing, but the bright thing".
So what can we do, to bring to life the International Women's Day theme?
I want to challenge each of you, to think about one thing you can do this year, to continue to drive this change.
This could be:
- mentoring a colleague at work
- encouraging young adults at school or University
- forming a women's network - formal or informal, for example Global women
- speaking out about bias in the work place or else where
Please think about our challenge, it is only each and every one of us who will continue to move us forward on this journey with momentum.
I will leave you with a quote from Louise Otto-Peters - a woman of our times but born in 1819, a journalist, poet, writer and feminist, acknowledged as a founder of the German women's movement.
"The history of all time and of today especially, teaches that women will be forgotten, if they forget to think about themselves"
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/8400572/Celebrating-International-Womans-Day
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