Women's Economic Empowerment, Gender Equality, Women in Politics, Indigenous Women and Children

MBA Careers: Oxford Saïd Business School Joins Call For Financial Inclusion For Women  Oxford Saïd Business School threw its weight behind gender equality in business last week. The leading MBA provider is campaigning to make financial inclusion for women a global imperative.

Professor Peter Tufano, Dean of Saïd Business School, signing the petition last week

Oxford Saïd Business School became the latest MBA provider to call for financial inclusion for women last week.

Professor Peter Tufano, Dean of Saïd Business School, and Professor Andrew Hamilton, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, were among the first signatories to a petition to world leaders to make financial inclusion for women a global imperative, and to include it in the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals.

The petition was launched at Power Shift: The Oxford Forum on Women in the World Economy, at Saïd Business School. The launch was live-streamed on the Knowledge Gateway for Women’s Economic Empowerment, and the petition was signed by the conference participants – a range of leading academics, investors, financial institutions, advisers and entrepreneurs.

The petition says: “We, the undersigned, call on the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, in the articulation of the Post-2015 Development Framework, to emphasise women's economic empowerment, particularly with regard to increasing women’s access to financial services, improving their financial capability, and increasing their access to skilled jobs including leadership positions in the financial sector.”

The full petition will be delivered in person to the UN in New York on 9 June 2014.

Khan said Clinton was chosen as WWFI’s honoree for her “incredible work” in championing women’s rights and “empowering women to build and transform societies.”  Sandberg, according to Khan, has been “a very strong … and an engaged supporter for years.”

Sandberg, who is on the board of The Walt Disney Co., ABC’s parent company, presented Clinton with the “Champion of Peace Award.” Matching the evening’s theme of Stronger Women, Stronger Nations, Clinton emphasized the impact of advancing the rights of women and girls around the world.

“You cannot have real peace and security if you marginalize and exclude women,” said Clinton. “You cannot have decent, just societies if you abuse women. You cannot move on a path to democracy and open economies if you isolate and marginalize half the population. For some that was self-evident, others have had their eyes opened over the past 20 years.”

WfWI’s  message to help women help themselves and their communities dovetails with Sandberg’s own nonprofit movement, “LeanIn.org,” which promotes women and girl in leadership. Sandberg talked about starting her career in development at the World Bank, where there was an old saying, “When you give money to men, they spend it on whiskey and themselves…when you give to women, they spend it on their children.”

She said, “If women and girls everywhere were treated as equal to men in rights, dignity and opportunity, we would see political and economic progress everywhere.”

In an interview with ABC News last March, Sandberg expressed her hope that Hillary Clinton would run for the highest office in U.S. government again.  In that interview Sandberg said she hoped her 4-year old daughter would one day not ask her why all the past U.S. presidents are male.

Read More: Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Says Women Must Learn to “Lean In”

“I believe if we had half our companies and half our countries run by women, and half our homes run by men, things would be better,” she said. “We know our companies would be more productive. If you use the full talents of the population, you’re more productive. We know our homes would be happier.”

Clinton reaffirmed the benefits of empowering women.  “By helping women in some of the most dire circumstances…you are not only helping them, you’re helping communities and countries – helping make our world more prosperous, more peaceful.” Supporting women and girls is not just a “nice thing to do, it supports global economies,” she concluded.

According to Khan, WfWI focuses on recruiting women on the community level by identifying the most vulnerable households.  “Women who enroll in our one-year program learn job skills and receive business training so they can earn a living. They come to understand their rights and how to fight for those rights in their homes, their communities and their nations. They learn how to become leaders,” said Khan.

The National Council of Jewish Women North Shore Section held a panel event, “Leading the Way: Jewish Women’s Voices in Politics,” on May 7 at Glencoe North Shore Congregation Israel.

The driving point of the discussion was ways to empower Jewish women to become better policy advocates and to consider running for elected office.

Planning committee members included Diane Moore, Cynthia Plouche, Alison Bloom, Karen Dillon, Barbara Slutsky, Carol Spielman and Dana Gordon, all of Highland Park; Rachel Ferber and Ronna Ash, both of Glencoe; Barbara Novick of Morton Grove and Donna Fishman of Northbrook.

Speakers included Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering, Amy Zisook, Marjie Sandlow, all of Highland Park, Marilyn Glazer and Shelley Sutker-Dermer, both of Skokie and Rebecca Sive of Chicago

Stories related to women and girls globally generally tend to get so little mainstream coverage in the media that it's too easy to remain blissfully unaware of their status.

March 8, International Women's Day, lets the world stop and consider women's condition past and present -- both to celebrate the economic, political and social strides women have certainly made globally, but also to remind us of the enormous inequities that remain to be addressed.

Around the world, girls and women continue to lack economic opportunity and adequate health care and education. They are pushed into early marriage and suffer sexual violence and many forms of oppression and discrimination.

The global community is increasingly aware that educating girls and women helps the whole of humanity, with women's empowerment linked to the alleviation of a host of serious problems facing the world such as poverty, war and the environment. As Hillary Clinton said at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, "human rights are women's rights ... and women's rights are human rights."

Women -- and men -- must come together and take a strong stand for our own rights and those of our global sisters. (To get informed and involved, you can visit this list where we feature some of the amazing organizations working on behalf of women's global causes.)

At Philanthropy New York‘s 35th annual meeting at the Ford Foundation in New York, the crowd waited eagerly to hear Hillary Rodham Clinton speak with Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts on the topic of full participation in society for women and girls around the world.

It’s a topic that’s long been on Clinton’s short-list of priorities, and her appearance yesterday functioned in part to boost awareness of the Clinton Foundation’s No Ceilings initiative, launched to revisit promises made at the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, address where progress has been made, and where gaps still must be addressed.

During the hour-long conversation with Roberts, Clinton touched on pressing issues for women, such as the recent kidnapping of nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram, a situation she called “a perfect storm of all the issues concerning those of us who follow women and girls around the world.”

She discussed African villages that hum with women at work that goes unmeasured by economists and the “vestigial remnants of a prior era” and “unwelcoming atmosphere” that still stymies women looking to enter STEM and other male-dominated fields.

Although women still lag by a lot in their representation in the top managerial positions, they have greatly narrowed the gap between their full time earnings and that of men. Wives earn more than their husbands in perhaps 30% of all American families with two earners,  and that percentage continues to grow.

American women are starting new businesses at a much faster rate than they did in the past, and the number of female heads of large companies, although small in number, has been growing.

Although the United States has instituted various policies to help working women, unlike Sweden and other Scandinavian countries it does not provide extensive public subsidies to childcare, does not have a system of legislated paid leaves to women that allow them to care for newborn children, and does not guarantee that they can get their jobs back when they return to work.

Yet, contrary to many claims, I believe that the less interventionist American approach may not have impeded, and may even have encouraged, women’s’ progress in the labor force....

Released January 12th, 2014

A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink will examine the rates of financial insecurity among American women and the children who depend on them, investigate the impact of it on our nation’s institutions and economic future, and promote modern solutions to help women strengthen their financial status.

Don't miss the 2014 women's conference that can propel you to get everything you want in work and life!

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Program Sessions Include:[CAREER] Reimagining the Career Journey to Success[LEADERSHIP] Fireside Chats with Sallie Krawcheck and Marlo Thomas[LEADERSHIP] Where Are the Women? A Look at Industries: Sports, Finance, Tech, Media & Beyond[MOTHERHOOD]

The New Vocabulary: Fulfillment & Integration Over “Having It All”[ENTREPRENEURSHIP] Women Business Owners: How to Go from Start to Scale?[SOCIAL GOOD] Invest in Girls. Change the World[PERSONAL FINANCE] Women & Wealth: Managing Money, Making Meaning

Worldwide Guide to Women in Leadership

CURRENT WOMAN LEADERS

Also see Chronological List of Female Presidents,
Woman Heads of State and Government
and Woman Premier Ministers

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The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) taught us that clear goals and coordinated, committed leadership can go a long way in driving human progress. They also solidified the notion of interconnectedness—that human issues should not be considered or addressed in isolation from one another. We’ve rediscovered that truth in the cross-cutting benefits of women’s empowerment in the developing world. When women are more empowered, economies improve, education levels rise -- and hunger, undernutrition, and poverty decline.

But women’s empowerment isn’t as easy to capture as specific statistics such as how many children attend primary school or how many households have access to clean water. How will we know which “empowerment” strategies are succeeding so that we can scale them up? In an effort to capture holistically how women fare from one country to another, women’s empowerment indices—composed of dozens of indicators—have been devised by the UN Development Programme and the World Economic Forum.

The United Nations Statistical Division recently released a minimum set of indicators needed to get an accurate picture of starting points and progress. This “minimum” list has 52 indicators in five categories.

The U.N. “statistics people” also took the next step: considering how much data is available on a sampling of these indicators. The findings show that we still have a long way to go toward reliable, consistent data on women’s empowerment.

Ali Velshi got to know Maya Angelou personally during the financial crisis. She told him she watched him on TV and felt his explanations of the crisis helped her understand it and feel safer. This led her to bring Ali on her radio show several times to discuss money.

He remembers accepting an invitation to a garden party at Angelou’s North Carolina home, the finest Southern party he ever attended. Personally greeting everyone, she made her guests, including Ali, feel like they were the only ones in the world. That was part of her power. Maya Angelou's early life was a struggle - she faced sexual abuse as a child, and racism as an adult. But she was a pioneer from the beginning.

At the age of 16, in awe of the uniforms and the caps and the little gizmos attached to their belts that gave change, Maya Angelou became San Francisco’s first woman streetcar conductor. She knew the best way to avoid the worst life had to offer was political and economic empowerment.

She understood financial literacy is a big part of empowerment. Talking about money with Maya Angelou, on her radio show, allowed Ali to reach a different audience and speak about finance in the most accessible way he’d ever known.

He remembers Angelou telling him, what he did mattered and helped people. She was about as removed from Ali’s world as anyone, yet she included herself in it, and she included Ali in hers.

ATLANTA -- A pair of special guests took the stage Wednesday at Coke’s annual meeting of shareowners to explore an issue very important to the company’s business and society at large: women’s economic empowerment.

Award-winning journalist Maria Shriver discussed the findings of the latest Shriver Report -- A Woman's Nation Pushes Back From the Brink -- which highlights the under-reported 42 million working women in the U.S. who are on the verge of poverty and the 28 million children who depend on them.  

During a conversation with Coca-ColaChairman and CEO Muhtar Kent, Shriver said empowering women in the U.S. -- many of whom are living paycheck to paycheck and juggling the roles of breadwinner, mom and caregiver to aging parents -- will require collaborative solutions from government, business and women themselves.

For example, women -- who make up half of the U.S. workforce and 70 percent of minimum wage earners -- must learn how to manage a budget and prioritize education over family planning.

“Women today are not working for what I call ‘fun’ money,” Shriver said. “They’re working for money that makes a life-or-death difference in their family homes. Educating and empowering them is good for your business."

Shriver said men -- who are sharing parenting and caregiving duties today more than ever -- are a critical part of the equation, too. She applauded Kent and Coke for taking steps to empower women both inside and outside the company’s walls.

“To empower women doesn’t mean to disempower men,” said Shriver, who has two sons and four brothers. “I’ve learned that what women need is what men need.”

Equality between women and men is enshrined in the EU Treaties and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as a fundamental principle of the European Union (EU). Ensuring gender equality is one of the EU's main objectives and tasks. It is also a necessary condition for the achievement of the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy – the EU’s growth strategy, which leans on knowledge, competences and innovation. Despite significant progress during the last decades thanks to regulatory pressure, gender inequalities persist in leadership positions and the pace of change is slow in many Member States. In response, the European Commission has reaffirmed its commitment to work to improve the situation by making gender equality in decision-making one of the five priority areas in both the Women’s Charter and

the Strategy for Equality between Women and Men (2010-2015).

Women are particularly outnumbered by men in leadership positions in the corporate sector and this has been the focus of intense public debate initiated by the European Commission at EU level and in a number of Member States. Indeed, the under- utilisation of the skills of highly qualified and experienced women constitutes a loss of economic growth potential. Research from various countries suggests that companies with a higher representation of women at the most senior levels deliver stronger organisational and financial performance as well as better corporate governance. Moreover, the lack of women in leadership positions means that female talent is being underused, human capital wasted and the quality of appointments to the highest positions may be compromised.

The election of a new European Parliament this month and the subsequent appointment of a new European leadership present an opportunity to improve gender representation in EU leadership positions. Europe could certainly benefit from a more diverse political elite. At one level, female representation in leadership positions may not appear to be that much of a problem in Europe. After all, Germany has a female chancellor, eight women now sit in the newest Italian cabinet, and nine female commissioners are at the helm of the European Commission. The first high representative for foreign and security policy is a woman. And female members constituted 35.8 percent of the European Parliament, higher than in any European member state.

However, only 29 percent of European companies have at least two women on their executive committees. And when looking at the institutions surrounding governments and public administration, such as think tanks and public policy institutes, there are no binding provisions for equal gender representation. Men still generally dominate public policy debates and discussions, particularly in the areas of foreign and security policy. In part, the problem lies with how policy topics are framed. It does not take a radical feminist theorist to tease out the gendered nature of the terms “hard power” and “soft power,” and the implicit hierarchy assumed between the two. Hard security and statecraft feature at the highest levels of think tank and policy events more frequently than a host of other “soft” topics such as public health, climate change, energy security, urban policy, international aid, cultural diplomacy, and education. It is no coincidence that these topics tend also to feature more female perspectives.