Bet on women’s leadership

RANDI DAVIS

THIS YEAR, International Women’s Day shines the spotlight on women’s leadership and the need for gender equality in a post-covid19 world. Surely the pace of reform is too slow, and we know that the covid19 pandemic is threatening to push us back into the kitchen and even further away from the boardroom.

Even before the pandemic, women’s leadership statistics around the world were at best “disappointing.” Despite being 25 years out from the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action, women still only account for 25 per cent of the world’s parliamentarians and less than seven per cent of the world’s heads of state.

When it comes to access to economic decision-making and financial power – in other words the stuff that really counts – the sad reality is that women comprise a miniscule number of the top brass in the corporate world (only seven per cent of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women). Their earning potential remains well below that of their male colleagues with a gender pay gap averaging 20 per cent. Juxtapose this against women’s education: In nearly all regions, women make up a higher level of tertiary graduates, and despite this trend continue to lag men when it comes to leadership in nearly all professions.

Now covid19 threatens to reverse years of progress for gender equality and women’s leadership. Women who carried a disproportionate share of unpaid care work in the home (estimated at three times as much as men) are now also having to manage household hygiene, homeschool their children, while also sustaining their livelihoods. This, in a context where they account for more than 54 per cent of overall job losses while accounting for only 39 per cent of formal global employment.

And everywhere in the world more and more women experience violence – in their homes, on the streets and in the workplace. The covid19 pandemic has only intensified this shadow pandemic of violence against women – in every region and cultural context (it is estimated there are at least 15 million cases of GBV for every month of lockdown).

Staying safe while feeding and educating their families in the wake of the pandemic is no small challenge that requires a host of skills that we will need as we manage through and beyond the covid19 crises. While right now women do not have the time to put towards professional or political advancement, I would argue that betting on women’s leadership is the best way for us to leapfrog our nations out of this pandemic and towards a path for a better tomorrow, and this requires concrete policies and action to get us there.

Pre-pandemic, the World Economic Forum argued that closing the gender gap in economic participation by 25 per cent by 2025 could increase the global GDP by US$5.3 trillion. I imagine now this figure is likely greater. We now know that companies with more gender-balanced boards and stronger female leadership on average report higher returns on equity, sales and invested capital. Look no further than New Zealand, Taiwan, Germany, Norway, and some of the small island states led by women such as Barbados, Aruba and Sint Maarten, to see how adept women political leaders are managing through crises. In fact, a recent article by the Harvard Business Review showed that confirmed deaths in the first half year of 2020 from covid19 were six times lower in countries led by women.

The world is also counting on a group of outstanding women to steer our global economic recovery, with Janet Yellen heading the US Treasury; Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund; Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, recently appointed to lead the World Trade Organization.

Imagine how much better off we would be if we had equal participation of women in all leadership positions and across all sectors and an equal sharing of the burden of care in the household. This would mean more women in non-traditional sectors such as policing, engineering, in executive management in the public service and private companies and as business owners and investors. More women in decision making effecting choices over health, education, wealth, social protection, foreign and defence policy.

Realising this dream will require a whole of society approach from governments to private companies and individual people. It will require rapid changes in discriminatory laws and practices that deny women’s basic equal rights covering the gamut from decisions concerning their own body to those effecting their economic rights.

It would also mean policies that reduce the care burden on women, eliminate discrimination in tax and fiscal policy, and a radical increase in investments to ensure services to enable women to realise the right to feel safe in their home, on public transport, in public spaces and in the workplace.

Here in Latin America and the Caribbean, where 39 per cent of households are headed by a woman and 26 per cent are single-parent households headed by women, policies that enable women to safely re-enter the workforce are also the vital antidotes to preventing families from sliding back into poverty while safeguarding economic recovery.

The Beijing Platform for Action continues to provide the blueprint for what needs to be done. Twenty-five years later, as the world contemplates its way out of the dire situation covid19 has put us in, we should finally put the resources down to close gender gaps. Let us look no further than to the women who have shown incredible resilience and skill in managing households while standing at the frontline of the pandemic. Let us hope they are not left behind when some level of normalcy returns, and our economies start roaring.

Randi Davis is the UNDP’s Resident Representative for TT, Curacao, Aruba, and Sint Maarten. She was director of UNDP’s Global Work on Gender Equality prior to joining UNDP in TT. Follow her on Twitter at @RandiDavisUNDP