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Australia's
Julia Gillard
Finland's
Mari Kiviniemi
Trinidad and
Tobago's Kamla Persad-Bissessar
United Nations
Summit
President Irene Natividad and former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet
SEC's
Mary Schapiro
FDIC's Sheila
Bair
TARP Chair
Elizabeth Warren
Women Should
be Able to Work Outside the Home
(From Pew
Research Center)
CalPERS Anne
Simpson
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I.
MEET THREE NEW WOMEN PRIME MINISTERS
Australia in the Asia Pacific region, Finland in Europe and Trinidad and
Tobago in the Caribbean Islands all now have women at the helm running
these countries. There are currently 9 women presidents and 6 women
Prime Ministers among the 191-member nations of the United Nations.
Finland is the only country with a woman President and a woman Prime
Minister. (See www.globewomen.com for
complete listings)
Julia
Gillard is the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of Australia, who
also heads up a major political party in her country.
A career politician, she served as Deputy Prime Minister prior to this
appointment as well as Minister with three distinct portfolios –
Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and Social Inclusion.
First elected to Parliament in 1998, Ms. Gillard is a lawyer by profession
and is a native of Wales, making her the first foreign-born Prime Minister
of Australia. She came to politics through the Labour Party, and she
served for some time as a Shadow Minister and Leader of the Opposition.
A parliamentarian for 15 years, Finland’s new Prime Minister,
Mari Kiviniemi,
served previously as Minister for Local Government and
Administration for three years. A career politician like her
Australian counterpart, she had held the portfolio of Minister of Foreign
Trade and Development. First elected to Parliament in 1995, Ms.
Kiviniemi’s political skills were honed through various leadership roles in
the Student Union early in her career.
Known as a groundbreaker throughout
her political life, Trinidad
and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar is also
a lawyer by training, who graduated at the top of her law school
class. A former member of the Senate, Ms. Persad-Bissessar served as
her country’s Attorney General from 1995-2000, then as Minister of
Education in 2001. In 2010, she won election as Leader of the United
National Congress, beating the founder of the party who was her former
mentor. She then won as Prime Minister when the incumbent PM Patrick
Manning called snap elections. ustralia in the Asia Pacific region,
Finland in Europe and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean Islands all now have
women at the helm running these countries.
There are currently 9 women presidents and 6 women Prime Ministers
among the 191-member nations of the United Nations. Finland is the only country with a woman
President and a woman Prime Minister.
(See www.globewomen.com
for complete listings)
II. UNITED
NATIONS LAUNCHES NEW SUPERAGENCY FOR
WOMEN
After four years of discussion, the United Nations General
Assembly approved unanimously on July 2, 2010 the creation of a new
umbrella organization for women. The United Nations
Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment for Women (UNEGEEW) pulls
together four small, fragmented agencies that worked on women’s issues,
often resulting in some duplication. By fusing the disparate agencies
together, member nations hope that the new entity will have more clout in
addressing the challenges that women face worldwide.
UN Women, as this unit is often called, will
oversee projects around the world, lobby for better laws for women, as well
as ensure that other UN agencies promote women’s equality. The head
of UN Women will be a senior official and will have the rank of
Undersecretary General. There is a search for an international ‘star’
from a developing economy to serve as the first leader of the agency.
The favorite candidate to date is Chile’s former President Michelle
Bachelet.. (Source: International Herald Tribune, 7/4/2010)
III. CLEANING
UP AMERICAN BANKING AND FINANCE POST—
CRISIS: THE THREE U.S. WOMEN IN CHARGE
Many have commented that the
financial wreckage that continues to afflict the world’s economies was
caused primarily by men, since so few women hold senior positions in the
banks that precipitated the global recession. A regulatory mood has
swept the U.S. and Europe in the wake of this financial crisis. In the
United States, it is noteworthy that the three top government officials
charged with crafting new laws and procedures that will protect investors
and consumers in the future are women.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is
chaired by Mary
Shapiro, the first woman to hold this post, who cast the
deciding vote for the agency’s suit against Goldman Sachs. Three of
the five SEC Commissioners are currently women. The Chair of the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is Sheila Bair, who
first signaled the impending collapse that some banks were facing three
years ago, for which she was much criticized. Her warnings proved to
be true, and FDIC has had to take over 68 U.S. banks so far. Lastly,
the Chair of the panel overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
is Elizabeth Warren,
the chief advocate for new consumer finance regulations that bank lobbyists
have spent millions to oppose. All three have reputations for being
strong enforcers, smart and possess a clear sense of mission about their
assignments. (Source: Time magazine, 5/24/2010).
IV.
WHAT THE WORLD THINKS OF WOMEN AND EQUAL
RIGHTS
A survey of men
and women in 22 countries conducted by Pew Research Center and the
International Herald Tribune shows a
‘reality gap’ between strong belief in women’s equal rights expressed by
the majority of developed and developing economies and the actuality of
translating that belief into action.
- In France, 100% of women and 99% of men support the idea of
equality for women, but 75%
also state that men lead better lives – the highest
percentage among the countries surveyed.. Why? “There are
still very few women running large organizations, and business culture
remains resolutely a boys’ club,” according to Prof. Herminia Ibarra
of INSEAD, an international business school.
- More men than women believe that changes necessary
to provide for women’s equality are already in place. This is the opinion of American, German,
Chinese, Indian, Indonesian and Jordanian men. “When you’re left
out of the club, you know it,” states Prof. Jacqui True, a gender
relations expert at the Univ. of Auckland. “When you’re in the
club, you don’t see what the problem is.”
- In only a few countries do men and women feel
equality has been achieved fully. In Mexico (56%), Indonesia (55%) and Russia
(52%), the majority of those surveyed say that women and men have
reached a comparable quality of life. Prof. True suggests that
“There is a lower consciousness of the gender differences there because
men have always dominated.”
- In 10 of 22 countries surveyed, more than 50% said
that when jobs are scarce, they should go to men. This opinion was widely held in India,
Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia and China. (Source:
International Herald Tribune, 7/1/2010)
V.
CHANGING THE FACE IN U.S. CORPORATE BOARDS:
CalPERS’ 3D – ‘DIVERSE DIRECTOR DATABASE’
With
a portfolio that includes $1.9 billion invested in ExxonMobil, $1.16
billion in General Electric, and $1.1 billion in Bank of America, the
California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) – the largest US
pension fund with assets of $200 billion – has a powerful ‘shareholder’
voice. The fund
recently announced that it is recruiting executives to nominate for board
seats in poorly performing companies in which it holds shares.
The CalPERS initiative, called 3-D, anticipates new proxy access rules to
be announced by the US Securities and Exchange Commission that will give
shareholders direct access to other shareholders by using a company’s own
communications system. SEC’s intent is to keep boards more
accountable to shareholders – a goal shared by hedge funds, pension funds
and unions.
Prior to the 3-D initiative,
CalPERS commissioned a report which found that companies that have diverse
boards perform better than those with similar director profiles in terms of
ethnicity, gender and skill sets. “On most boards,
everybody looks the same and thinks the same,” states Anne Simpson,
CalPERS’ Chief of Corporate Governance. She adds that all of the
pension fund’s potential nominees must have expertise in management,
finance and industry knowledge but may also come from “historically
underrepresented groups, including women and minorities.”
(Source: Wall Street Journal, 6/28/2010).
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