Time for a Balanced Debate About the Future - Building Gender Balanced Business

The Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society had its fifth conference in Deauville, France, this October. Publicis, which now has a stake in the company, was involved too. The themes covered were huge ones relating to the urgent need to create a new world order – a more humane, more equal, and more environmentally sustainable global economy. It was striking how these themes were not politically correct add-ons to the relentless drive for capitalist growth and profits usually discussed at such conferences. The women who debated these issues believe that it is imperative to find new ways to promote capitalist growth and that this is central to any discussion about recovery and renewal.

It was striking that this kind of approach – which is of such critical importance today as the window of opportunity for change begins to narrow – is so lacking elsewhere. As Avivah Wittenberg-Cox states in her blog this month, it is time to bring women’s opinions squarely into the mainstream discussions. We will be watching to see what happens at Davos next year. Last January, as we reported, there were few women delegates there (Where are the Women?). The Deauville forum made it blindingly obvious that there are 1000s of women out there in positions of great responsibility in corporations, NGOs, private enterprises and so on. The dynamism, energy, brainpower, and sheer talent is overwhelming. Many of the women I met seemed far better equipped to manage and motivate teams virtually, to seize new opportunities offered by technology and the wireless world, than many men I have met over the years at similar conferences.

Isla Ramos Chaves, director of strategy & business organisation optimization (EMEA) at the PC company Lenovo, for example, manages a team of over one hundred people virtually. Odile Desforges, the first woman to make it to the executive committee at Renault, the French car company, was also at the conference. Unusually for many women, Desforges gained production experience on her way up specialising in engineering and quality. Daphne Mashile-Nkosi, a former ANC activist who had been imprisoned during the days of apartheid, is the first South African Black woman to found and run a mining company. She created a manganese operation, Kalagadi Mining, in spite of banks’ refusals to back her and in spite of the fact that no one believed a woman could do it. Now, Arcelor-Mittal has a 50% stake in the company while 68% of Mashile-Nkosi’s share of the company is owned by women. These are just some of the women who attended this event. So, the organisers of Davos and other similar summits cannot credibly claim that the “women aren’t out there” to fill their conference halls and inform their debates.