Issue No. LXXXVIII, September 26, 2011 THIS ISSUE’S HIGHLIGHTS: I.      WOMEN CEOs:  IMPACT ON WOMEN’S ACCESS TO BOARDS AND C-SUITES II.     NEW WOMEN LEADERS:  DENMARK’S NEW PRIME MINISTER AND HEWLETT-PACKARD’S NEW CEO III.    GENDER EQUALITY AND BUSINESS GROWTH IV.    WALMART – PROMOTING WOMEN’S ENTREPRENEURSHIP V.    PATERNITY LEAVE: THE SWEDISH EXPERIENCE

Percentage of Women Board Directors in Companies with Women CEOs Percentage of Women Executive Officers in Companies with Women CEOs   Denmark's First female Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt HP's new CEO - Meg Whitman   The just-released World Bank World Development Report 2012 on Gender Equality and Development       Wal-Mart's Daniela Di Fiori, Vice President for Coporate Responsibility and Sustainability in Brazil (center) at the 2009 Global Summit of Women in Chile       I.     WOMEN CEOs:  IMPACT ON WOMEN’S ACCESS TO BOARDS AND C-SUITES Does it make a difference if women are in charge?  The answer is a resounding ‘yes’.  A new report from Corporate Women Directors International (CWDI), which has been conducting research on women directors for 15 years globally, surveyed 113 women CEOs from among 39 economies and found that their influence has a positive impact on hiring and promoting other women. Companies with women CEOs have 22.3% women on their boards compared to 9.8% average representation on the boards of peer companies.  Women-led companies also have a higher percentage of women in senior management at 24.5%, while their counterpart companies are only at 12.2%.  This pattern holds no matter which country or size of company a woman leads.  “Whether it’s by intent or a natural consequence of their own experience in climbing to the top, women CEOs are clearly tapping the talents of women for senior roles,” states CWDI Chair Irene Natividad, who authored the report. The Top Ten list of women-led companies with the highest percentage of women directors and women in senior management has a Serbian food production company listed in the Belgrade Stock Exchange ranked first – Soja Protein with 6 out of 9 directors being female (66.7%) and 100% of senior executives being women (4 out of 4).   Six US companies (Avon, Xerox, Wellpoint, Pepsico, Kraft and Sara Lee) with women CEOs dominate the Top Ten, and they average 36% female directors compared to 15.7% average female board representation in the Fortune 500.  These companies’ female CEOs also had 28.4% women in their executive teams as opposed to the 17% average of women in senior management among the Fortune listing. “Given the value that women CEOs bring to accelerating access to boards and executive positions for women, it’s a shame that there are so few of them in every corner of the world,” adds Natividad.  For additional findings, log on to www.globewomen.org and click to CWDI.             _________________________________________________________________ II.     NEW WOMEN LEADERS:  DENMARK’S NEW PRIME MINISTER AND HEWLETT-PACKARD’S NEW CEO   Denmark has its first female Prime Minister in Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a Social Democrat who has had a career as a former member of the Danish Parliament and the European Parliament.   She broke the ten-year grip of the center-right Liberal Party and put the Social Democrats back in power after a decade in opposition.  Winning by a slim margin, Thorning-Schmidt will have to forge a coalition government, which may make it more difficult to implement her campaign promise of stimulating the economy through more social welfare spending.  (Source:  Copenhagen Post, 9/20/11).   Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman made news by being appointed chief executive of Hewlett-Packard.  The company’s board hopes that the former leader of e-commerce can turn around a computer maker plagued by slowing growth and management troubles.  Given Whitman’s previous stints in consumer-oriented companies such as eBay Inc. , Procter & Gamble and Hasbro, some analysts question whether she would be equipped to run HP’s business computing division, which comprises 75% of the company’s revenues. Whitman is credited for building eBay into the world’s largest Internet auctioneer with a market value of $40 billion.  She followed her eBay tenure with an unsuccessful run for Governor of California, in which she invested a considerable amount of her personal fortune.  (Source:  Bloomberg, 9/22/11).               _________________________________________________________________ III.    GENDER EQUALITY AND BUSINESS GROWTH As world leaders convened at the United Nations General Assembly last week, and world financial gurus met in Washington for the annual World Bank/IMF confab, a flagship report was released by the World Bank on September 12th which focused primarily on gender equality around the world.   The World Development Report 2012 makes the case that investing in women is an economically sound strategy.  Specifically, granting women and girls access to education, land rights, job opportunities, control over family planning – provides overall improvement in economic development globally for all.   This business case has been articulated before but never so forcefully by the world’s financial oversight institution.  World Bank SVP for development economics, Justin Yifu Lin, states:  “Blocking women and girls from getting the skills and earnings to succeed in a globalized world is not only wrong, but also economically harmful.  Sharing the fruits of growth and globalization equally between men and women is essential to meeting key development goals.”   The report outlines four areas of action:  addressing the gender gap in education, better maternal healthcare and sanitation to prevent high mortality rates among women and girls, closing the wage gap between women and men, and better legal protection for women and girls in the areas of discrimination, property ownership, and domestic violence.  These are issues long known by women’s rights activists, but having a policy framework echoed and supported by the World Bank can possibly lead to progress on those issues.  (Source:  www. Guardian.co.uk, 9/19/11).                _________________________________________________________________     IV.    WALMART – PROMOTING WOMEN’S ENTREPRENEURSHIP The world’s largest retailer announced on September 14th that it is committing billions of dollars over the next five years to ‘growing’ women entrepreneurs’ skills around the world and to support women-owned businesses.  It is working with nonprofits such as CARE International to provide training in job skills for low-income women in the U.S. and in overseas farms and factories that Wal-mart relies on for its merchandise.   Equally important, Wal-mart is committing $20 billion in the coming five years to source goods from American women-owned businesses.   It will also double the amount of goods purchased from women entrepreneurs globally.   “We have looked kind of systematically in the places our business will make a difference, that will make us a stronger business and will also helped our customers and our communities,” stated Leslie Dach, head of Wal-mart’s corporate affairs.  The majority of Wal-mart’s 200 million customers are female, and more than half of its 2 million workers are women, so Dach added that the program will help the company in recruiting and attracting better workers.   Wal-mart worked with Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Women’s Issues, in crafting the women’s initiative.  “Together, we will see these women change the lives of their families and communities for the better,” Verveer stated.  This initiative has impact as well on other companies that are suppliers to Wal-mart, as it will also require those with more than $1 billion in sales to increase the percentage of women and minorities on their Wal-mart accounts.  (Source:  Washington Post, 9/11/11).                  _________________________________________________________________     V.    PATERNITY LEAVE: THE SWEDISH EXPERIENCE   The Nordic countries have long been lauded for their generous parental leave policies.  Unfortunately, mostly women took those leaves and since they were lower paid, such leaves perpetuated the wage gap.  Sweden addressed this problem by introducing paternity leave in 1995.  No father was forced to take them but the family would lose one month of subsidies if he did not.  The result – 8 in ten men took the leave.    In 2002, a second daddy month was granted.   The Swedish Institute of Labor Market Policy Evaluation showed that for every month a father takes leave, a mother’s future earnings increased by 7%.  Couples now divide the months of parental leave, with the result that divorce and separation rates in Sweden have dropped since 1995.  Now, 41% of companies encourage fathers to take parental leave, up from only 2% in 1993.  “Graduates used to look for big paychecks.  Now they want work/life balance,” states the human resource director of Ericsson, Goran Henriksson.   This generous parental  leave benefit comes at a high cost to Swedish taxpayers, whose payments comprise 47% of the country’s gross domestic product.  (Source:  New York Times, 6/10/10)   Don't receive this e-newsletter regularly?  Subscribe by clicking here.   Follow the Global Summit of Women on:                                CONTACT US Global Summit of Women  1100 G St. NW, Ste. 700 Washington, DC 20005  USA tel: 202-835-3713 / fax: 202-466-6195 email: summit@globewomen.com