Translator: Thomas Tam Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
So I feel like I've been waiting all day to say a startling and shocking fact -
that men outnumber women as leaders by figure of four to one.
And this is shocking to me
because clearly we're not using the talent of half the talent pool.
We're not giving equal opportunity for all,
and we're not able to drive the bottom line
for businesses and governments.
So I'm here to tell you today about a tool that we can use to change this fact.
An index.
An index is a tool lets us collect data
to measure and determine things like the consumer price index,
market prices of goods and services,
or the USA News and World Report index
that lets us choose a college or university based on variety of factors.
Because in order to get to where we want to go,
we need to know where we are today.
And today we know that women are half the talent pool.
We have evidence that shows their power.
A McKinsey Report shows that if you employ men and women equally,
the global economy will grow by 12 to 28 trillion dollars.
We've all received trainings in sexual harassment,
diversity and inclusion anti-discrimination.
We've enacted laws like Title IX which give girls access -
equal access to education and sports.
We know women leaders -
we know Mary Barra, Sheryl Sandberg, Christine Lagarde,
and we knows their stories.
We've talked about training, mentorship, confidence.
And in 2018, there are over 309 women running for office.
The #MeToo and Time is Up movements
are not only in the United States, but they are global.
And companies like Uber and Nike
are experiencing revolts in terms of leadership.
So the time is ripe for women's leadership.
But until we change the systems and institutions,
until we know where are women leaders,
how did they get there, and how much power did they hold,
we will not able to change this skewed leadership dynamic.
At the Women in Public Service project, we have developed an index -
an index to know the numbers.
How many female ministers of defense are there in the world?
An index to analyze the leaders of change.
Does paternity leave matter?
And an index to provide a snapshot and framework
of where women are today.
The leadership index we've developed measures where women are in government,
the positions;
how they got there, the pathways;
and how much power they hold in 75 countries across the globe.
So when we talk about the pathways
to talk about things like women and girls' access to education;
Is there an equality law?
Do women have the right to vote?
access to finance.
When we talk about positions,
we talk about where women are across the five sectors of government:
the executive, the legislative,
the judiciary, the security sector
and the civil service.
Because we need more than just presidents
and women in Congress, we need them across all sectors.
We need the Black Hawk pilots,
the head of Federal Reserve.
And finally, we look at a set of indicators
as to how much power do women hold in those offices.
Do they have budget power?
Do they have veto power?
Do they have a power to develop and drive an agenda?
So the index tells us where women are at the highest level of government
and provides a snapshot and a framework.
So where is the United States today?
We are
109 out of 195 countries in the world in terms of gender equality.
Now, this fact is probably surprising to this room
and surprising to a lot of us in the United States.
Because arguably our "pathways," the education, the access,
the equality of the opportunity
is available to all in the United States.
But yet we've never had a female president.
We've never had a woman head of the Department of Defense,
Treasury, or Veterans Affairs.
We've never broken the 20% barrier in Congress.
So what's interesting in this index of these 75 countries
is the United States sits next to South Korea and Nigeria,
two very different countries, arguably three,
where the pathways are very different.
I lived and worked in Africa for over 25 years,
and I can tell you that a girl's access to education
is not the same as it is in the United States.
And yet, in Nigeria,
women comprise 40% of economy ministries.
In the United States that figure is 16.7.
In South Korea, women comprise 66% of infrastructure ministries.
These are the ministries that control not just roads but energy,
telecommunications, the internet.
That figure in the United States is 25%.
So the question now is what do we know
by collectively analyzing 75 countries.
Well, the first thing we're finding out is that education matters,
which I think we all know.
But interestingly we're finding out that it's not just formal education,
sort of master's and bachelor's degree, university level stuff,
it's informal education as well.
It's skills-based training; it's vocation training,
When I worked in Africa,
we trained women to run their businesses
by giving them basic accounting skills and basic literacy skills.
I have a friend in Tanzania
who has proven that people without medical degrees
can perform brain surgery with local materials.
And I don't say this to minimize the value of formal education,
but we need to rethink
what's important in terms of education today
and for the future and what type of skills people need.
Now, the second thing we have learned
is that women can be leaders by working part time,
which is hard to say in the United States.
But in the Netherlands,
women are 58% of the workforce.
And that percentage of women working,
63% of those women work part time.
And here's what interesting in the Netherlands,
is that women have achieved gender parity in government.
They have a lower wage gap in terms of men and women than other countries.
And they've gotten there by working part time and flex time.
So we need to rethink the traditional pathways,
how we work, and what it takes to rise into leadership positions.
The third thing we've learned is that women are twice as likely
to end up in social cultural ministries.
So those are education, health, culture.
In Africa, I knew very many women that were the Ministry of Women in Africa.
But they didn't have a budget.
Many of them didn't have an office.
Definitely didn't drive an agenda.
And this is important
because if women are not at defense, economy infrastructure,
services that they use,
they are absent from very important decision-making tables
across the globe.
So not only do we have to break the glass ceiling how high women go,
we have to break the glass walls
to ensure that they're present in every single decision-making table.
And the fourth thing we've learned is that perception matters.
How people perceive the community, the population,
how people perceive women, their right to work outside the home,
whether they're a suitable political candidate or not, matters.
And it's probably, from a statistical standpoint,
the single figure that drives all the other variables in the index.
So one of the other countries that does really well across equally indexes
is Slovenia.
And in Slovenia,
73% of the population believe
that women have a right to work outside the home.
And when you look at the data,
what you see is that women comprise almost 30% -
28% of basic function ministries,
50% of economy ministries, and 50% of infrastructure.
This perception piece matters.
When you talk about the Nordic countries
and how they got to where they are in terms of gender equality,
they talk about the belief in equality and the trust in government.
So with this data now,
we can look at the policies and the systems and the institutions
to increase women's leadership.
We need to have both behavioral change and policy change.
So the first thing in terms of behavior is we need to be careful and be cognizant
of how we treat boys and girls,
and how we talk to them
about opportunities,
the tasks we divide up in the household.
The second thing we need to do
is we need to be careful about our language.
The more we continue to talk about childcare and family issues
as women's issues
and only with women,
the more they're going to remain women's issues.
These are family issues, these are issues that every member of society faces.
And the third thing we need to do in terms of behaviors
is we need to talk to women and men together.
Men can mentor women.
This is not a win-lose situation.
This is bringing everybody and all of our talent pool
and all of our ideas to the table to have this conversation.
And the last thing we need to do,
which we've talked about today several times
is we need to notice when women aren't on the stage,
when they're not at the decision-making tables,
and we need to ask why.
We need to actively witness.
Why aren't they there?
Why aren't they in those positions of leadership?
And when they are there, how'd they get there?
But we all know that behavior alone is not enough.
We know that wearing a seat belt, for example,
will keep you safer in an accident.
Yet we still had to pass a law in 1968 requiring us to wear seat belts.
So policies matter.
Gender-blind hiring policies matter.
I'm sure all of us in this room want to hire and promote people
based on a set of criteria,
not necessarily just on our beliefs, but on a set of criteria.
The top five orchestras realized in the 1970s
that women comprise less than 5% of these orchestras.
So they did a test.
Everybody had to audition behind a screen.
Everybody had to take their shoes off,
so you couldn't hear the click clack of heels, frankly.
And what they found out of a decade doing this
is that the percentage of women in these orchestras rose
from below five percent
to be 25 to 46% of these orchestras.
Today, we're looking at things like artificial intelligence
or taking names off resumes.
We're trying to think of criteria and merit.
But we also must demand
that transparency in terms of hiring and promoting.
We have to consider some of these criteria are not necessarily gender-blind.
Number of years in the workforce or past earnings
can work as a disadvantage to certain segments of society.
The third thing we need to do
is we simply must have family leave policy.
Paternity leave turns out to be the biggest driver of women's leadership
across a variety of countries.
Plus it's not just children,
we are taking care of elders and other people in our society.
There are five states today they have paid family leave:
New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Minnesota, and California.
Here in Idaho, I just learned of several weeks ago,
Chobani has offered six weeks of paid family leave.
But what's important about the family leave is,
as we've been looking and I've been analyzing,
is that men have to take it just as much as women have to take it.
Iceland, it turn out, has three months for women,
three months for men,
and three months for the family to decide who.
And if the man doesn't take the three months, it goes away.
And this is paid 80% leave.
And so what happen when the man takes it?
Well, you change the workplace culture.
It's more acceptable for a man to go home and pick up his child.
There's a connection and a bond.
You change the expectations
about who should, who can take care of both family and work.
And finally, I don't know if anyone knows this,
companies can be gender certified.
There's a certification called the EDGE certification,
which certifies a company in terms of gender quality.
A company like Marriott has done this.
So we can choose to buy goods and services
from companies that are gender certified.
So now you can see we have the data
that allows us to figure out where women are,
how to get them there, and how much power they hold.
So now more than ever,
we're seeing this sea of change
demanding the women sit at decision-making tables across sectors.
And I hope that by utilizing this data,
and when we look at where our women are and how to get them there,
that all of us will be able to ensure
that women are leading their companies,
their communities, and their countries
across the globe.
Thank you.
(Applause)