Symposium

WHY & HOW Women Mean Business: A Walk around Womenomics
Never before has there been such a confluence of international attention to the economic importance and impact of women. Their position as consumers, employees and leaders is being recognized as a measure of health, maturity and economic viability. They are becoming central to labour market solutions to the challenges of an ageing workforce, falling birth rates and skill shortages. Even as companies have begun to understand the WHY of better gender balance and its role in creating more innovation and better business performance, they are still struggling with HOW to make it happen. Too often, companies are caught in a historical, 20th century mindset when it comes to gender. While women are picking up the majority of service economy jobs and the majority of university degrees in countries around the globe, many women still think of themselves as a disempowered minority. This is not helped by traditional corporate diversity approaches that position ‘women’ as one minority among many to be managed. Even the most progressive companies still struggle with identifying and grooming female talent into power.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, CEO of the leading gender consultancy, 20-first, and a world authority on leadership, gender and business, will share her extensive experience in working with CEOs, executive committees and managers across the globe to build gender ‘bilingual’ organizations. She will offer some pragmatic suggestions, structured around four simple steps: Audit, Awareness, Align and Sustain.