An Excellent 2010 International Women’s Day
If women entrepreneurs in the US started with the same capital as their male counterparts, they would add a whopping 6 million jobs to the economy in five years—2 million of those in the first year alone. Babson College
What happens when you put 100 really smart women in a room from every sector—private, public, civil society, NGOs, government, social enterprises? You get some really great thinking.
I was invited to attend the 9 March 2009 UN Global Compact/UN Development Fund for Women Meeting to Launch the Women’s Empowerment Principles. http://www.unifem.org/news_events/story_detail.php?StoryID=1048. The Principles outline seven steps designed for companies to take in order to empower women in the workplace. I owe a big thanks to Erica Christensen, Community Affairs Director at CA who was instrumental in securing my invitation.
Participating in this meeting as a ‘first responder’ meant my role was to respond at the conclusion of a panel that addressed Workplace Practices to Empower Women. However, I broke the rules and found myself posing a question rather than making a statement. My question?
“If all the stakeholders understand the problem (and they do—there was no shortage of understanding the issue. Every woman and man in the room could articulate the issue, then why do some companies accept the risks AND still launch extremely innovative programs on behalf of women.
I’ve heard the arguments for—the moral imperative; inclusivity as a business driver; women as part of the supply chain. And, likewise, against—legal issues; transparency; human resource vs. business unit need.
However, some companies find a way to tunnel through these issues, come out the other end and launch programs that really do move the agenda forward on behalf of women and women leaders. Don’t get me wrong—I passionately believe, at least in the sphere I inhabit— recruitment/retention/advancement of technical women—that every company I work with wants and more importantly is trying to further the agenda of women in the workplace. I believe this.
What is beginning to emerge however, at least from my lens, is a premise that could truly impact the status of working women throughout the world, including women creating new technologies, women owning new business, women scaling existing businesses, and women launching micro-credit funded businesses. Empirical data increasingly points to the bottom line ROI that women-owned business could, in fact, be the roadmap out of the global recession.
Just take a look at a few current statistics[1]
- 8 million women-owned enterprises in the US have an annual economic impact of nearly US$3 trillion dollars
- Women own or operate between 25% and 33% of all private businesses worldwide
- Women create or maintain more than 23 million jobs—16% of all US employment alone
- Women-owned businesses grow faster than those owned by men and faster than businesses overall.
At the UN meeting, the remarkable (really extraordinary) Deborah Holmes, Global Director, Corporate Responsibility at Ernst & Young and formerly with Catalyst, described a program Ernst & Young launched in the US and is now expanding to Brazil, South Africa and Turkey. The Entrepreneurial Winning Women Program identifies and supports women entrepreneurs seeking to become market leaders—in other words, they target successful women business owners and teach them to think bigger—to move from a 5 person company to a 150 person company to a 15000 person company.
Ernst and Young believes that if it can offer women the skills needed to think bigger, perhaps it can in help to offset the potential loss of 25M jobs worldwide by the end of 2010.
These are skills we often see in discussion about best practices for moving women forward, but they are designed in a different way. I think of a best practice articulated by another remarkable woman, Mary Finlay, SVP and CIO of Partners Healthcare System during a recent panel of women CIOs—the concept of ‘transition teams’ for women staffed by multiple experts—individuals that come together as a team in order to help a woman execute successfully at the next level. Ernst & Young’s program does, in fact, assemble transition teams specifically targeting women entrepreneurs. The teams consist of :
- Role models to help women think bigger;
- Strategies for women business owners to raise their revenue goals and expectations;
- Direct intervention in women’s decision making, helping them to understand ways in which women cede decision-making to their male counterparts;
- Articulating a vision and goal for their business;
- And finally the one we all know—providing mentoring and networking skills that can help women entrepreneurs make the leap from one business stage to the next.
So perhaps this is supply chain management, or human capital management, but I think it’s something more—economic growth that is being driven by women. It gives me great hope.
Next Blog: Other innovative initiatives from the meeting, and Women’s Empowerment Principals
[1] Scaling up. Why women-owned businesses can recharge the global economy. 2009. Ernst & Young