Women and finance: banking on a new relationship

By Alice Ross

For many private bankers the stereotype still stands: a woman walking into the bank usually means one of two things – she is either divorced or widowed.

Some private banks still find it difficult to enter the modern age, in which female entrepreneurs are on the rise and more women are staking their place in the boardroom. Successful women complain they are still being patronised by those managing their money.

According to research from Boston Consulting Group, the world’s wealthiest women – those with at least $500,000 of investable assets – are now worth a collective $20,200bn, representing 27 per cent of global assets under management.

Yet 73 per cent of women said they were dissatisfied with their financial advisers or institutions, finding their approach “insincere”.

Cath Tillotson, managing partner at Scorpio Partnership, the wealth management consultancy, says: “The traditional approach of private banks to dealing with women’s financial affairs is to accept that on divorce or loss of a husband, women may need particular care and attention to help them manage their finances.”

Barbara-Ann King, female-client group head at Barclays Wealth, the private banking arm of Barclays, says many women are disillusioned by financial services and believe “it’s not for them”.

Private banking hours can be particularly difficult for women juggling a business and a family. Many women find they only have time to discuss their finances late at night. “The traditional models of only operating through office hours doesn’t work for them,” says King. “A lot of women are doing it at 10pm at night, and many financial services firms aren’t equipped for that.”

Tillotson agrees. “I don’t particularly enjoy going to cocktail parties at 6pm, which is the standard form of corporate entertainment. I want them to work more around my life,” she says.

Bankers are often accused of using too much jargon, which could confuse someone not used to the language of finance, whether male or female.

Alex Ruffel, founding partner of Berkeley Law, a London-based private-wealth law firm, says some of her clients are intimidated by their private bankers. One client will phone her first to check whether her query is “stupid”, before putting it to her banker.

“Often bankers don’t really appreciate the situation and don’t pitch at the right level,” she says. “They will say, ‘This is your asset allocation and this is what we think about the Japanese small-cap market.’ But the client needs to know: how much have I got? What does it mean? I have four kids: do I have enough money?’”

Ruffel also says she has seen cases of private banks calling a male relative of a female client at a shared family office to discuss the woman’s financial affairs.

Many bankers recognise this has to change. Nathalie Dauriac-Stoebe last year founded Signia Wealth, a high-end wealth management business aimed at people with more than £10m ($16m) of assets. She is trying to make finance more accessible for her clients by running educational days every few months, inviting all her female clients to a seminar followed by lunch, often with a female entrepreneur as guest speaker.

Last year, King set up a website called SmartWoman, with Barclays Stockbrokers, an arm of Barclays, to help women engage with finance.

“We want to educate around finances broadly but also look at lifestyle and life cycle, saying what matters to you when you think about preserving or enjoying your wealth,” she says.

However, there is disagreement in the industry over whether wealthy women really have different needs from their male counterparts. One theory is that women are more cautious than men, and more likely to want to protect their money than to grow it.

King points to studies undertaken by Barclays Stockbrokers that suggest women have different attitudes to investing: they are more likely to be cautious, and they buy and hold shares rather than place short-term trades.

The question now is whether to tailor investment portfolios to women and men – although King argues more research needs to be conducted.

“This is about recognising men and women are different, and being able to cater to those specific differences just like any other market,” she explains.

Jane Parry, head of marketing and business development at Duncan Lawrie, a private bank, believes women “may be more risk averse generally in their investments. They want to protect their money and often look after their family.”

But others find the notion that women think or invest differently patronising. “We look at female clients in the same way as we look at any of our clients,” says Dena Brumpton, chief operating officer of Citi Private Bank. “Women are as professional with their portfolios as their male counterparts today. I don’t think they demand anything different – they know all the right questions to ask.”

Scorpio Partnership’s Tillotson believes some banks are deciding how best to cater to women with little hard evidence. Research from Scorpio Partnership, she says, suggests there is, in fact, little difference between the two. Rather, it is the delivery of the service that private banks have to get right.

Jacqui Brabazon, global head of marketing and philanthropy at Standard Chartered Private Bank, agrees.

“The focus is on delivery and differentiation – not simply lumping women together in one category. What is more important is to respond to the client, and not the gender,” she says.

In fact, the debate over whether to treat female and male clients differently is part of a wider issue. The financial crisis created a lack of trust on the part of many wealthy people towards their wealth managers. Some who were slotted into one-size-fits-all portfolios have demanded a tailored approach. Whether to segment these approaches according to gender is something private banks around the world now have to decide.

But the growing numbers of women entering private banks in senior positions could start to change the old-school mentality. Female private bankers say the industry has traditionally attracted women who like the fact that in-office hours are not as demanding as at an investment bank: while they have to be on call 24/7, they do not necessarily have to be physically at the office.

“The ‘old boy’ private banking system is changing as women move up in the profession,” says Tillotson.

Dauriac-Stoebe agrees: “The number of women going into wealth management is growing,” she says. “Now, some of my best performers are women.”

Source: Financial Times website (September 2011)

Women’s share in global economy much smaller: WB-IFC report

By Zeeshan Javaid

World Bank (WB) and International Finance Corporation (IFC) have expressed concern over legal and regulatory hurdles faced by women to fully participate in the global economy, announcing in their joint report that women represent 49.6 percent of the population—but only 40.8 percent of the workforce in the formal sector.

According to the new report “Women, Business and the Law 2012” jointly released by the WB and IFC, Removing Barriers to Economic Inclusion (RBEI) found that while 36 economies reduced legal differences between men and women, 103 out of 141 economies studied still impose legal differences on the basis of gender in at least one of the report’s key indicators.

The report also identified 41 law and regulatory reforms enacted between June 2009 and March 2011 that could enhance women’s economic opportunities, legal differences between men and women may explain this gap.

For men and women throughout the developing world including Pakistan, the chance to start and run a business or get a good job is the surest hope for a way out of poverty, creating the kind of environment in which this hope can flourish requires effort in a broad range of areas, from security and infrastructure to education and health.

Measuring how regulations and institutions differentiate between women and men in ways that may affect women’s incentives or capacity to work or to set up and run a business provides a basis for improving regulation. Women, Business and the Law objectively measures such legal differentiations on the basis of gender in 141 economies around the world, covering six areas: accessing institutions, using property, getting a job, providing incentives to work, building credit, and going to court.

Within these six areas, we examined 21 legal differentiations for unmarried women and 24 legal differentiations for married women for a total of 45 gender differences, covering aspects such as being able to get a job, sign a contract, register a business, open a bank account, own property, work at night or in all industries, and retire at the same age as men.

In 103 of the economies covered, there exists at least one such legal difference between men and women that may hinder women’s economic opportunities. In all economies, married women face as many or more differentiations as unmarried women. This loss in rights at the time of marriage occurs for women, but not for men. No economy imposes all 45 legal differentiations on women.

Twenty four economies impose ten or more legal differentiations. None of these is in the high-income OECD, or Eastern Europe and Central Asia or Latin America and the Caribbean.

According to the methodology of Women, Business and the Law, in 38 economies there are no legal differentiations on the basis of gender. On average, high-income economies have fewer legal differentiations than middle- and low-income economies.

However, even as income levels rise, these disparities do not necessarily disappear, as 17 of the 39 high-income economies covered have at least one legal gender differentiation between men and women. Globally, women represent 49 .6% of the total population, but only 40 .8% of the total workforce in the formal sector.

In Latin America and the Caribbean and in East Asia and the Pacific, explicit legal gender differentiation is uncommon in the areas measured in accessing institutions and using property, but still exists in a few economies: Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

Meanwhile, labor regulations are unlikely to include benefits such as parental leave; among the 34 economies covered in these two regions, only Taiwan, China grants parental leave. Institutions such as small claims courts are present in approximately half of the economies covered.

The Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa are the three regions in which explicit legal gender differentiations are more common, both in accessing institutions and in using property. All 14 economies covered in the Middle East and North Africa has at least one legal differentiation in both accessing institutions and using property.

In South Asia, only Sri Lanka does not have any legal differentiation in both topics. Out of 35 economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, only ten (Angola, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe) have no legal differentiation in these topics.

Source: Daily Times (September 2011)

CGI Commitment Encourages G20 Leaders to Involve Girls and Women to Help Solve Current Economic Issues

With the support of the Clinton Global Initiative and more than 50 other international partners the G(irls)20 Summit will be held in Paris, France from October 18th-21st, 2011 two weeks before the leaders of the world’s most powerful nations meet in Cannes, France for the G20 meetings.

Modeled after the G20, the G(irls)20 Summit will bring together a representative from each of the 20 member countries so they may focus on how girls and women and their vision of the world can help solve the current major economic world challenges. Once again this year a representative from the African Union will also participate, bringing the number of delegates to 21. In Paris, they will work together to develop a set of concrete solutions to address global challenges. They will take part in various workshops learning to become familiar with media relations, the development of a business plan, financial literacy, and navigating the digital world.

The delegates were selected from among hundreds of applicants. They were chosen according to very precise criteria including their vision of leadership, personal triumph, and also their ability to find innovative solutions to economic challenges.

“Girls and women have an incredible capacity to think creatively about the challenges facing the world”, says Belinda Stronach, CGI Member, President and CEO of the Stronach Group “The G(irls)20 Summit is a unique platform for the girls to express their innovative ideas and to bring them to the G20 leaders.”

Source: Wall Street Journal website (September 2011)

Women hold half the sky

By Chit U. Juan

As the Chinese saying goes, women indeed comprise about 50 percent of the population of the world, and MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) are made up of more than 60 percent women.

But when a business gets bigger and becomes a public company, chances are, the women are left behind to run managerial affairs but not to be included in future-charting corporate boards.

When I became a fellow of the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD) in 2006, my guess was, we probably had 10-15 percent women in the roster of independent directors.

The number of fellows has now grown to over 200, yet only about 10-15 percent are women. Most corporate boards are still male-dominated, as most industries are still an “old boys’ club.”

When I accepted the presidency of the country’s foremost business women’s aggrupation, the Women’s Business Council of the Philippines (WBCP), I thought to myself that this is one deliverable I should accomplish during my watch: have at least 30 percent women on corporate boards. In public and private corporations. In NGOs. In hybrid for-profits.

Diversity

It’s about diversity in the workplace, and diversity on the “strategy table”—that is, the board of directors.

Before preaching this gospel, I made a check on the boards I presently sit in.

The Management Association of the Philippines has three women governors out of nine seats. Perfect.

In the Philippine Coffee Board Inc., we have three women out of nine seats. Great.

In the Peace and Equity Foundation, an NGO, we have four women out of nine seats. Even better is the fact that we have a Catholic nun, a Muslim leader, a foundation stalwart and me, the social entrepreneur.

Now, that is diversity. I also sit in a relatively new NGO in Albay called the Philippine Social Enterprise Development Center (SedCen), and even in that board of five, there are two women. Now I can preach.

I am reading a book by Linda Tarr-Whelan called “Women Lead the Way,” and there she cites studies and statistics that companies with 30 percent women on board are more profitable and more successful.

Maybe, this is a secret we have to be more conscious about. Some company presidents elect their wives or daughters and there is nothing wrong with that. In our family company, my father always had two or three of my sisters on board. Women were always given a voice in our family corporations.

Now, the challenge is for each of us to check our companies and our organizations. If the 30-percent solution is not yet being looked at, we can suggest that future vacancies be opened to women directors.

A small change

We have had two women presidents, scores of women representatives and many female senators. Yet, in our own communities and organizations, we tolerate this unconscious male domination only because no one wants to change anything.

That is why results are always the same. Well, we can now say, we are conscious of women participation in ALL boards. Maybe, we can expect different if not better results.

May I humbly ask our members in MAP and in our other business organizations to look at their present board composition? You may be surprised what a small change can do to your bottom line or to your KPIs.

And second, may I ask more women to please rise to the occasion. We need you to make the business sector more robust and more interesting.  MAP is looking to invite more women CEOs and COOs to be members. Even women entrepreneurs are much needed to add diversity and talent, of course, in every organization.

If all the women business owners got together as we are doing in Chongqing, China, on September 27-29, we can band together and sell to the whole world.

This event, called the “Global Platform for Action on Sourcing from Women Vendors,” sponsored by the International Trade Center, aims to “increase the share of corporate, government and institutional procurement secured by women vendors for the ultimate purpose of bringing greater economic benefit to women and their communities.”

Did you know that over 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies have a supplier diversity program under which they actively source from women?

‘Multiplier effect’

As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has said: “Investing in women and girls has a multiplier effect on productivity and sustained economic growth … Investing in women is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do.”

So, there you are ladies. You can speak up and get voted into your board. Or you can speak up in a forum such as what I mentioned above, and take your products to the world. Either way or both, you win.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer website (September 2011)

Sewing Her Way Out of Poverty

By Nicholas Kristof

I came to Kenya partly to help make a PBS documentary about empowering women as a way to lift families and communities — men included — out of poverty. And I promptly met a prostitute-turned-businesswoman who epitomizes that theme.

Jane Ngoiri is a 38-year-old single mom who grew up in a slum and dropped out of school after the eighth grade. She married at age 18, but when she was pregnant with her second child, her husband informally took a second wife (polygamy is common for Christians here as well as Muslims), and she was nudged out. Jane soon found herself with small children, no home and no money.

To survive, she sold her body for the next five years. It was a perilous existence in Mathare, a collection of dangerous slums in Nairobi. The area, a warren of winding, muddy alleys, is consumed by crime and despair.

Regular jobs are rare, and many men self-medicate in ways that perpetuate self-destructive cycles of hopelessness. Social workers estimate that one-third of the slum’s men get drunk every night — spending about $1.50 an evening, which could otherwise finance their children’s education. Poverty becomes self-replicating.

Then in 1999, Jane joined an antipoverty organization called Jamii Bora, which means “good families” in Swahili. The group, founded by 50 street beggars with the help of a Swedish woman, Ingrid Munro, who still lives in Nairobi, became Kenya’s largest microfinance organization, with more than 300,000 members. But it also runs entrepreneurship training, a sobriety campaign to reduce alcoholism, and a housing program to help slum-dwellers move to the suburbs.

In Jamii Bora, Jane was pushed to save for the future, to lean forward. There is growing evidence that the most powerful element of microfinance is not microlending, but microsavings, and that’s how Jamii Bora starts: it encourages members to save small amounts, perhaps just 50 cents a week. Then members are coached to use those savings, coupled with loans and training, to start tiny businesses.

Jane learned to sew, left prostitution and used her savings and a small loan to buy a sewing machine. She began buying secondhand wedding gowns and bridesmaid dresses for about $7 each, and then cutting them up to make two or three smaller dresses.

Jane’s business flourished, and she used her profits to buy a small home in a safe suburb and to keep her children in school. Her eldest daughter, Caroline, became the first child in the family to graduate from high school and is now taking computer classes.

The intellectual star of the family is Anthony, the second child, who is ranked No. 1 in his class of 138 pupils at a good boarding school with much richer students. Anthony, a star soccer player even though he has no soccer shoes, hopes to go to college and become an engineer. He told me that when he gets his first paycheck, he’s going to buy something beautiful for his mom — and his eyes glistened as he spoke.

Another child, Cynthia, a seventh grader, has just been chosen by teachers to become head girl of her school next year, a tribute to her grades and leadership. Jane hopes to send Cynthia, who dreams of being a lawyer, to a good boarding school as well, but it’s difficult to see how she will pay all these tuition costs.

Careful research by Professor Esther Duflo of M.I.T. and other economists suggests that microfinance can chip away at poverty but is not a panacea. You see that in Jane’s life.

After I finished my interviews, catastrophe struck. Cynthia’s big toe was mangled in a traffic accident, and ultimately it was amputated — a disfigurement in a country where people routinely wear sandals. Jane devoted every scrap of savings to medical costs — leaving Anthony unable to return to school.

Our documentary team took up a collection, and Anthony is now back in class. But the crisis was a reminder of how fragile the family’s gains are. Jane’s life reflects the lesson of mountains of data: overcoming poverty is a tumultuous and uncertain task, but it can be done.

There’s a tendency these days to give up on poverty, to dismiss it as a sad but inevitable feature of humanity, particularly at a time when we have deep economic problems of our own. But if a former prostitute in a Nairobi slum can build a dressmaking business, buy a home in the suburbs and produce over-achievers like Caroline, Anthony and Cynthia, then it’s worth remembering that sheer grit, and a helping hand, can sometimes blaze trails where none seem possible.

Source: New York Times website (September 2011)

Indonesia making progress in gender equality: Report

Indonesia has made “important progress” over the past two decades in improving health conditions of women and girls, who now have wider access to finances and justice, a World Bank report says.

Stefan Koeberle, World Bank Country Director for Indonesia, said during the launching of the World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development in Jakarta on Tuesday that female life expectancy in Indonesia was 73 years. The global average is 71 years.

“More women are becoming entrepreneurs thanks to innovative microcredit schemes. Women are also more aware of their legal rights thanks to paralegal training in villages,” he said.

“Nonetheless,” he added, “there are areas for improvement, such as in labor participation, maternal mortality, access to formal financial institutions and development planning and budgeting. The World Bank has been working actively with the Indonesian government on programs to increase gender equality in some of these areas.”

The World Bank said that in terms of economic activity, “female-owned businesses in rural Indonesia are still less profitable than those owned by men.”

Andrew Mason, the lead economist and regional gender coordinator for the World Bank’s East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) Region, said women in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, still played a minor role in development as they had limited access to productive resources such as land, capital and education.

Tensions between their domestic and market roles only aggravate the problem, he added.

“Women are currently facing particular challenges in which they have to juggle between domestic roles, such as household work and childcare, and the market roles, giving them more disadvantages in economic fields,” Mason told reporters in a video conference from Washington DC.

Mason said some countries in the region had been trying to eliminate the disadvantages by, for example, giving women wider access to land and capital.

They have even been involving extension services in the agricultural sector, giving female farmers more access to knowledge and support needed to improve their productivity. But such measures are not enough given the existing tensions between women’s household and market roles.

In a rural economy, Mason said, women spent too much time on domestic activities that could be reduced significantly by increasing investments in infrastructure. “The ideas to break the time constraints on women in domestic activities include water and fuel collections and so on,” he said.

In urban economies, various policies such as providing affordable day care for gender-friendly work provisions will create a more level playing field for men and women.

“This will enable women to participate more fully, even if they have children in their households,” Mason said.

World Bank consultant and gender specialist Yulia Immajati said that in terms of expanding economic opportunities for women, the World Bank focused not only on breaking down barriers to productive resources but also on how to best resolve the juggling acts women faced with their traditional domestic responsibilities and market roles.

“By applying flexible working hours, we may still allow women to have good economic opportunities without neglecting their household responsibilities, because under such working patterns, we prioritize quality of work output instead of only talking about the working hours quantitatively,” Yulia told The Jakarta Post.

Despite some narrowed gender gaps comprising better educational enrollment, life expectancy and labor force participation levels, countries in the region still face gaps such as excess deaths of girls and women, disparities in girls’ schooling, unequal access to economic opportunities and differences in voice in households and in societies, the report says.

“We find that there are populations for whom the gender gaps remain, and these are typically populations where poverty combines with other factors such as exclusion and remoteness. In such populations, we find that gender gaps persist,” said Ana Revenga, co-director of the World Bank World Development Report 2012 on Gender Equality and Development.

Source: The Jakarta Post website (September 2011)

A Woman’s Touch

Wealth managers need to cater to the needs of independently wealthy women.

By Tanzeel Akhtar

Recent research has shown that today’s growing band of independently wealthy women are disappointed in the way their needs are being met by wealth managers.

Statistics from the World Wealth Report released by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch show that more than one in four high-net-worth individuals are now female. Women accounted for 27% of the global high-net-worth population in 2010, up from 24% in 2008.

The number of independently wealthy women varies from region to region. For example, 18% of the total high-net-worth population in Europe is female, compared to 37% in the U.S.—where women are more established in the business world— and 31% of high-net-worth individuals are female in Japan.

Whatever the breakdown, it is becoming increasingly critical for wealth managers the world over to cater for the needs of independently wealthy women. Even the blue-blooded U.K. private bank Coutts, once a paragon of traditionally male City values, has launched a specialized service for its female clients called Coutts Woman.

As one-third of its customers are female, Coutts, along with eight other institutions, commissioned Market Dynamics Research and Consulting to survey 2,000 wealthy women about current levels of service.

The results of the report were not flattering to the banks. “Broadly speaking high-net-worth women are unhappy with the service provided by their bank, only 41% were satisfied, the rest were dissatisfied,” MDRC managing director Richard Williams says.

Investment-wise, female clients do not want something drastically different to men. The main difference comes in the way women want to be dealt with by their money managers. “Some of the things we have found from our client base is that they still want to make money on their portfolios, they still want to have performance discussions but they want to have a [stronger] relationship with their trusted adviser,” Kate Turner, the company’s head of private banking says.

Men are typically more transactional, Ms. Turner says, whereas women tend to be more loyal customers and rarely use multiple banks, or “chop and change” their relationships once they settle on an adviser they trust. Dina de Angelo, a director at Swiss private bank Pictet, says the female clients she caters for know what they are looking for. “The most important thing [for women] is to find a banker who has more empathy towards them. It depends whether the banker can respond to what that women needs, anything from education to financial literacy.”

One wealthy female investor approached Ms. de Angelo complaining that the advisers she dealt with tended not communicate effectively and did not always explain things. Most clients do not mind whether their adviser is male or female, just so as long as they can form a good working relationship. Even so, MDRC found that the majority of wealthy women believed a dedicated female wealth management service was important with only 6% saying it was unimportant.

By Women for Women

Boutique firms in which women are advised by women are becoming increasingly prevalent. Take Anna Sofat’s boutique, Addidi. In 2008 Ms. Sofat, who had focused on managing female clients at independent advisory Fiona Price and Partners, recognized that there was a niche for a company run for women, by women. The current generation has seen women’s professional success generate considerable wealth, Ms. Sofat says, and since the 1980s, most of them are investing independently. Coutts is thinking along similar lines. A survey of its female clients found that women tend to be more cautious investors than men and take fewer risks. Female wealth managers interviewed for this article back this conclusion. They believe that women are less prone to taking risks and are more interested in what their money is being invested in. Female clients are also more aware of environmental issues and aware of ethical investing, according to Ms. Turner. The trend toward more independently wealthy women is likely to continue, and financial advisers would do well to adapt their services to meet a unique set of needs that don’t necessarily align with the needs of male counterparts. But there is a paradox at the heart of the push toward female financial freedom. Men. Despite the trend of women taking more control over their assets and their financial decisions, MDRC’s research shows that a significant source of financial advice for wealthy women remains their husbands. MDRC reported that 25.8% of wealthy women go to their partner for financial advice. What is even more surprising for some is that even if they are divorced, they still ask their ex-partner. “Although most go to professional advisers, one quarter [of respondents to the survey] said they rely on their partners for professional advice, which came as a surprise to us,” Mr. Williams says. “We are talking about women who are professionally qualified, graduates, very intelligent and very able, when it comes to finance they seem to be less confident. They are less likely to be self-directed. It’s an interesting concept, as much as we like to think that the world has moved on but actually a big percentage of women will totally rely on their other half,” he adds.

Source: Wall Street Journal website (September 2011)

Microfinance support for 26 million women in developing countries

Australia will help millions of women in developing countries to achieve economic independence through microfinance funding.

At the APEC Women and the Economy Summit, chaired by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in San Francisco, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd committed $2.2 million to help women start and expand their own small businesses.

“Microfinance is an important funding source for women who run up to 40 per cent of small businesses worldwide but only access around 10 per cent of commercial bank loans,” Mr Rudd said.

“This money will help microfinance institutions provide loans to more than 26 million women by the end of 2013. That’s 26 million women who will be able to establish their own business, send their children to school and improve their standard of living.”

This is truly effective aid – supporting 26 million women and their families through a grant of only $2.2 million.

Mr Rudd attended the Summit accompanied by a senior delegation of Australian women – Australia’s newly appointed Global Ambassador for Women and Girls, Penny Williams, the CEO of Reconciliation Australia, Ms Leah Armstrong, and CNBC Anchor, Amanda Drury.

Source: Invest in Australia website (September 2011)

APEC Nations adopt San Francisco Declaration

Hon Hekia Parata
Minister of Women’s Affairs

APEC Nations adopt San Francisco Declaration

New Zealand is comparatively well advanced in helping women become fully engaged in the economy, the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Hekia Parata, told the APEC Women and the Economy Summit in San Francisco.

“But there is always more to do. Our Government is committed to growth and we recognise the contribution that women can make to that.”

Ms Parata was the final speaker in a high policy discussion on women and the economy, chaired by US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, on the final day of the Summit.

“This Summit shows all our economies what can be achieved when women are provided with the tools and the access they need to succeed,” Ms Parata said.

“In New Zealand we have been working hard to get more women into leadership roles and increase women’s participation in the economy.

“A recent report from Investment Bank Goldman Sachs says we could increase our GDP by ten percent by increasing women’s participation in the economy. The report also recommended a number of ways the gender gap could be reduced many of which our Government is already undertaking.

“We are also investing more in education, health, and infrastructure which will benefit women.

“In terms of getting more women into leadership roles, we have had some recent success. The NZX are proposing new rules that will require all publicly listed companies to declare how many women they have in senior roles, while the New Zealand Institute of Directors has established a new mentoring scheme which aims to help women develop connections and skills that will allow them to achieve board positions.

“But we are not complacent. We always know there is more we can do to build a brighter future for New Zealand.’’

The three day Summit concluded with the adopting of the San Francisco Declaration, a commitment by all 21 APEC nations that they will take actions to realise the full potential of women, integrate them more fully into APEC economies, harness their talents, remove barriers that restrict women’s full economic participation and maximise their contributions towards economic growth.

This will be done by helping women get access to capital and markets, and increasing the capability and number of women in leadership roles.
The declaration will be presented to the APEC leaders at their conference in Hawaii in November.

During the conference Ms Parata also met with the USA’s Ambassador-at-large for Global Women’s Issues, Melanne Verveer and Under-Secretary-General and Executive General, UN Women, Michelle Bachelet.

“Both were very positive about the progress we are making in New Zealand, and are keen to continue working with us to support Pacific women improve their level of representation in their Governments,” said Ms Parata

“The recurring theme of the Summit was that a stable economy focused on growth was the best possible environment for women to realise their economic potential. It was good to see that the approach our Government is taking to increasing the participation of women in the economy is the right one.”

Ms Parata also met with Canadian Minister, Rona Ambrose, and Tatiana Valovaya, the Director of the Department of International Cooperation for the Russian Government and Head Delegation for Russia.

“It was very helpful to share experiences and best practice. The work we are doing to get women on boards in New Zealand was of great interest to the Summit. Similarly, Canada’s success in getting women owned businesses into global supply chains offers some real possibilities for New Zealand women. I will be meeting with a Canadian representative in the next month to advance this possibility.

“Compared to many of the APEC economies New Zealand women are doing very well. At 10.6 per cent the gender pay gap is the lowest it has ever been But there is always more that can be done and while Government can play its part businesses must take the lead.

“One of the most impressive statistics of the Summit was that the potential of harnessing women’s potential is bigger than the combined effect of the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

“We need to work together to find ways to increase women’s participation so we don’t miss out on the economic benefits greater diversity brings.

“As Secretary Clinton said: “when we liberate the economic potential of women we lift the performance of the economies of our communities and our nations.

“Our Government is completely committed to lifting the performance of our economy and the contribution that women can make to that,” Ms Parata said.

Source: Scoop website (September 2011)

Women on Wall Street: Small group at the top gets smaller

Salie Krawcheck’s departure from a high-ranking job at Bank of America spotlights a trend on Wall Street: Women, in recent years, have lost their jobs more often than men.

By Nathaniel Popper, Los Angeles Times

Even before Sallie Krawcheck’s ouster from a high-ranking job at Bank of America, things weren’t looking all that good for women climbing the ranks on Wall Street.

The financial industry, long known for its boys-club environment, has only a small fraction of women as top executives. And that small cadre has been thinning out in recent years, with the most recent example Krawcheck’s departure as BofA’s president of global wealth management.

Her departure is part of a broader trend in the financial industry in recent years: Female employees are losing their jobs at a faster clip than men.

From 2007 to 2010, 12.5% of women in the financial industry lost their jobs, compared with 8.8% of men, according to an analysis of government statistics by the Economic Policy Institute. By comparison, in the overall economy during the same period, it was men who lost jobs at a higher rate.

And each high-profile departure similar to Krawcheck’s makes reversing that trend even more difficult.

“There were very few women in finance to begin with,” said Deborah Soon, a senior vice president of Catalyst, a nonprofit group that studies women in the workplace. “It’s hard to find others to step into her shoes.”

Krawcheck joins a string of other top female bankers to leave the upper echelons of financial companies in recent years. Other notable exits include Heidi Miller, who in June stepped down as one of two women serving on JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s operating committee.

Citigroup Inc.’s Terri Dial last year stepped down as head of the company’s consumer banking operations; former Morgan Stanley co-President Zoe Cruz resigned from the investment bank in 2007; and Lehman Brothers Chief Financial Officer Erin Callan was pushed out just before the firm collapsed.

And the departures weren’t just on Wall Street. Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Carol Bartz stepped down from her job this week.

There is no indication that Krawcheck lost her job because of discrimination — Bank of America said she was leaving as part of a recent cost-cutting program at the struggling company, and Krawcheck has not explained her departure.

But her exit and the scrutiny surrounding it underscore what an increasingly rare species women like Krawcheck have become.

Women represent about half of the nation’s white-collar workers. But they represent just 14.4% of executive officers at Fortune 500 companies, according to Catalyst. Further, the number of women at the top of S&P 500 companies has only inched up over the last decade — from five in 2001 to 18 at the end of 2010, according to data from executive search firm Spencer Stuart.

Only two of the 30 components of the Dow Jones industrial average have a woman in charge. Ellen Kullman became CEO of DuPont Co. in 2009, and Irene Rosenfelt has headed Kraft Foods Inc. since 2006.

“While the ouster of a number of top Wall Street women cannot necessarily be tied directly to the glass ceiling or sexism per se, the numbers aren’t good,” said Deborah Ancona, a professor of organization studies at the MIT’s Sloan School of Management. “Women fill a minority of top leadership positions in corporate America.”

The finance industry has not historically been known as a welcoming place for women. The cigar and strip-club reputation was confirmed by a lawsuit against Smith Barney in the 1990s, which accused it of turning a blind eye to raunchy, sexist behavior. The lawsuit later became the subject of a book called “Tales From the Boom-Boom Room.”

The attention brought by the suit spurred wide-scale changes that helped stamp out overt discrimination and open up hiring. A decade ago, the number of women in finance was rising.

Even during the good times, though, few women were making it into the executive suite — a problem common to other big U.S. companies. While 55% of all employees at U.S. financial firms were women in 2010, only 16.8% of the executive committees at these firms were, according to Catalyst’s research. KeyCorp, of Cleveland, is the only bank in the Fortune 500 with a female chief executive.

The recession appears to have exacerbated these problems, which experts have explained in varying ways.

There are the long-standing barriers, such as the stereotyping of women, and the fear that they’ll be less likely to stick around after having children. In an interview this year, Krawcheck said, “There’s no doubt that bringing up the kids, having a family life and also having a full-time job on Wall Street is as extreme as it gets.”

There is some indication that the fastest growth areas at banks in recent years — including the various trading operations — have also been the areas that women have been the least likely to join.

Perhaps most important, the relative lack of female executives before the financial crisis meant that there were fewer women to serve as mentors and allies for up-and-coming executives when hard decisions were being made.

Sources: Los Angeles Times Website (September 2011)