Catalyst blogs

#WomenCan Spotlight: Abbe Luersman

bsanders — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:00:06 +0000

Catalyzing

May 21, 2013

Welcome to our new series of #WomenCan profiles, highlighting exceptional female executives who are Catalysts for change in their careers and their companies. Learn how these smart leaders are rising up the ranks, changing corporate mindsets, and addressing and overcoming stereotypes about what women CAN and CANNOT do in the workplace.

MEET: Abbe Luersman, Senior Vice-President, Human Resources, Europe, Unilever. (Unilever was one of the 2013 Catalyst Award Winners.)

Early influences: I grew up in a blue-collar, lower income family where we had to work hard for the things we wanted. My father maintained multiple jobs to support us, and taught me to strive hard and not be disappointed when I don’t achieve because there’s always the next day to try again.

Career path: While in college, I had three jobs over the summer: working as an hourly employee in Whirlpool’s factory, sales clerking at a department store jewelry counter, and making pizza on the weekends. I received my BA and MA in speech communications with an emphasis on organizational development and change management from Miami University in Ohio. I spent over 16 years with Whirlpool, where I held various roles with increasing leadership accountability, and joined Unilever in September 2007 as Senior Vice President, HR Transformation and Strategy at their global headquarters in London. Since August, 2009, I’ve been the Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Europe for Unilever based out of Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Executive decision: When Unilever approached me for a job in the UK, I had a three-year-old and my husband was a partner in a law firm. We had to make a family decision. My husband decided he would take a sabbatical for one year, so we could move abroad. He ended up enjoying his sabbatical so much, he said to me, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to continue to be on sabbatical!” That sabbatical extended to five and a half years! Now we’re based in the Netherlands, and the experience has been amazing for all of us. We’ve been able to travel all over Europe with our daughter, who is now nine.

Work-Life Wisdom: We made a lifecycle map for our family, using markers, crayons, and pictures to ensure our daughter’s engagement as well. It hangs in our home, and we each plot what we want to achieve and where we want to be over the next ten years. That way, we’re making collective choices. Work-life effectiveness is about ensuring what not only works for you, but also for your partner and your family.

---

Hear more of Abbe’s comments, from the Catalyst Connects panel at our 2013 Catalyst Awards Conference.

Watch and share our #WomenCan Video.

Read how one mom and daughter shared a #WomenCan moment.

Learn how others are Catalysts for change at IAmA.Catalyst.org. Sheryl Sandberg is a Catalyst. How about you?

“Women Can” And “I Am a Catalyst”: Two Sides of the Same Coin

bsanders — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:16:06 +0000

Catalyzing

Ilene H. Lang

May 20, 2013

Last year we launched “I Am A Catalyst” and last week we unveiled our new Women Can campaign. Wondering how they fit together? They’re two sides of the same coin!

Women Can is about harnessing top talent to create dynamic and inclusive workplaces. It’s about sweeping away embedded societal and workplace stereotypes that limit women’s opportunities to grow, to contribute to their fullest potential, and to lead. It’s about empowering women to succeed with hard work, smart strategies, and committed advocates.

I Am A Catalyst is about realizing that anyone can become a Catalyst for change by taking action in everyday life. Those who embrace the I Am A Catalyst message know how crucial it is to emphasize that Women Can do anything while being themselves. They champion talented women and push for changes in workplace culture that will enable women to advance further and faster.

These campaigns are really two sides of the same coin. They’re about challenging the status quo and asking not just “What’s wrong with this picture?” but also, “What can I do to fix it?” They’re about reminding ourselves—and each other—that women can make it to the top, and that each of us as individuals has the power to step up and drive change.

We hope you’ll be inspired to join us on this exciting journey. What does Women Can mean to you? How can we bring women and men on board? Please share your thoughts with us and each other!

---

Watch and share our #WomenCan video!

Sheryl Sandberg is a Catalyst. How about you?

Share how you are a Catalyst for change at IAmA.Catalyst.org.

Women Can...Be on Canadian Boards

bsanders — Thu, 16 May 2013 13:43:04 +0000

Catalyzing

Alex Johnston

May 16, 2013

Each country does it differently. Norway, Spain, and France have opted for quotas. The United Kingdom and the United States require disclosure. The Australian Stock Exchange has a “comply or explain” requirement.

And now, Canada has an advisory committee, whose members possess the best brains and finest track records in the fields of business and public policy. The committee advises industry and government about how to improve women’s representation on corporate boards. Even at the provincial level, the Ontario Securities Commission has just moved forward with a similar effort in Ontario, making it clear that the winds are shifting as more and more decision-makers understand gender diversity on boards to be a critical economic issue for Canada.

Regardless of the initiative, it’s great to see growing awareness and action.

I’m delighted to participate in the new Canadian Federal Government Advisory Committee as Catalyst Canada’s ex officio representative on the committee, along with our colleagues from The Women’s Executive Network and the Canadian Board Diversity Council. I’m especially pleased that the government has asked for recommendations by the fall of this year and that the Minister leading the committee is positioning this as an important economic issue.

We know that our economic competitiveness, as well as innovation and individual corporate performance, is enhanced when decision makers represent a broad spectrum of perspectives.

Specifically, we know that having more women at the top improves the bottom line.

I’d encourage the committee to look at initiatives that are already beginning to find traction in Canada. Launched in 2012, the Catalyst Accord asks Financial Post 500 CEOs to make a voluntary commitment to raise the overall proportion of board seats held by women in Canada to 25 percent by 2017. For many companies, getting to 25 percent means simply adding one more woman to their boards. But for the over 40 percent of public FP500 companies who currently have no women on their boards, there’s a lot more work to be done.

One year into the initiative, 13 companies have signed on.

Fortunately for them, there is no shortage of Canadian women who are ready, willing, and more than able to be effective, strong, board members. (The “lack of board-ready women” myth has more basis in corporate recruiting practices, which have often been restricted to familiar faces, than in fact.)

Our Catalyst Corporate Board Resource, launched in 2012 to support corporate efforts towards board diversity, offers member companies who choose to become Catalyst Accord signatories a long list of experienced, CEO-sponsored women to recruit for their specific needs. The leadership demonstrated by the 13 signatory companies is a critical first step in shifting Canadian corporate culture. The establishment of the Canadian Federal Government Advisory Committee is an important next step in enlisting federal government leadership to drive change.

Together, we can ensure that the Canadian economy benefits from the talents of Canada’s board-ready women, and the diverse leadership we need to make opportunities out of global challenges.

---

Watch and share our #WomenCan video!

Learn how others are Catalysts for change at IAmA.Catalyst.org.

Sheryl Sandberg is a Catalyst. How about you?

Mothers and Daughters Can: Our Day and Our Time

bsanders — Fri, 10 May 2013 16:18:07 +0000

Catalyzing

Dnika J. Travis

May 13, 2013

It’s 6:15 am. My alarm launches into music, signaling the start of a new day. My 9-year-old daughter, Morgan, is also awake, prepping for a full day: 3^rd grade math, science, and reading, followed by after-school volleyball, tutoring, and some downtime with her 3-year-old brother.

It’s now 6:45 am. Driven by her desire to “take on more responsibility,” Morgan is in the kitchen eating breakfast and packing her blue backpack, which is adorned with key chains from all the places my husband and I have traveled for business. Homework…check! Snack…check! Glasses…check!

I join her near the kitchen in my office space. As we exchange “Good mornings,” I ask, “Did you pack your backpack?” She sighs: “Yes, Mom.”

Before I know it, it’s 7:00 am. As a virtual worker, I often use the fifteen minutes before taking the kids to school to check my email, make my to do list, or write.

But this morning is not a typical morning. I open my email and find a message from a colleague encouraging us to spread the word about Catalyst’s new video, “Turn CANNOT into CAN!” Inspired, I immediately call, “Morgan, come watch this!” I get up from my office chair so she can have a seat. We press “play” and she focuses intently on my computer screen.

Once the clip concludes, I ask, “What did that video mean to you?” She rapidly responds, “C for Catalyst…C for Change.” Her response resonates, but it’s not what I expected. “Absolutely!” I say.

But I keep talking—this is a big parenting moment, right??! “Well…the video also shows how we can achieve anything. See how the video shows that we have the ability to “Turn CANNOT into CAN?” I continue, “People all over the world (as demonstrated by the Spring Bud Project in China) are doing amazing things to make sure young girls and women have equal opportunities to succeed.” Morgan takes a long pause. She looks at me intently, then smiles: “Ahhh!” she says.

In that moment, Catalyst’s values—Connect, Engage, Inspire, Impact—flashed before me. Tears filled my eyes. Indeed, change happens in small increments—even on seemingly ordinary days. This was our day and our time: 7:15 am. We hit re-play and watched the video again…this time in full-screen mode.

---

Watch and share our #WomenCan video!

Learn how others are Catalysts for change at IAmA.Catalyst.org.

Sheryl Sandberg is a Catalyst. How about you?

Talent Is the New Buzzword in the Netherlands

bsanders — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:22:45 +0000

Catalyzing

Caroline Pickard

May 9, 2013

Change often creeps up on us, and a new phase in the Netherlands may just be starting—one in which we stop accepting traditional notions of what talent looks like, and instead embrace new attitudes towards talent that are not defined by gender.

At a recent Catalyst Europe Roundtable here in Amsterdam, I was struck by the number of members talking about talent. They were seeing a pressing need within their organisations to address continuing bad economic news from the Eurozone by developing new approaches to talent management. Their organisations were learning both how to attract top talent in the first place, and how to retain, develop, and leverage existing talent.

The talent theme is cropping up more and more often, and this excites me. Suddenly there are voices talking loudly and concurrently about stopping the outflow not only of women, but of talented millennials, visible minorities, and LGBT people as well. Organisations are implementing programs to encourage schoolgirls to take a betapakket (science module) in high school, and women college graduates are being promoted into technical roles. Employers are coaching young parents through their return to work following parental leave. Slowly but surely, the number of men sponsoring high-potential women into senior management and board positions is rising.

Many organisations are now making a valiant effort to make these changes happen. The change agenda of the EU’s Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, Viviane Reding, may be creating fewer waves than it did six months ago, but companies in the Netherlands are certainly beginning to realize that the deep-seated culture of male privilege and cronyism so pervasive in corporations and in politics is stifling economic recovery and innovation. Critics of the bias intrinsic to the Dutch political system, media, and society as a whole are getting louder and more convincing in their arguments, and Dutch people no longer see a woman leading a company or ministry as an excuustruus (token woman), but rather as someone who got there thanks to talent and merit.

Despite legislation slumbering in the Upper House, business leaders and a number of national organisations and independent institutions have introduced internal targets not just for women on boards and in management roles, but throughout their ranks of employees. Via congresses, Tweets, NGOs, publications, forums, networks, and blogs, an urgency and enthusiasm about diversity is beginning to spread. And talented women are ready to step up.

What If?

bsanders — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:52:51 +0000

Catalyzing

David Lau

May 6, 2013

Until relatively recently, medical research largely ignored women, assuming that what was true for men would apply to women, or that women’s bodies were simply variations on the standard human (read: male) body.

Research suggests that the habit of treating male experience as the norm, with no recognition of the role gender plays in altering women’s experiences and perspectives, continues unabated in workplaces across Canada and throughout the world.

How would things change if men experienced the world of work as women do? Let’s explore this by reversing some common assumptions:

“Joe is the best candidate for this job overseas, and it could mean a real boost to his career, but he probably won’t be interested because he has young children, plus his wife is on a great career track. Besides, the country we’d be sending him to doesn’t have laws to protect men from violence in the street or on public transportation. Let’s offer it to Mary instead.”

“Gerald Brown, the CEO of ABC company, led an aggressive but ultimately unsuccessful program of expansion to new markets, leading to a sharp drop in his company’s stock value. Can men really be trusted to make good decisions when the pressure is on?”

“John is hard to work with because he’s so pushy and aggressive. Susan, on the other hand, is assertive. You always know where she stands on an issue.”

“Sure, men earn less than women. But that’s because they take time off when they have children and aren’t interested in jobs that might require relocation or long hours.”

These statements sound pretty silly when applied to men, don’t they? So why do we accept them when their subjects are women? No one would question a man’s commitment to his career or his company or his qualifications for a job simply because he loves his children and has strong opinions, or because some other man once made a poor business decision.

Taking it a bit further, imagine what the reaction would be if these assumptions did apply to men. Would we simply shrug and accept that “that’s the way it is”? Or would we introduce family-friendly policies to support employees who take on greater responsibility? And why do we so frequently assume that a man’s spouse will happily compromise her career in service of his advancement—but never the reverse?

If men were the target of violence, would we advise them to stay home for their own good? Or would we take action to keep our employees safe?

Why attribute one woman’s mistakes or incompetence to her gender, but see a man’s errors as the result of his individual character?

Canadian women are fortunate to be allowed a full year’s leave after giving birth to a child. We’re even more fortunate that Canadians now have parental leave, which entitles both parents, regardless of gender, to an opportunity to spend time with their new baby. So why don’t we ask men in professional settings whether they’re planning on having a family?

Women have made great strides in the workplace. But it’s time to move beyond the assumption that men are, by nature, more suited to the world of business.

The Evolution of Women’s Empowerment at The Coca-Cola Company

bsanders — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:41:44 +0000

Catalyzing

Guest Blogger

May 2, 2013

How can companies attract, engage and retain the very best talent? It’s all about empowering women, says Kathleen Ciaramello, Vice-President of East Zone at Coca-Cola Refreshments. The Coca-Cola Company’s initiative, Global Women’s Initiative: Women as the Real Drivers of the 21st Century, was a 2013 Catalyst Award winner.

In June, I will celebrate 28 years with The Coca-Cola Company. I know first-hand how far we’ve come with the empowerment of women.

While I didn’t really understand the concept of a company’s culture at the time, I remember my marketing professor at Boston College (also head of our School of Management Honors Program of which I was a member) working hard to convince me that Coca-Cola was not the offer I should accept. He did not believe the culture was a great fit for a woman like me. Fast forward to today and I undoubtedly believe I made the right decision. While the early years may have had some bumps, the company has continuously worked to improve the community and empower our women associates. I am proud to say that I have had a hand in influencing this evolved culture and will continue to have a role in shaping our future.

Coke’s goal is to be a great place to work and we work every day to attract, engage and retain the best talent. If we were not focused on empowering women and therefore not seen as a great place for women to work, we would miss out on 40 percent of the global workforce, we would be ignoring 50 percent of the population, and we would not mirror the marketplace that we serve (70 percent of global household purchases are influenced by women and $20 trillion of spending worldwide is controlled by women). Our company must create an environment that provides a license of empowerment. What is done with that license is up to each associate.

One example that brings this to life is our Women in Leadership Program. The women I know who joined this program, like most, needed to feel 99 percent ready before raising their hand for their next role. After a week in the program, their minds opened to the concept of growth and stretch vs. perfection. Each of the associates I personally know emerged more confident and bullish in their readiness for the next career step. They are now successfully performing in roles that they would have previously viewed as being out of reach. Bottom-line, if The Coca-Cola Company is to be competitive and achieve our goal of being a great workplace, we must have access to 100 percent of the available global talent. We need the professors of the world to be saying, “take the Coca-Cola offer.”

Coca-Cola has gone beyond our four walls with this initiative. At the core is a belief that investing in women is investing in children, families and entire communities. Our 5by20initiative allows us to do just that. I had the opportunity to witness this first-hand in the Philippines. (That’s me and the team in the photo above.) We visited the training center where women were lined up around the building, with their children in tow, for just the chance of being accepted into our program. In classrooms, we saw top-rated instructors walking them through the key levels of a profit-and-loss statement, teaching them the skills they would need to lead a thriving successful business. We then visited the operations—owned by women—which we helped make a reality. I will always remember the passion, pride and determination of the women we met. They were beyond inspiring. I could not help but think that what I was seeing was so much bigger than myself and so much bigger than Coca-Cola, yet collectively, with help from others, we made and can continue to make a huge difference.

We have much work yet to do and recognize that this is a journey on a very long road. We are so honored to be a recipient of the 2013 Catalyst Award and see it as a “sign” along the road. A sign that reinforces we are driving in the right direction—and to keep going.

Kathleen Ciaramello is Vice-President of East Zone at Coca-Cola Refreshments.

Take 5: Questioning Quotas

bsanders — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:42:24 +0000

Catalyzing

Allyson Zimmermann

May 1, 2013

To legislate, or not to legislate—that is the question.

On April 18^th, 2013, the German parliament became the most recent EU government to reject legally mandated quotas for women on corporate boards. This follows a pushback led last year by Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark against a proposal by Viviane Reding, the senior justice official in the European Union, for legislation requiring that women occupy 40 percent of the seats on corporate boards in the EU. “I don’t like quotas,” said Reding, “but I like what they do.”

The proportion of women on boards across the globe remains low, and some countries have implemented quotas to tip the scales. Below are five facts about quota legislation across the globe:

1) At least seven countries have legislated gender quotas for publicly traded companies. They include Norway (mandating 40 percent women on boards), Spain (40 percent), France (40 percent), Iceland (40 percent), Belgium (33 percent), Italy (33 percent), and Israel, where publicly traded companies must have at least one women board director.

2) Israel was the first country to legislate gender quotas for publicly traded companies (1999)—Denmark is the most recent (2012). Unlike other countries, Denmark’s is a “flexi-quota”— companies set the target themselves and publicly disclose their policies to increase women board directors, and their progress against that target.

3) French women held only 7.2 percent of board director seats at publicly listed companies in 2004. The percentage of women on boards in France spiked ahead of quota legislation passed in 2010, and continued to rise following enactment of the law. According to GMI Ratings, in 2012 the percentage of female directors in France stood at 16.6 percent, nine out of ten French companies had at least one woman on their board, and nearly one-third of French firms have at least three female directors. “By all of three of these measures,” noted the report, “the level of female representation is now significantly higher on French boards than on those in the US, UK, Germany, or Australia.”

4) Norway has what some consider the boldest quota laws on the books. Publicly traded companies that cannot maintain at least 40 percent women board directors face dissolution by court order. Due in large part to quotas, women’s representation on boards in Norway increased in the last nine years from 9 percent in 2003 to more than 40 percent in 2012.

5) The UK has adopted a voluntary approach to increasing women’s representation, urging 25 percent representation of women in the boardrooms of FTSE 100 companies by 2015. From 2010 to 2012, women’s representation on FTSE 100 boards grew from 10.5 percent to 17.3 percent—on track to achieve the 2015 target. Despite this initial progress resulting from the UK’s voluntary approach, a recent Cranfield School of Management report found that in the second half of 2012, the number of women appointed to the boards of the 100 largest listed UK companies dropped sharply, from 44 percent to 26 percent. Though the majority of UK government officials still believe that a voluntary approach is best, some have threatened UK companies with tougher measures, including quotas, if they can’t meet gender diversity targets voluntarily. Currently a lighter touch prevails: companies that didn’t set women board director targets for 2013 or 2015 received a personal letter from Prime Minister David Cameron requesting that they do so!

At Catalyst, we see that quotas work. But we also believe that other approaches can, too. What’s most critical is that business leaders work to increase the representation of qualified women on their companies’ boards—not how they do it.

What do you think is the best way for countries to improve women’s standing in corporate boardrooms? Please share your thoughts with us!

Leaning In—And Pushing Back

bsanders — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:15:05 +0000

Catalyzing

Raina Lipsitz

April 24, 2013

I graduated from college in 2004 and soon after landed an internship that I fantasized would launch my career. The internship was unpaid, but it came with a guarantee that I would gain valuable experience as a fact-checker for a respected national magazine. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with my life, but I imagined it would be in the realm of writing and editing, and fact-checking seemed like a useful skill to acquire.

Of course my ability to accept an unpaid internship was a sign of my privilege—I’m the lucky product of generous, financially stable parents and a first-rate education—but I was eager to prove myself to my new employer and get off the parental dole. I took that internship seriously. I showed up on time and never missed a deadline. As soon as I finished one task, I asked for another. And I wrote a few short pieces and asked my supervisor, an enthusiastic young man whom I liked enormously, to help me get them published in the magazine.

My supervisor was supportive and encouraging and told me often that I was a talented writer. But he wasn’t the champion I needed—not because he didn’t want me to succeed, but because he was too busy launching his own career to take an active interest in developing mine. He rarely read anything I wrote right away, and by the time he got around to reading it, it was no longer relevant or timely enough to publish. After a few instances of this, I became discouraged and stopped trying.

Our intern class of six contained only one other woman, and I soon noticed that the male interns were publishing short pieces left and right, both on the magazine’s website and in the print edition. Their ideas weren’t any better than mine (although they frequently generated more of them). They weren’t better writers. One thing they were definitely better at was self-promotion. They didn’t wilt and give up in the face of rejection, and they didn’t take “no” for an answer. They kept pitching ideas, writing articles, and submitting them, whether or not they received encouragement along the way. One man in particular made a pointed effort to ingratiate himself with the magazine’s editor-in-chief. And she rewarded him handsomely: his writing appeared in the magazine several times throughout our internship, and, afterward, he landed a coveted full-time writing job and began freelancing for the magazine on a regular basis.

What conclusions did I draw from this experience? I’d be lying if I said I never felt bitter or resentful. But at some point—usually once you’ve escaped your early twenties—you begin to realize that bitterness doesn’t propel you to the top; it drags you down. And resenting others for having what you want doesn’t get you any closer to having it yourself.

I remember my fellow interns fondly and have followed their personal and professional progress over the years. What I regret most about that internship is not that I wasn’t taken as seriously or mentored as assiduously as my male peers, but why: because I lacked the aggressive self-confidence most men are encouraged to display, and, instead of trying harder, I began to doubt myself. It’s frustrating to feel as if you’re banging your head against a brick wall (or a glass ceiling), but it’s crucial to keep pushing back. I work for Catalyst because I want to help create environments in which talent and hard work are recognized, and women and people of color do not feel as powerless or invisible as I felt back then.

Stories From the Field: Global Challenges for Women

bsanders — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:12:34 +0000

Catalyzing

Alixandra Pollack

Anna Beninger

April 18, 2013

Imagine living in a place where you are not identified by your own name alone, but in relation to a man: you are not simply you; you are known formally as the “wife of” or “daughter of” someone else.

Imagine being a successful businesswoman but unable to speak of your success in public for fear of drawing attention to yourself and your family as potential targets of violence and crime.

Imagine being intelligent, talented, and ambitious, but unable to realize your full potential because your husband, mother-in-law, professors, or government do not support your career.

These are just a few of the challenges women in a number of emerging markets around the world face in their workplaces and wider communities.

Two weeks ago, Catalyst’s Research Center for Career Pathways convened a group of academics, business practitioners, and policy makers from a range of disciplines, industries, and nations—including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, and the U.S. —for an inaugural symposium: “Career Paths in Emerging and Mature Markets—Global Trends, Gender Gaps, and Game Changers.” The event, held in Bangalore, India, and hosted by Dell, the Center’s lead sponsor, was designed to identify cutting-edge paths of inquiry for future study that will allow businesses, media, governments, and individuals in these markets to gauge women’s progress and develop action plans to advance women into leadership.

In addition to discussing the challenges women face in emerging markets and opening up new avenues of research, policy, and practice in these areas, the participants shared compelling stories about global obstacles to women’s advancement, as well as those specific to women in emerging markets. These stories imbued our conversations with a sense of depth and personal connection and lent context and color to the entire event.

Here are a few of the many stories that resonated with us:

One businessperson spoke of engaging with male colleagues who couldn’t understand why women’s groups exist around the issue of violence against women in Mexico:

“I have asked male colleagues to think of ten women they know. Then I ask them to pick seven of the ten women to be physically assaulted. Who would they choose? It makes them realize how disturbing the rate of violence against women in Mexico is.”

Most of us are aware of the gender stereotypes that lead people to “think leader, think male.” But it’s one thing to understand this intellectually and to know in the abstract that it occurs, and quite another to live the reality. A woman with a senior role at a consulting firm in India told the following story:

“Often my male clients would refuse to meet with me alone, even though I was leading the project. They would ask, ‘Isn’t there anyone more senior, a man maybe, who could be present at this meeting?’ So time and again I would have to ask my male manager, who had nothing to do with the account, to come sit in on the meeting. He would reluctantly join as a silent male representative, while I would give the presentation and field all of the questions.”

It isn’t surprising that bias and stereotyping of this sort exist in emerging markets. But the reality is that even in progressive developed countries, including those frequently lauded for their commitment to diversity and cultures of equality, stereotypes about women and leadership still persist. A researcher and business school professor in one such country said:

“A few years ago, I was teaching an MBA class with both male and female students. I organized a formal mentoring program to connect the students with successful businesswomen. One very successful businesswoman who owns several companies hosted a barbeque at her house for the 14 students, but only five showed up and the rest didn’t even bother to say that they weren’t going to come. These students, our future leaders, probably did not feel that this business leader and eager mentor would have anything useful to offer them, simply because she was a woman.

These stories provide insights “from the field” that will aid us in developing strategies to promote gender equity—and they inspire us all to be catalysts for change.

What experiences have you had that reflect the challenges women still face around the world? What successes have you had in overcoming them?

Please join this important conversation by sharing your story below!