Investing in Women Pays Dividends

08/02/2012 Women in Business NI is growing from strength to strength, with over 650 members throughout NI , delivering both local and regional events to over 1500 business women, covering all business sectors and with a membership that includes Owner/ Managing Directors, Sole Traders, Partnerships to Senior Executives and Managers in Corporate Industry……

Yes, blowing our own trumpet but this is a success for everyone in Northern Ireland but in particular, the business community. I would ask all our business people, politicians, and civil servants to celebrate too; an organisation that supports and encourages women to grow their businesses, to develop further in their career, to be leaders will help bring to business the diversity we need to help take us out of this recession.

We need to understand that investing in women pays dividends.
This message is not new there is a growing realization that the world’s progress — whether measured in economic growth, peace and stability, higher standards of health and education, enjoyment of human rights or overall well-being of a population — is intrinsically related to the status of women in a society.

At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos this was an important theme, they hosted a plenary session entitled “Women as the Way Forward”. Last week on Feb. 1, some of the most powerful companies in the United States (Accenture, Coca-Cola, Ernst and Young, Goldman Sachs, and others) signed on to a worldwide campaign to bring women into the economic mainstream.

Called the Third Billion Campaign, it is an alliance including corporations, governments, and nonprofits—to enable 1 billion women to become members of the global economy by 2025.

Bringing women into businesses creates what Michael Porter and Mark Kramer of Harvard Business School call “shared value”—it helps companies while helping communities too.

And just a few months ago, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, chairing the first-ever Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) High-Level Policy Dialogue on Women and the Economy, made this point emphatically: “By increasing women’s participation in the economy and enhancing their efficiency and productivity, we can have a dramatic impact on the competitiveness and growth of our economies…Any country or company that wants to succeed in today's economy must unlock the power of women's potential.”
In her remarks, Secretary Clinton recounted some of the evidence: The Economist found that the increase in employment of women in developed economies during the past decade contributed more to global growth than did China. In the U.S., a McKinsey study found that women went from holding 37% of all jobs to nearly 48% over the past 40 years, and that the productivity gains attributable to this modest increase in women’s share of the labor market now accounts for approximately 25% of U.S. GDP.

That works out to over $3.5 trillion – more than the GDP of Germany and more than half the GDPs of China and Japan.
“So investing in women is not only the right thing to do," Clinton said. "It's clearly the smart thing as well."

The evidence is clear the success of Women in Business NI Ltd is a success for us all. We will celebrate our 10th Birthday in October this year and with the full support and understanding of the business community going into the next ten years, the dividends will hopefully be even more impressive.

Roseann Kelly, CEO Women in Business NI Ltd : roseann@womeninbusinessni.com www.womeninbusinessni.com
 

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