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Most definitely yes. I was guilty of assuming that developed countries also had more developed attitudes towards furthering women’s careers, but recent reading has made me question this.
The world’s first elected female prime minster was in Sri Lanka (1960). Indira Ghandi followed shortly, to be elected the PM of India in 1996, and is still the world's longest serving female PM. In 1988, Benazir Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state (Pakistan). And a couple of months ago India’s upper house passed an historic bill to reserve a third of all legislative seats for women.
Although there’s no absolute causal link between gender representation in Government and gender equality, diverse political representation can only help the case for female leaders and female supportive policies. A Kauffman-foundation sponsored report attempts to answer how India is achieving so much success in R&D despite its skill shortages and weakness of its higher-education system.
One answer is the importance placed on diversity. Women in particular have been identified as a wealth of under-used talent. GE Research for example has set targets for hiring women. Women with allied skills such as computer science or electronics are placed in areas where there are few women, such as mechanical engineering. And it is also encouraging the hiring of women who have taken career breaks.
And there are some wonderful examples of gender equality initiatives in Africa too, such as Nigeria’s Gender and Affirmative Action movement that works to eradicate the marginalisation of women in politics and decision making policies. And in terms of political representation Rwanda ranks first in the world for the highest number of women in parliament – they actually outnumber the men (56%) - and South Africa ranks 3rd.
Sandra,
Now new CIMA entrants is largely skewing towards women, and women are over represented amongst newly qualifieds, will CIMA have a campaign to try and attract men to join the profession and ensure the institute has equality between men and women?
Brian
Brian,
Cheeky, no? You ask a valid question.
CIMA is committed to helping all its member progress their careers and to promoting the value of managment accounting. The majority of CIMA members are male (over 2/3rds), but we have seen a positive increase in the number of women joining accounting institutes and entering the profession, but there is still a disproportionately low number of women at board level. This is an area that CIMA would like to address. We want to see women progressing at the same rate as men and given the same opportunities.
Therefore with this research we hope to identify career strategies and leadership skills that helped women make it to top level roles, and share with this members in middle management roles. I hope that our insights will help both men and women.
Sandra
An interesting observation. I wonder what's driving those things?
For lots of complex reasons NGOs in the developing world have focussed imaginative initiatives like micro-financing towards women, with impressive results not least in empowering women to have the confidence, time and economic strength to take on positions of community leadership.
And this is a behavioural issue often conflated with gender and sex, but many developing countries have less adversarial political structures than those in the Anglo-Saxon world (excepting those who take Mao Zedong's "power comes from the barrel of a gun" observation to heart). I suspect that leaves much more room for those who want to work with their colleagues and opponents rather than walk all over them, and that does perhaps mean more women are prepared to take on political leadership roles. I believe a recent UK study showed that women in the UK tend to prefer to be politically active at local councillor level, where they can help individuals and act directly for the benefit of their constituents, while politically-active men tend to be more interested in working at strategic and planning level more distanced from individuals. Perhaps our own gender representation at Westminster will improve if our current coalition becomes the established way of working rather than something the old-school suits-and-ties still can't quite believe has happened to them?
I do think that sometimes it's easy to believe that leadership is effective only at figurehead level. Of course anyone who has the skill and ability to work at board level should have an equal opportunity to get there, but at the same time I'd like to think CIMA is encouraging men and women to build rewarding, influential careers at whatever level in their organisation they're comfortable choosing.
Actually, referring to the second paragraph of the first post, I disagreed with its conclusions but agreed with the main proposal that the West could study these phemonema and learn from them. What motivates voters in one culture may not do the same in another culture.
Also, some country's voters are highly rational and analytical whereas a country might have voters that are sentimental, and would be convinced by the family member of a recently deceased politican to vote for him - who in turn has been convinced by his partymen knowing that the emotional punch will work.
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