Lead-HER-Ship

Archive for June, 2011

On July 19 and 20  the United States will celebrate the 163rd Anniversary of the First Women’s Rights Conference held in Seneca Falls, NY, in 1848  Although it took 72 years before women won the right to vote this was the opening salvo of the war.  Winning the right to vote was an enormous step forward in equality for women.  Although the war has not been won we are all grateful that this battle came out on the side of women!

Virtcom Consulting found that a selected group of companies with a high representation of diverse board seats (especially gender diversity) exceeded the average returns of the Dow Jones and NASDAQ Indices over a 5 year period.

According to “Women Matter” by McKinsey in 2007 Companies with three or more women in senior management functions score more highly on average (on nine dimensions of company excellence). It is notable that performance increases significantly once a certain critical mass is attained, namely, at least three women on management committees for an average membership of 10 people.

The European Project on Equal Pay created an extensive 19-year study of 215 Fortune 500 firms.  They found a strong correlation between a strong record of promoting women into the executive suite and high profitability. Three measures of profitability were used to demonstrate that the 25 Fortune 500 firms with the best record of promoting women to high positions are between 18 and 69 percent more profitable than the median Fortune 500 firms in their industries.

Catalyst in 2007 found that Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women board directors attained significantly higher financial performance, on average, than those with the lowest representation of women board directors.

Leymah Gbowee from Liberia had enough: fourteen years of military dictatorship, armed rebels recruiting children, and military strong arming everyone.

She took action and created Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace. No demonstrations but rather praying and singing in Liberia’s fish markets. The movement grew so strong that then dictator Charles Taylor agreed to start peace talks. (He subsequently fled with an indictment for war crimes) But Gbowee was unimpressed. The women needed more!

They marched into the hotel where peace talks were being held and staged a sit-in, vowing not to leave until peace was achieved. Two weeks, later Taylor was forced from power .

I owe this story to Susan Corso with ODE magazine.  Find her at odemagazine.com/susancorso . To learn more about the documentary on the Women of Liberia Mass Action, find it here. But I warn you– this is most disturbing footage. Women and children are the greatest victims of war and hatred. Rape is a poor man’s B52.