UNDP hosts Regional Dialogue to Promote Gender Equality in Leadership Positions

October 7, 2019

As part of the regional Promoting a fair business environment in ASEAN, UNDP hosts The Future of Leadership is Gender Equal

Bangkok, 07 September 2019

Session Briefs: Day One of the Regional Dialogue

The Future of Leadership is Gender Equal, a bold topic that brought together a bold group of people. As part of the regional Promoting a fair business environment in ASEAN project (2018-2021), the UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub organized this premier regional dialogue to engage a number of stakeholders including government officials, private sector representatives and advocacy groups in leading the discussion around greater gender diversity in the boardrooms and in senior executive leadership of companies. A two-day event (Aug 29-30th, 2019) consisted of one day of sessions and discussions, followed by a day of Design Thinking Lab.

Day one started with Valerie Cliff, UNDP Deputy Director for Asia-Pacific, highlighting “At UNDP, we strongly believe that gender inclusive leadership can have a positive impact well beyond the lives of the women that make it at the top of the companies”. Other UNDP presenters also reminded us of the tremendous challenges that remain on gender equality, and that inaction can derail our achievement of not just the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, but across all the goals. Gender equality is central to all the SDGs. UNDP presented a baseline report to highlight the challenges, the opportunities and the imperative for more women in boards and leadership positions. Engaging dialogue among participants about the “why’s”- from the economic imperative to the business case; from how women bring in a diversity of ideas and solutions to business problems; and how there is growing evidence to show more women in boards lean towards greener, more sustainable choices along with business growth.

The fireside chat moderated by the James Chacko, who recently joined UNDP’s Bangkok Regional Hub as Programme Advisor - East Asia and the Pacific Cluster, Country Office Support and Quality Assurance - got the panellists fired up through a round of provocative and insightful questions. The panellists – Aliza Napartivaumnuay, Co-Founder, Socialgiver, Thailand; Brittany Chong, Partner, Diversity and Inclusion Leader of PwC Vietnam and Stephanie Choo, Director and Co-Founder of Tandemic, shared what gender equality means for businesses, what types of skills and enabling environment is needed for women to lead with men, side by side. All three women echoed the need to acknowledge that women lead differently, and companies need to acknowledge diverse leadership styles. Highlights from this conversation featured not just personal battles that they have had to reach their positions of leadership, but also to highlight that creating a culture that embraces inclusion is key to having diversity within organizations.

The next session was the Roundtable session where UNDP’s Regional Partnerships Specialist Ruchi Mohanty asked the panellists a series of though-provoking questions. Hajah Mahuran Saro Dato Haji Sariki from Talent Corp Malaysia talked about the types of investments that were being made in Malaysia and the importance of human resource development. Sharing Talent Corp efforts to create a country-wide momentum through a larger talent pool of women who are “board-ready” and ensuring that there was a demand from companies to want more women in leadership. Kyawt Kay Thi Win of the Business Coalition for Gender Equality Association from Myanmar highlighted the need to create more awareness among the private sector in her country. Working with several companies in this space, she said that many of them are just starting off, with not even a simple policy in place. There is clearly a lot of opportunities to work in this field in Myanmar. Angel Cheung Horenfeldt of Barclays highlighted that overall gender parity has been achieved but parity in senior leadership is yet to be attained. She emphasized the importance of this issue to Barclays and how the bank has taken a number of progressive steps to challenge the status quo; from tapping into a talent pool which allows women who may have taken a career break to rejoin the job market, to creating family-friendly policies which encourage more gender-balanced sharing of household and parenting responsibilities.

Two corporate giants, Procter & Gamble and Sodexo, were invited to share their journeys with us. Victoria De Mello from UNDP’s Business and Human Rights team moderated our dialogue with both companies, that are game changers in this space and have taken incredibly bold steps to shape their gender equality at workplace culture. Sirinporn ‘Joy’ Vatanaparadorn, the Sales Director, Procter & Gamble Trading (Thailand) Co. Ltd spoke of her own journey and success at P&G. It was incredible to see how the company leverages its outreach and influence to promote gender diversity and eliminate biases. Campaigns such as Like a Girl showcase positive expressions and break gender stereotypes and others like the WeSeeEqual Campaign showcases the brand commitment to this issue. Roshith Rajan who heads Corporate Responsibility for Sodexo in Asia talked about how the company started its journey, and built the case for greater diversity and gender balance. A few noteworthy initiatives are the Advisory Board called SoTogether, which is dedicated to promoting women's advancement, their SheWorks Initiative, the supplier inclusion program to take gender balance beyond their own work and the top highlight that Diversity and Inclusion is one of their top drivers of employee engagement.

Anupama Puranik, Managing Director of Russell Reynolds challenged participants “unconscious biases” and talked about steps companies are taking to root out these biases in their recruitment processes. “Unconscious bias is a stereotype we create in our own minds about people and situations”, she highlighted. She urged organizations to take the first step, which is to get people trained and aware, so that everyone can start bringing their biases into the conscious space. She left the participants with a lot of food for thought, and the topic of unconscious bias found its way into the coffee break conversations and well into the evening.

The day featured honest and candid conversations through the CEO Circle - where UNDP’s very own Renaud Meyer, Country Director for Thailand moderated an exciting discussion between Dinh Thi Quynh Van, General Director, PwC Vietnam; Hla Hla Win, CEO & Founder of 360ed; and Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol, Secretary-General, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Thailand. All three women, from very different walks of life talked about their personal journeys of support, resistance and overcoming challenges. They shared their own reflections on the trials and tribulations of climbing the corporate ladder and truly shattering the glass ceiling. Their collective experiences – whether in government, as an entrepreneur or heading one of the big 4 consulting firms; each of their stories helped everyone reflect on what it means to stay true to their own style of leadership and to be able to develop a new brand of leadership which is not mired in masculine traits.

The final piece of the day was the keynote speaker, Ambassador Ted Osius, Vice President of Public Affairs at Google who talked about how Google fosters diversity as part of bringing in innovation into the company. He highlighted how the technology sector can create opportunities to overcome the barriers for women’s leadership and empowerment. He spoke of examples of Google shaping a new narrative for women and girls - in India, Vietnam and several other countries in the region. His message was loud and clear, that businesses must be at the forefront of leading this change, and ended his talk by highlighting the key to success- partnerships and collaboration.

And with that Day One was a wrap as participants entered into thinking about how they can unpack several of the important issues we spoke about, how can they leverage the experience that women, men and companies already have. All in all, everyone had an energizing first day. 

Words: 

Radhika Behuria, Consultant, Gender Equality and Private Sector Partnerships, UNDP BRH

For more information, please contact:

Liviana Zorzi, Programme Analyst, Transparency & Accountability, UNDP BRH

liviana.zorzi@undp.org

Luciana Arlidge, Consultant, Gender Equality & Women's Empowerment, UNDP BRH

luciana.arlidge@undp.org