Social Impact – Page 14

How to Create a Women-Friendly Workplace

Posted on April 30, 2015January 14, 2026 by Will Marre

Last night I served on a panel discussion in front of hundreds of women working for a well-known global tech company. I gave them three specific habits designed to evolve their culture to a higher state. (More on that in a minute.) The challenge topic was “How can women better support each other in the workplace?” The topic is hot for three reasons. They are supported by studies from firms like McKinsey that clearly show that corporate cultures are biased against women in three ways:

Advancement and leadership opportunities strongly favor men because of the mistaken belief that dominant male (hard power) traits of assertiveness, confidence and decisiveness actually define superior leadership. This is simply not true. A meta-research analysis reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology of over 95 studies on leadership show that these factors do not predict effective leadership. (Iraq war anyone.) What they do predict is dominance. Nevertheless, evolutionary anthropology has seemingly wired our brains to mistake dominance for leadership. That’s a problem.

Organizations favor people who dedicate virtually all their time and attention to organizational priorities in urgencies. It is well documented that women have a disproportionately high “home workload.” The traditional roles of childcare, managing the household, cleaning and cooking etc. mostly fall to women. Due to their higher levels of hormones related to empathy and nurturing they also take on greater emotional responsibility for the development and well-being of their children and loved ones. Yet in many organizations the idea of work-life balance is ridiculed as a failed ideal. In these organizations women are told that they can receive the same opportunities as men when they make the same commitment to their work. This might be legitimate if the contributions that women make at work were interchangeable with men’s contributions. If leaders of organizations do not believe that women’s holistic thinking and soft power traits of social intelligence, active collaboration, and value driven innovation bring a distinctive competitive advantage they will treat them like interchangeable miners in their salt mines.

The third reason is perhaps the most frustrating. My decades of experience helping companies navigate the stormy seas of cultural evolution and leadership excellence have revealed a disturbing observation. Generally, women are not proactive advocates of their distinctive value. And they seem reluctant to actively support other women as they ascend into leadership. Of course there are many exceptions to my last observation but it is what I see too often. I have noticed that women seem very comfortable working in peer teams. Yet if one is chosen to become a leader often the un-chosen women begin to distance themselves and even become critical of their former peer. This even has a name. It’s called the prom queen effect.(This is when a group of high school girls become jealous and gossipy when one of them becomes the prom queen.) This of course is not exclusively a woman problem. Men are frequently dysfunctionally competitive and downright cutthroat with their male colleagues. What disturbs me about women behaving this way is that they need all the mutual support they can get as a disadvantaged group.

So this is what I told hundreds of extremely smart professional women last night. There is ample proof that having significant numbers of women in all levels of leadership lead businesses to have distinct competitive advantages, especially in innovation. (A good starting place to examine the research is found in the Strategic Management Journal, September 2012.) Proactively working together to create a culture that approaches work achievement through the feminine strengths of holistic thinking, inclusion, and agile collaboration is a very smart thing to do…not just for women but also for your enterprise. Now here are the three simple habits I told last night’s audience that they can start doing to drive their culture forward:

PLUS: Women need to “plus” each other. This means when you’re in a meeting and one of your female colleagues makes a suggestion or offers an insight that you immediately seize on the kernel of wisdom and “plus” it. You give her attribution by name saying something like this… “I think Kathy’s point that a root cause of missing deadlines may be not having the entire team meet together often enough is right on target…” then proceed with your point which builds on Kathy’s. The key to “plussing” is using the person’s name that you were trying to amplify and linking your point to hers. “Plussing” each other is very important because women report they often feel invisible in meetings. They tell me that they will frequently make a suggestion that no one even acknowledges. Then three minutes later a male will make the same suggestion and all of a sudden that male becomes the smartest person in the room. This, they tell me, is very frustrating!

PUSH: Women need to push each other to take on greater responsibility and “sell” their good ideas. As I’ve written before, there was a mistaken notion that women are less confident than men. The research actually says that women only behave less confidently. Internally women are just as confident as men in their ideas, perceptions and decisions. Yet women are less likely to assert their points of view, ask for a promotion or take an unpopular position. For women to make a positive impact on organizations they need to push each other to say what they think, present their ideas, voice their criticisms and contribute all that they can. So when women hear other women expressing doubt as to whether they should “go for it” they need to push each other upward.

PROMOTE: Women in leadership positions should promote the careers of other women. The best women leaders I have worked with have aggressively and consistently fought for big opportunities for younger women to leapfrog forward in their careers. It is very encouraging when a young woman knows that her career opportunities are being promoted when she is not in the room.

If you are a woman in business you are in a disadvantaged group. A minority group is disadvantaged when treating them equally to the advantaged group perpetuates unfairness. In most business organizations work-obsessed males have set the standards of success behavior. As long as those standards and expectations are unquestioned women will be disadvantaged. Yet women do not have to be victimized. When they act together using the simple habits of PLUS, PUSH and PROMOTE they can change the business culture. And that would be a big PLUS!

Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel: Building Love, Breaking Barriers

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Rob Swymer

Nelson Mandela left us in 2013, but his wife, Graça Machel, remains an endearing symbol of his generous spirit and leadership. She’s still hard at work in Africa, promoting a vision she shared with Mandela – that we can achieve anything when we work collectively rather than individually. Graça Machel has played an historic role in two African nations, Mozambique and South Africa. After her marriage to former Mozambique president Samora Machel ended after a fatal plane crash in 1986 she married again in 1998. This time, to an iconic figure who possesed the same values and visionary leadership that she held dear – Nelson Mandela. An historic situation arose that made her the first woman in history to have been the First Lady of two different countries.

In true generous spirit, Mandela gave the world a gift on his 89th birthday when he announced the formation of The Elders – a group that includes Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and nine other notable individuals.

In true generous spirit, Mandela gave the world a gift on his 89th birthday when he announced the formation of The Elders – a group that includes Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and nine other notable individuals. The Elders work globally and describe themselves as “independent global leaders working together for peace and human rights.” The goal Mandela set for The Elders was to use their almost 1,000 years of collective experience to work on solutions for seemingly insurmountable problems, such as climate change, HIV/AIDS and poverty, as well as to use their political independence to help resolve some of the world’s most intractable conflicts. Machel has led The Elders’ work on child marriage, and was the founder of Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage.

Not satisfied with settling on the title First Lady, Machel embarked on humanitarian work that took calculated risks to achieve results. She has challenged the staus quo business-as-usual mentality on many occassions while striving to deliver results for women and children. Mandela had always liked strong women and might be considered the ultimate male feminist. For him, democracy and gender equality were not separate issues.

His relationship with Machel created a formidable team that worked together on a global scale for the greater good, despite the onset of old age when many of their peers would have been seeking a more sedentary lifestyle. There was great respect and affection between them. Hillary Clinton recalled her fondest memory of the couple when she last saw them together: “What I like to remember is the way Madiba’s face would light up when he saw Graça come into a room or even heard her voice,” she says. “I think it is fair to say that Madiba had very good judgment and in Graça he found a partner worthy of his own incomparable soul.”

It was also a relationship forged on shared values and struggles. When Machel lost her first husband, Madiba wrote to her offering condolences and she replied, “From within your vast prison you have brought a ray of light into my hour of darkness.” A schoolteacher turned freedom fighter, she served as Mozambique’s Minister of Education for nearly 15 years. Under Machel’s leadership, primary school enrolment increased from only 40 percent in 1975 to more than 90 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls by 1989.

Under Machel’s leadership, primary school enrolment increased from only 40 percent in 1975 to more than 90 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls by 1989.

At the height of the recent financial crisis, she listened to talk of restructuring the financial system and analyzing what had gone wrong. She called a group of young people in the financial sector and said, “Look, moments of crisis are moments of opportunity.” From that sentiment, Machel started a powerful network of African women in finance that has already held three summits attended by ministers of finance, along with the CEOs of the largest financial banks and institutions on the continent. “We now have huge support from the African Development Bank and we engage with women in financial institutions who need to be encouraged to take up leadership positions,” says Machel.

“One of the things we’ve succeeded in doing with this network is creating new faces and voices within the financial sector; not only in Africa but within global institutions too. We’re not just trying to change the financial landscape but also to influence the thinking within financial institutions that will bring about more opportunities for women.” Many organizations talk about how critical health and education are for women, but access to credit, and being able to start and grow a business, is at the core of whether or not women and girls will have economic opportunities. It’s an area that is increasingly being recognized as critical to the development of emerging economies. Machel’s work with The Elders on child marriage and her studies on children in conflict may be highly symbolic, but have an important role to play in changing a world where women and children are increasingly the victims of conflict – more than at any time in history.

“The Elders work with countries in conflict in a very subtle way,” says Machel.

“The Elders work with countries in conflict in a very subtle way,” says Machel. “We encourage people in an informal setting to look into each other’s minds and recognize that they belong to the same nation.” The issue of child marriage is a slightly more challenging one, ingrained, as it often is, among cultural and religious beliefs. Machel believes there are situations that allow much to be achieved in this area, but that you need to be strategic. Simple finger wagging won’t work.

“I like to use the phrase ‘sowing the seeds of social change’,” says Machel. “You need to give people incentives.” Rather than moral lectures, Machel believes that by presenting the economic benefits against child marriage, she will have a greater effect. “We talk about the importance of education and keeping children in school until they complete at least secondary level,” she says. “This is an age when you’re old enough to make a decision on whether you want to get married, to whom and whether you want to have a child. No child of 10 or 14 years old has a body that is ready for marriage and because they are then expected to have children themselves, we highlight the relationship between child marriage and maternal mortality and child mortality,” says Machel.

These facts help people see for themselves the economic short-sightedness of risking the lives of family members for social norms, rather than ensuring their longevity and reaping long-term benefits. “We need to change mindsets and allow the child to grow and have opportunities,” says Machel. “It’s a long and difficult process and we work with community and religious leaders. Organized religion in Africa has a huge network and through these institutions, we work to protect children from marriage.

We are building a new generation of women and also changing the mindset of people – that if a child is born a girl, she has the same rights as a boy.”

The Future of Gender Diversity

Posted on March 24, 2015January 17, 2026 by Real Leaders Inc.

Three prominent female leaders from across the globe offer their views on the role of diversity and how it might shape future development in their regions.

1. Erica Pedruzzi Member of the Board of Directors, C4B Compliance for Business, Argentina

What is your personal view on the role of diversity in the South American region currently and its implication for the future development in the region?

From my perspective and personal experience, women remain significantly underrepresented in the workforce at higher levels in South America. Although gender diversity has been traditionally overlooked in the region, it seems that over the last decades there have been an increasing number of organizations focused on assessing the current scenario in Latin America, aiming both to identify the reasons of such underrepresentation, and to promote an increase in the rates of women’s participation in top management in South America. Some of these surveys and research indicate that, although there have been some improvements in recent years, gender equality is still a distant dream in the entire region.

I believe that the most relevant reason for the lack of gender diversity in South America is a combination of, on one hand, a lack of adequate efforts by the companies to promote women to top management positions, and, on the other hand, an ever present reality in the lives of a vast majority of women in South America: most of them need to combine their work responsibilities with their family daily responsibilities, which are usually undertaken almost exclusively by the women, given the fact that they are still considered as the primary family caretaker, and household chores and children upbringing are still considered mostly women-related activities.

Hence, in my opinion, usually are women themselves those who choose not to move on climbing the corporate ladder, therefore lowering their career aspirations or even quitting their jobs once they realize that they will not succeed in comfortably juggling with their work-life balance.

I believe that a future increase in women’s participation rates in top management positions in South America will largely depend on: (i) changing society’s mentality towards the need to share equally the burden of family responsibilities between husband and wife; and (ii) strengthening the companies’ perception that an increase in female representation in senior management will greatly benefit companies, therefore causing them to improve their efforts to hire, retain and promote talented women in the region.

2. Dr. Florence Eid-Oakden Chief Economist, Founder & CEO, Arabia Monitor, UK

What is your personal view on the role of diversity in the MENA region currently and its implication for the future development in the region?

There has been significant progress in recent years relating to human development and growth for women in the MENA region with countries like Kuwait and the UAE in the lead in terms of progress. The region has closed 60% of its overall gender gap in 2014. However, it still lags behind other regions including Sub-Saharan Africa in terms of gender diversity. Despite experiencing the biggest absolute improvement compared to 2013, the region remains in sixth position.

On the Educational Attainment sub-index, the region surpassed Asia and the Pacific, ranking in fourth place with 93% of the educational gender gap closed. The Middle East and North Africa region ranks fifth on the Health and Survival sub-index, with 97% of the health gender gap being closed, slightly ahead of the Sub-Saharan Africa region. Finally, on the Political Empowerment sub-index, the region continues to rank sixth, with only 8% of the political gender gap closed.

Despite these modest rankings, the region has seen the third-largest improvement on the overall Index score, just behind North America and Latin America and the Caribbean when compared to 2006. The region has also shown the third largest relative change compared to its own 2006 overall Index score. The highest-ranking economies of the region have made vast investments in increasing women’s education levels in the last decade.

In Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, tertiary enrolment rates for women are higher than those of men. In 2014, Kuwait was the top-performing country among the Arab countries due to an increase in the estimated earned income ratio. The UAE experienced the highest percentage change relative to its own 2006 score on the Political Empowerment sub-index. Saudi Arabia continues to be the lowest-performing country among high-income countries, but is among the five countries with the highest percentage change relative to their own 2006 score.

According to the Ministry of Labour, the number of women employed in the private sector in Saudi Arabia rose by 84% in 2013 to around 400,000 employees, an increase of 183,000 from 2012. In the 2015 municipal elections scheduled this year, women would be allowed to vote for the first time following the King’s promise in 2011.

According to the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), there has been a dramatic increase in the participation of Omani women in the public and private sectors, as well as a growing trend towards female Omani students opting for private school education and continuing on to pursue higher education.

Between 2002 and 2014, female labour participation rate in MENA has increased by over 20% and participation rates are especially high in the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. Arab business women are now at the forefront of global markets and their business networks will play an increasing role in promoting trade and creating jobs in MENA. Women in MENA now operate in diverse business sectors with a higher proportion in banking and finance (29%), construction and industry (26%) and retail (17%).

3. Brigitte Wolff, ME International Director, PwC Strategy&, China

What is your personal view on the role of diversity in the Chinese region currently and its implication for the future development in the region?

A long time ago Mao Zedong was quoted: “Women carry half the sky!” Meaning that women not only have the same duties as the men but also the same rights. Traditionally the work women and men had to do, was identical. This is in many ways still the case in modern China: Almost 50% of enrolled tertiary students and tertiary graduates, as well of enrolled graduate students were female in 2012. 45% of the Chinese workforce are women. Over 70% of women between the ages of 18-64 are employed.

It is much more a normal situation that a woman works. Particularly when she has one or two children she does not stop her work, but returns after her maternity leave. This is possible because the respective parents are raising the grandchildren, as their parents had also risen their grandchildren.

But the gender pay gap between women and men in China is 69% – meaning women earned on average 31% less than men for doing similar work. Diversity is not that an important issue as we experience for example in Germany. The Chinese society has long accepted the role of the women in business. So it is very normal that women are in leading positions and/or are entrepreneurs. Still some trends can be observed: on one hand side the mother of richer families tend to stay at home longer, herself taking care of the kids.

On the other hand it is quite normal that mothers return in their position or even higher after the child started with the school, not necessarily in the same firm. Quite often young girls have more difficulties to find a job compared to young men. But later on the job, the millions of qualified Chinese women have an excellent reputation regarding their working quality and ethics. My estimation is that it will be crucial for the further development in the region, that China is using the full potential of its work force, both in terms of numbers and qualification as well as of diversity.

As in other countries the gender gap pay issue has to be solved as well as the female percentage in the boards and the government has to increase.

All three ladies are part of the Global Female Leaders 2015 community, taking place at the prestigious Adlon Kempinski Berlin on 21-22 April. To join them, visit our website or contact Aleksandar Pavlovski, Marketing and Media Manager, for more information: Aleks.Pavlovski@managementcircle.com

Newborn Girls to Achieve Gender Equality by Age 81

Posted on March 7, 2015January 17, 2026 by Real Leaders Inc.

Progress for women in the past 20 years has been unacceptably slow, with areas of stagnation and regression. This is the conclusion of an authoritative global review of progress on gender equality, to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, which UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will present to Members States on 9 March. The survey covers an unprecedented 167 countries, drawing on rich inputs from governments and civil society.

Prepared for the 59th Commission on the Status of Women, it shows that despite some progress, world leaders have not done nearly enough to act on commitments made in the visionary Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. “The Secretary-General’s report makes this very clear: The disappointing gap between the norms and implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action points to a collective failure of leadership on progress for women,” says Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (pictured above).

“The leaders entrusted with the power to realize the promises made in Beijing have failed women and girls.” Given the findings of the report, UN Women today launched a new initiative “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality” to galvanize government pledges for action, as part of UN Women’s wider Beijing+20 campaign. A dedicated web platform www.unwomen.org/stepitup will draw global attention to all new commitments made by countries around the world.

“Today, we are calling on governments, everywhere in the world, to Step It Up,” says Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka. “By 2030 at the latest, we want to live in a world where at least half of all parliamentarians, university students, CEOs, civil society leaders and any other category, are women. Real progress requires 50-50.”

In 1995, 189 countries endorsed the Platform for Action, but today, no country has achieved gender equality. At the current pace, it will take 81 years to achieve gender parity in economic participation, and some 50 years to reach parity in parliamentary representation. The report finds some areas of progress, such as an upturn in the number of countries removing discriminatory laws and adopting legislation to stop violence against women and girls. Girls are close to being half of all students in primary schools.

Women’s labour force participation has risen; maternal mortality has declined by 45 per cent since 1990. Yet these gains contrast with the fact that despite women’s better education, they hold some of the worse jobs, while the gender pay gap is a universal phenomenon. Violence against women and girls persists in all countries, taking many horrific forms.

Women are far from equal in terms of their roles in leadership in either public or private institutions. Chronic underinvestment hobbles the pursuit of gender equality across all areas. The report outlines some of the main factors holding back progress, including conflict, economic crises, volatile food and energy prices, fallout from climate change, and rising extremism and backlash against women’s rights.

Discriminatory norms remain deeply rooted. Key elements of change encompass transforming norms and stereotypes; transforming economies to achieve gender equality, such as through decent jobs; ensuring women’s full and equal participation in all levels of decision-making; significantly boosting investments in gender equality; and strengthening accountability for upholding women’s and girls’ rights. The year 2015 provides a historic moment to rapidly accelerate progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment.

In September, Heads of State and Government from every corner of the world are slated to attend a Summit where they will agree on a blueprint for development for the next 15 years.

African Women Can Transform The Continent

Posted on February 1, 2015January 17, 2026 by Real Leaders Inc.

African women can and will be agents of change for the continent’s transformation at all levels. This was the message delivered by the African Development Bank’s Special Envoy on Gender (SEOG), Geraldine J. Fraser-Moleketi, during a Pre-Summit Ministerial Consultative Meeting on Gender that took place on January 20-22 ahead of the 24th Summit of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “Promoting women’s empowerment and gender equality must remain an option, but be placed at the heart of the efforts of the AfDB to promote inclusive growth in Africa,” she said.

“Women continue to play a central role in putting an end to extreme poverty, promoting education and achieving economic growth across the continent.” Her words come as the African Union declared 2015 as the Year of Women’s Empowerment and Development towards Africa’s Agenda 2063.

The theme of the AU Summit also coincides with the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and its Platform for Action (1995), the 5th Anniversary of the African Women’s Decade (2010-2020), the 15th Anniversary of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325, and the finalization of the Post 2015 development agenda.

‘Let’s be audacious in moving the African post-2015 Agenda forward’ – Geraldine J. Fraser-Moleketi AfDB’s Special Envoy on Gender The Special Envoy on Gender said that the African Development Bank strongly believes that that, throughout Africa, women are a powerful force for growth and development; they make important contributions to the economy as workers and entrepreneurs, and to the welfare of their families.

In many African countries, however, unequal access to property, discrimination in the labour market, and business-related obstacles hinder women from contributing even more to their countries’ growth and well-being. Removing such obstacles can not only help to empower women, but also to unlock the full economic potential of their nations. Fraser-Moleketi emphasized that Africa’s growth story has not been inclusive.

Increased and sustained efforts are required to empower women to contribute to and benefit from this transformation process, she added. Releasing the economic potential of women provides the opportunity to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty and ensure that Africa’s growth is both inclusive and sustainable.

Facilitating women’s economic empowerment efforts is at the heart of AfDB’s Ten Year Strategy, the Special Gender Envoy said, adding that the increasing disparity of income that the continent is currently witnessing can not only be stopped; it can be reversed.

As 2015 marks the year of Women’s Economic Empowerment by African Heads of State and Governments, the stage has been set for an increased focus on the role of women as key players in Africa’s economic growth and structural transformation.

Emma Watson: Are You Man Enough For Equality?

Posted on January 27, 2015January 17, 2026 by Real Leaders Inc.

Since the HeForShe launch in New York last September I think it would be fair to say that my colleagues and I have been stunned by the response. The HeForShe conference was watched over 11 million times, sparking 1.2 billion social media conversations, culminating in the HeForShe hashtag becoming so popular that Twitter painted it on the walls of its headquarters and men from almost every country in the world made the commitment.

Everyone from Desmond Tutu to Prince Harry to Hilary Clinton to Yoko Ono have issued their support or contacted us since September 20th. Everything from marathons being run, merchandise being created, 15 year old boys writing to national newspapers deploring female discrimination, young girls collecting hundreds of signatures – it’s all happened in the last 4 months. I couldn’t have DREAMED it (!) but it’s happened.

Thank you so much for watching and thank you so much for your support. What is Impact 10x10x10? It’s about engaging governments, businesses and universities and having them make concrete commitments to gender equality but I want to hear from the human beings that are behind these organizations.

I spoke about my story in September – what are your stories? Girls who have been your mentors? Parents did you make sure you treated your children equally, and if so, how have you done it? Husbands have you been supporting your female partner privately so that she can fulfill her dreams too? Young men have you spoken up in a conversation when a woman was casually degraded or dismissed? How did this affect you? How did this affect the woman you stepped up for? How did you take action when you became aware a woman was a victim of violence?

Businessmen have you mentored, supported, or engaged women in leadership positions? Writers have you challenged the language and imagery used to portray women? CEO’s have you implemented the women’s empowerment principles in your own company? What change have you seen? Are you someone that has been persuading men to become HeForShes and collecting their signatures for our website? How many have you got? We want to know. One of the biggest pieces of feedback I’ve had since my speech is that people want to help but they aren’t sure how best to do it. Men say they have signed the petition – What now?

The truth is the ‘what now’ is down to you. What your HeForShe commitment will be is personal. And there is no ‘best’ way – everything is valid. Decide what your commitment is, make it public, and then please report back to us on your progress so that we can share your story. We want to support, guide and reinforce your efforts. Impact 10x10x10 is about concrete commitments to change, the visibility of these commitments and the measurability of them too. How has the campaign impacted me so far?

I’ve had my breath taken away when a fan told me that since watching my speech she has stopped allowing herself to be beaten by her father. I’ve been stunned by the amount of men in my life that have contacted me since my speech to tell me to keep going and that they want to make sure their daughters are still alive to see a world where women have parity, economically and politically. While I would love to claim that the success of the HeForShe campaign is a direct result of my own incredible speechwriting skills. I know that it’s not. It’s because the ground is fertile. It’s my belief that there is a greater understanding than ever that women need to be equal participants in our homes, our societies, in our governments, and in our work places.

And they know that the world is being held back in every way because they are not. Women share this planet 50/50 and they are massively neglected and underrepresented, their potential astonishingly untapped. We are very excited to be launching Impact 10x10x10 to bring HeForShe into its next phase. If you’re a HeForShe – and I am assuming you are because otherwise you’d be at somebody else’s press conference right now – I’m here to ask you what is the impact you can have? How, what, where, when and with who? We want to help and we want to know.

If you agree with Emma, please sign our 5050×2020 gender balance pledge here

What Leadership Legacy Is Victoria’s Secret Leaving For Our Children?

Posted on December 3, 2014January 14, 2026 by Pino Bethencourt Gallagher

On today’s TV news Victoria’s Secret was showcased with their upcoming world-celebrated parade of angels. Admittedly the show they will put on in London in a few days is spectacular. No other fashion parade in the world creates as much expectation and interest. Servers and entire networks are said to have gone down as global internet surfers tried to watch the show. Under every parameter of modern society, Victoria’s Secret parades rule. This is what we call leadership. Is it? Really?

It our current ideals of leadership is where all our invisible demons begin to show themselves. Twenty-first century society has reduced leadership to the smallest, most insignificant meaning of the term. We think of leaders as those who win. Those who appear on global rankings, make the most money, have the most followers on twitter. If we are to believe our own books, news articles and business school cases, Victoria’s Secret models, Rihanna, Beyoncé and Madonna are role models to be followed and copied. Seriously? Do you agree with this? Will this be our legacy to our children?

I always dreamed I would call my first daughter Tara. I haven’t had any children yet. But one day I looked up where the name came from. Everybody remembers the famous movie “Gone with the wind”, where a female role model of her time, Scarlett O ‘Hara, fought for Red Butler’s love and the survival of her family’s ranch, named Tara. But Tara actually comes from the Hill of Tara in Ireland. And it is a symbol of what leadership meant to Celtic societies in Europe two thousand years ago. To them leadership was, above all, about loving Nature. The Hill of Tara is about forty minutes outside of Dublin by car.

For more than six thousand years people have been going to this mysteriously simple hill to perform life changing rituals. An ancient tomb passage and deep ridges on the ground are all that you can see today. They bear witness to burials of Celtic druids and old wooden constructions which housed banquets, competitions and the very special crowning of no less than 142 Celtic High Kings of Ireland. How can we compare this ancient yearly gathering of Celtic tribes in Ireland to dispute the honor of being proclaimed High King to the Victoria’s Secret fashion parades of our current era?

We may be ashamed to see how far we’ve strayed from fundamental values of life and respect of Nature. We may be angered to see how differently we now portray women and sexuality. We may be worried to imagine our daughters and sons aspiring to imitate fancy video clips and play with priceless jeweled bras they see only on the internet.

The Celts were probably the last civilization to treat women as equals in Europe. It’s interesting to read how the Romans and Greeks who fought them already treated women as helpless, needy objects to be made pretty and to be passed on from father to husband like cattle. They joked in their journals about how scary Celtic women seemed in comparison, strong warriors and decision makers that they were. Celtic women had the right to inherit property and to divorce if they didn’t love their husbands. Celtic women only married for love. And they ate everything they felt like eating without feeling judged.

Today’s most desired angels, our daughters’ role models of success and attractiveness and our sons’ objects of desire, are starving away in some five-star resort to try and look as skinny and pretty as possible for this year’s parade. The leader of the parade, that is, the most spectacular, sought-after lingerie model, will be crowned by a beautiful ensemble made up of expensive diamonds, rubies and the like, framed by architecturally designed wings of fantasy. The reasons for this regal honor will be invisible to most of us, and probably most unknown to her. She will be proclaimed a global queen of feminine beauty because she was born that way, and because she harshly disciplined her body all week to hide all its small defects, in order to fabricate the materialistic angel the world expects to see. I remember the first time I visited a Victoria’s Secret store in some city in the USA.

It was the biggest disappointment in my life. I’ve loved and admired lingerie since I was very young: the faultless design of Italian craftsmen, the sophisticated engineering of French lingerie manufacturers, or the cheeky playfulness in British brands. Victoria’s Secret, as it turns out, seems to bet all their talent on their yearly fashion show. The product itself is like falling out of Heaven straight into a Hell of mass production, just-in-time carelessness and overseas outsourcing to the cheapest manufacturer. Leading the market of lingerie sales is pursued by investing a huge portion of product margin into an elaborate, unreal one-day dream, where everything we see if faked, pushed up, dieted down, blown out of proportion.

The man crowned as High King in Celtic Ireland twenty centuries ago, in stark contrast, was chosen among all others because he was an example of the leadership ideals they all aspired to fulfill. Many tests and competitions took place during these yearly gatherings, to prove which King was most intimately in tune with Mother Nature. Horse bones line the deepest layers of Tara soil because Epona, the Celtic Goddess of Natural abundance, was represented as a horse.

Pagan rituals of different sorts allowed aspiring candidates to prove themselves worthy of symbolically wedding Epona, thus guaranteeing good crops and plentiful living for all kingdoms under his rule. To the European Celts leadership was never about photo-shopped beauty or fancy marketing campaigns to hide mediocre wear and tear. It was about authenticity, about total respect to every single resource Nature provided, about men and women joining as equals to decide what was best for their young ones. It was about real, flesh-and-bone women with tummies and bad moods and circles under their eyes from fighting hardships alongside their husbands.

It was about taking what you needed from the planet in order to give back everything you managed to create with it. When you compare these two opposed examples of human celebration you may think that the fashion parade looks prettier. It looks great. It just feels really, really wrong. On so many levels I can only briefly point out in this short article of today. I love the Hill of Tara. I am in love with it. All those men and women thousands of years ago were also in love with Nature. They were in love with each other in ways we modern humans can’t begin to understand from our comfort-lined lives far from wild emotion and instinctive Nature. And when you are in love with something or someone, there is nothing you wouldn’t do to save it from harm.

No amount of money, fame or global admiration could drive you to tell the world that being happy is about a fancy show full of unrealistic images of perfection. Our angels of today hide the demons of our consumeristic culture. Our female role models hide the esthetically ugly things that make real women the most desirable creatures. And our men can’t feel like heroes or High Kings because they don’t know how to honor the Goddesses of abundance in their lives.

If I bear a daughter I will call her Tara and I will teach her to fall in love with her body exactly the way it is. I will wish her to fall in love with a man who sees a Goddess of abundance in her during her ugliest moments, and I will fight to show her that falling in love with Nature is the greatest legacy I could ever leave behind me.

What Leadership Legacy Is Victoria’s Secret Leaving For Our Children?

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Pino Bethencourt Gallagher

Can You Hold Yourself to a Higher Standard Than Self-Interest?

Posted on December 3, 2014January 14, 2026 by Will Marre

Business is bad. I am not referring to financial performance but rather moral performance. Capitalism is amoral. It has no intrinsic moral agenda. You can start an enterprise that makes boatloads of money selling cigarettes or selling treatments for the lung cancer it causes. Actually both these business models are currently thriving. And as far as most Wall Street investors are concerned there is no distinction between a business whose product is designed to kill people and a business whose products are designed to save people.

How did we get here? According to the patron saint economist of modern capitalism, Milton Friedman, the purpose of business is to make money as efficiently as possible. And that’s it. According to his doctrine the only ethical obligation a business leader has is to his investors. Friedman proclaimed the glories of amoral self-interest in a series of PBS programs that aired in the 1970s.

His ideas transformed our MBA schools and sanctified the dogma that “greed is good.” So how is this working for us? Obviously some people at the top of the capitalism food-chain are doing spectacularly well. Today’s radically materialistic capitalism also justifies workplaces in which employees have no job security, no earned retirement, and are continually told to do more with less. Business leaders have harnessed tools of modern technology to keep their employees working from dawn to midnight.

We are told that our life-balance has become both silly and irrelevant in our highly competitive economy. So get over it…“do whatever it takes.” Yet many of the same companies make so much money that they literally don’t know what to do with it. So activist investors insist leaders use the profits you gave your nights and weekends for to buy back their company’s stock.

This is simply a magic trick to try to temporarily increase the stock price so that short-term investors can cash out. How could this happen? I spent over three decades advising CEOs and executives of large publicly traded corporations. So I believe I have an answer to how it happened. It’s called Hard Power. Here’s how it works. Brain research that correlates personality types with neural networks reveal that the mental model of highly competitive people tends to focus on power, status, control and self-interest.

The areas of the brain that evaluate stimulus and drive action of hard-charging, self-focused people light up when opportunities for personal gain are detected. This focus is a significant advantage in hierarchical organizations. Since hierarchies concentrate power in the few people at the top, people who are power-driven tend to succeed. Put simply, most business organizations are rigged to reward self-centered, status seeking, goal-focused individuals. This is not a criticism. It is a description of reality. The advantage of highly competitive people is their mastery of hard power.

Hard power concentrates energy on goal setting and accountability. The most motivating goals are tangible…achievements that can be easily measured. And there is nothing easier to measure than money. As long as we cling to the insane idea that the primary purpose of business is to make money hard power leaders will define our future.

I am concerned that the myopia of hard power thinking will make the world more dangerous and less sustainable than it needs to be. Technology is the wildcard. Today, technology allows the destructive forces of what used to take thousands of people to do to be concentrated in the hands of very few. I’m not just referring to terrorism but also the fate of our entire international financial system, energy grid, clean air, plentiful water, healthy oceans and all of the rest that underlie our quality of life.

It’s simple. We are more interdependent now than ever before in history and the flaws of hard power and an amoral view of business creates unprecedented personal vulnerability.

So, what’s the solution? Well it’s not soft power. Soft power is rooted in co-operation for mutual benefit. It relies on empathy, collaboration, inclusiveness, open-mindedness and an active interest in the well-being of others. Personality studies of soft power oriented people show they are most interested in helping others achieve their goals. They also want to relieve suffering and solve problems. In most organizations soft power people are found in mid-level management. Hard power people make the goals and soft power people help them achieve them.

Soft power people remain stuck in middle management because they are lousy at speaking up, advocating for their self-interest and pressing their agenda.

Often they feel victimized and overwhelmed. Many soft power people fall into the trap of “learned helplessness,” mal-adapting to an ever-decaying status quo. It shouldn’t surprise you that developmental brain research indicates that most men are primarily wired to use hard power and that women’s brains are designed to rely on soft power. Although we don’t know for sure, it appears that about midway through gestation a typical male baby’s developing brain becomes bathed in testosterone which pre-wires later cognitive development for linear thinking, competitiveness, self-interest and struggles with impulse control. Female baby’s brains are bathed in estrogen which appears to trigger their brains to develop more holistic thinking patterns, long-term thinking, empathy and collaborative intelligence. (Although this is not settled neuro-science it sure explains a lot.) When you look at the design advantages of a typical female brain; holistic, long-term, empathetic and collaborative, you can immediately recognize the inherent leadership advantages these abilities bring to modern business organizations. Unfortunately, I found that much of the time these advantages go unrewarded.

That’s because business organizations are defectively designed to reward hard power and exploit soft power.

This is not some ivory tower theory. I’ve been successfully helping women advance into the highest levels of business leadership for over two decades. I usually do this through one-on-one leadership development. But it is not enough. I have a front row seat to the advancing descent of un-inspired business leadership and the frustration of aspiring women leaders who were being told that to be successful they must become like men. Although Sheryl Sandberg has made a great commercial success of her “Lean In” advice to women which is that they should just ‘man up,’ I have yet to speak to an audience of women who believe it is realistic or desirable. So what we have is confusion. It seems that many women aspire to power not to change things but to succeed in the system that is giving us the world we already have. I am concerned that I do not hear often enough the idea that if women ran things, things would be better. There seems to be a wavering confidence in the unique mindset that women bring to setting higher goals, a balanced work-life and accepting the mantle of moral authority.

I believe that we are at a major turning point.

The purpose of business can be forever elevated as a means to improve the quality of life of everyone–customers, employees, suppliers and communities. In a sane and sustainable world, profits should be a byproduct of genuine value creation. I believe that women are naturally designed to be the new voice of business leadership. Not one that mimics the shortcomings of hard power but rather the amplifier of Smart Power. Smart Power is the synthesis of the strengths of results-focused hard power and human-focused soft power. So no, I am not advocating for all women leadership teams. The best leadership teams I coach have a healthy balance of strong men and women who respect each other’s values and viewpoints in the pursuit of human-centered innovation…value that matters to people. I am not an unrealistic dreamer.

A great team of women clients and I recently led our first Leadership SPA (Smart Power Academy) for 33 women leaders from major organizations. It was designed to be visionary and career changing as well as practical and realistic. What happened was something far greater than I anticipated. The combined energy of these leaders created individual strategic aspirations and career roadmaps far more powerful than anything I could’ve anticipated. This same team of women is getting together in a few days to forge a path forward.

I don’t exactly know what the future will bring but what I do know is that as a global society we simply cannot keep doing what we have been doing. And I sincerely believe this. To go in a higher direction we need women leaders to bring their vision forward and insist that we hold ourselves to a higher standard than self-interest.

There is no better time than right now. (NOTE: I’m in the final stages of writing a new book titled Why We Need Women to Lead. This blog, except for the last paragraph, is a draft of the introduction.

Some of you may be familiar with the essence of the content from my blogs and speeches. I would appreciate any input you might have.)