BOLD Beginnings - Women2020

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BOLD Beginnings

Bold

Beginnings

Bold Beginnings

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he Women2020 platform – a stakeholder dialogue on the contribution of women to achieving the Europe 2020 strategy for growth and jobs – was formally launched at DIGITALEUROPE in Brussels on 8 March 2013, in honour of the 102nd celebration of International Women’s Day. The present report summarizes the discussion and conclusions of the Women2020 launch event – attended by forty invited speakers and participants and followed online by eighty via web streamed channels and Twitter – and is the first in a series of reports from each Women2020 dialogue taking place in 2013, to be released collectively in a final “Women2020 Action Plan” in December 2013.

Ms. Neelie Kroes

Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner in Charge of Digital Agenda for Europe:

To launch the Women2020 platform, Ms. Cheryl Miller, Executive Director of Zen Digital Europe and Founder of Women2020, invited high-level representatives of public and private sector organisations to kick off discussions and debate on the subjects of the platform. Women2020 partners, invited speakers and participants, held an open discussion on the suitability of the Europe 2020 strategy in addressing issues impacting Europe’s women, set priorities for the Strategy facing 2020, and initiated discussion on topics to be further elaborated in forthcoming Women2020 dialogues, including: n n n n

n “We need to fill half a million ICT jobs in Europe. And half of them, or even more, belong to women!”

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Women in STEM for Smart Growth; Women in Enterprise for Sustainable Growth; Women in Leadership for Inclusive Growth; and Young Women for Europe 2020.

Ms. Mary Collins

Policy Officer at the European Women’s Lobby:

Women2020 launch participants were also invited to take part in the launch of the Female Board Pool Belgium database and to enjoy a premiere screening of a video featuring Vice-President of the European Commission, Ms. Neelie Kroes, promoting the 2013 Girls in ICT Day activities of the European Commission, European Parliament and United Nations International Telecom Union.

n “Women’s hourly wage is 17% less than men’s. That gap has decreased slightly, not because women are earning more but because men’s hourly rate has decreased as a direct impact of the financial crisis.”

n Europe 2020 as a point of departure As Gender Expert to the Bureau of European Policy Advisers for the President of the European Commission, Dr. Agnes Hubert initiated the discussion of women and the Europe 2020 strategy by observing that the term “gender equality“ does not feature in the Europe 2020 strategy, though in her opinion, the Europe 2020 strategy has a lot of potential for women if studied carefully. Dr. Hubert contended that the phrase ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive’, for example, adds a A recent OECD study level of social innovation – the confirms that full gender attempt to find innovative equality would lead to a answers to societal needs – to the strategy. This aspect of 12.5% increase in GDP social innovation had been missing previously when the focus was on per capita. If you want two drivers, ‘growth’ and ‘technology’, without wondering what impact growth, you hire women! they would have on society.

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“We need to bring gender equality into our policies and bring it back onto the political agenda as a collective issue rather than an individual one so that we can begin to look at the different aspects. It is a chain that stands together: care goes with pay, pay goes with pension etc.”

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n “Gender equality used to be part of unemployment issues and then shifted to fundamental rights.”

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“The discussion about women on boards is about power, about sharing power.”

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“The strategy makes some groups of women invisible. Women aren’t a homogeneous group. Failing to look at that is failing to remove barriers.” n

n “Part time work means part time rights means part time pension and may lead to full time poverty!”

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Ms. Saskia Van Uffelen

Dr. Hubert concluded that although women are not yet the architects of the digital world, the strategy clearly gives women the objective to be active within the Digital Agenda for Europe, and to make sure that women have a voice at all levels, including the position of power to change things. Ms. Mary Collins, Policy Officer at the European Women’s Lobby (EWL), presented EWL’s recent report on the Europe 2020 strategy. With the Europe 2020 strategy in its third year of implementation, EWL called its report ‘Ticking Clocks’ to express the sense of urgency to put gender equality back on the agenda before 2015 when the Europe 2020 strategy will be evaluated. She emphasised that it is our legal and moral obligation to include gender equality now so that policymakers can give it financial priority and set up an appropriate framework to measure results by 2020. Ms. Collins stressed that it is important to ask whether there is still space to address the gender dimension in Europe 2020. With economic governance focussing on tackling austerity without considering the gender dimension, women are even more at risk. Women’s organisations face funding cuts and women are hit the hardest by the economic crisis and therefore risk falling off the radar. In addition, EWL notices a language shift that is potentially harmful for women employment as well. The ‘75% employment rate for women and men’ is now rephrased as ‘75% of the active population’ and therefore excludes women even more since their initial employment rate is closer to sixty percent.

CEO of Bull Belux and first Digital Champion of Belgium:

The Women2020 initiative could be important to counter these trends, to build networks and partnerships and put gender equality back onto the political agenda, in a streamlined manner.

n “If you want to put a national target which is factual, it will be easy for some and difficult for others since nations and regions are diverse.”

n The private sector perspective

“Within Bull which has more than 350 employees, we currently have 33% female employees. My objective is to increase it to 40% which is a good target for the ICT sector.”

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Dr. Agnes Hubert

Gender Expert, Bureau of European Policy Advisers for the President of the European Commission: “If there was one thing to have as a clear objective, it would be to be active within the digital agenda and make sure that we have women at all levels, that they have a real voice, including the position of power to change things.”

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DIGITALEUROPE contributed to the launch of Women2020 because it believes in the importance of open stakeholder networks when working on result-oriented implementations. Mr. John Higgins, Director General of DIGITALEUROPE – the European Information & Communications Technology Industry Association – shared a message on the importance of having a concrete plan when Europe 2020 initiatives such as the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs reach the execution phase. The grand coalition recognises that plenty of talented people are unemployed while Europe, in parallel, faces the challenge of filling approximately half a million digital jobs by 2015. DIGITALEUROPE sees more women in the ICT sector and a stronger focus on e-skills as key advantages to achieving this target in a positive partnership with stakeholders such as the European Commission. Ms. Saskia Van Uffelen, CEO of Bull Belux and first Digital Champion of Belgium, agreed that the exclusion of women from digital society is a major weakness to overcome. She commended the Women2020 platform as an initiative to get more women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and ICT leadership and vowed as CEO of Bull Belux to increase representation of women in her organisation to 40% across the organisation as well as at management level, within as little as two years.

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Digital education is important. Getting women active to fix the economy also means giving them the right digital skills to do so!

She pointed out, however, that avoiding a digital gap by increasing women’s e-skills has to start early on, basically in primary school. This would require a thorough revision of the educational system in many European countries including her home country, Belgium. In parallel, Europe would have to stimulate entrepreneurship and

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Ms. Zita Gurmai

set more ambitious leadership targets. Finally, she stressed that a difference could be made even before 2020 if, rather than starting new initiatives, a consolidated inventory of good initiatives for further promotion and dissemination would be made.

Member of European Parliament and President of the Party of European Socialists Women:

n The European policymaker viewpoint

“We must finally close the gender pay gap. How can women still accept to work six days a week to earn the same than their fathers, husbands, brothers or sons?”

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Ms. Zita Gurmai, Member of European Parliament and President of the Party of European Socialists (PES) Women’s group, advocated four areas requiring attention in order to better engage women in achieving the Europe 2020 vision. She stressed that the general employment target of 75% described in the Europe 2020 strategy does not consider the fact that women employment is only 60% overall. The strategy therefore puts women at a disadvantage from the onset. This can only be remedied with specific targets for women employment.

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Gender equality is about democracy at the end of the day. The question should not be ‘Are you for quotas?’ The question should be ‘Why do we need to have this discussion in 2013?‘

“We need to focus on and feel responsible for the next generation of young women. Demand the implementation of youth guarantees throughout Europe. Guarantee equal access to the labour market for women and men and this from a young age in order to prevent creating bigger gaps at a later stage. ”

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Ms. Gurmai also called for immediate action to close the current gender pay gap of 16% between men and women by two percent per year, including the setup of non-compliance measures if required. She explained that PES supports the 40% women on corporate boards directive from Vice-president of the European Commission and Commissioner responsible for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, Viviane Reding, and aims to strengthen the proposal even further by, for example, adding concrete timelines.

Ms. Gurmai’s final message was to focus on the next generation so as to guarantee that girls obtain access to the labour market also in curricula like engineering, mathematics, entrepreneurship etc. The PES campaign Your Future is My Future serves as an example in that respect.

n “Every tool which advances gender

equality by 2020 is essential.”

Ms. Silvana Koch-Mehrin, Member of European Parliament, seconded previous statements made and shared how the European Parliament has progressed and what it does to promote gender equality. The European Parliament’s first elections in 1979 resulted in 16% female MEPs whereas the current total is 35%. Most member countries have a higher female representation in the European parliament than in the national parliament; although some countries are outliers in that respect.

“Binding legislation is the only way to make a difference without waiting for a change of mentality.”

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“Unfortunately, the text of the Directive is very weak, but thanks to the co-decision procedure it is now up to my colleagues and me at the European Parliament to amend the texts in order to strengthen it in the way PES Women has been pushing for it for years.”

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She emphasised the importance of publicly naming outliers to keep up the pressure. The recent elections in Cyprus where no woman was elected would be one good example and the fact that Malta has zero percent female MEPs and only ten percent females in national parliament another one.

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If you have a more diverse boardroom, decisions are taken differently. This also goes for crisis management. The financial crisis would have been different if it had been Lehman Sisters.

Ms. Koch-Mehrin seconded Ms. Collins’ statements about the economic crisis – which she called ‘a male crisis: created by men, steered by men unable to find easy solutions and… the crisis mainly affects women!’ – and added that one effective weapon, as many scientific studies show, is to have gender diversity on company boards and in higher management positions. In November 2012, 50 MEPs formed a coalition to put pressure on political parties to have a 50-50 gender representation when elected, including for higher posts such as Vice Presidents and Group Leaders in the European Parliament. The coalition will keep up the pressure so that the fifty percent also becomes a target for the European Commission that has currently only pledged thirty percent.

“I trust we can achieve these crucial goals in the next seven years in order to build a better Europe where women are fully integrated, respected and invested in.”

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Ms. Koch-Mehrin

Member of European Parliament: “If you close your eyes and think CEO. You think mid-50s, white, male and not Asian, young, female. We must get rid of these stereotypes.”

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“The 50-50 coalition in the European Parliament is to put pressure on political parties to come up with 50-50 candidates, as many women as men, to become parliamentarians. Then the distribution of higher posts in the European Parliament must also be 50-50 because we are not yet as good as we should be. And the same goes for the European Commission.”

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n “President Barroso had a hard time

the last two rounds because he had to find 30% women. We want to keep that pressure up and increase it to 50%.”

Further on the topic of quota, Ms. Koch-Mehrin explained that a first workshop will be held at the end of March 2013 between the European Parliament’s Women’s Rights and Gender Equality committee and the Legal Affairs committee. The European Parliament has asked the European Commission to come forward with equal opportunity legislation since currently only eleven of the EU Member States have national quota legislation in place. She underscored the importance to support the European Commission’s current proposal of forty percent female representation and expressed her sentiment that the German announcement to form a coalition against the quota directive was not only a ‘bad present’ for international Women’s day but also ‘bad for society’ given the contribution women make towards an improved economy and society when they are in positions of leadership. With that statement, Cheryl Miller, Executive Director of Zen Digital Europe and Founder of Women2020, concluded the speaker contributions by declaring the Women2020 initiative formally launched.

n A call to action Claudia Ritter, Managing Director of Cleverland and Director of Female Board Pool Belgium, and Armelle Loghmanian, President of Professional Women International, took the floor to launch the Female Board Pool Belgium database. The Female Board Pool Belgium is an initiative to build female pipelines to the board and help with the much-needed paradigm shift. The database welcomes nominations of qualified women for Europe’s boardrooms and has five distinctive characteristics. n Searchable database of qualified board-ready women: The database guarantees the highest confidentiality and will only be brokered with the explicit consent of the nominee; n The database will be brokered with the partners: The female board members will be made visible and help with the paradigm shift which is much needed; n International: The Female Board Pool will have partnership agreements with other databases in other countries; n Inclusive: Women will be recruited across all sectors (NGOs, SMEs as well as private companies); and n Backed up by academic research: Thanks to the support of St. Gallen University. More information on the selection criteria and process regarding the Female Board Pool database is available on the Female Board Pool Belgium website.

n Next steps for Women2020 Cheryl Miller, Executive Director of Zen Digital Europe and Founder of Women2020, emphasised the need for concrete action in carrying forward the Women2020 dialogue, stressing quantitative and measurable targets as the dialogue’s desired outcome. Based on the Women2020 launch discussions, she suggested highlighting the below as practical recommendations for review within the Women2020 Working Groups and for follow up in forthcoming Women2020 gatherings: n n n n

Increasing the number of women employed in the ICT sector half a million by 2020 Closing the pay gap to zero by 2020 Guaranteeing forty percent women in Europe’s board rooms by 2020 Defining specific targets for women’s employment for 2020

Ms. Miller also encouraged all Women2020 launch participants to sign the Women 2020 petition in support of Vice-President Reding’s proposed Directive mandating forty percent women on executive boards of Europe’s listed companies. This petition is part of a Women2020 grassroots campaign to collect 5000 signatures in support of the directive. Before concluding the event, Ms. Miller further suggested to discuss

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‘the backlash against the quota question’ in a specific forum that addresses the question of why men are afraid of women in power. She also credited feminism with positively influencing the workplace of today where young men as well as women joining the workforce seek a better work-life balance. Finally, Ms. Miller introduced the second event of the Women 2020 platform which will take place in honour of International Girls in ICT Day, on Thursday, 25 April 2013, 8:0010:30 at DIGITALEUROPE in Brussels. This event will take the form of an invitation-only breakfast for a total of forty speakers and attendees on the topic of Women in STEM for Smart Growth — one of the three pillars of the European 2020 Strategy.

n Last word… To conclude the Women2020 launch event, participants were treated to an exclusive premiere of ‘Neelie and the Clikkers: more girls digital’ a video campaign promoting Girls in ICT Day, launched by Ms. Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner in charge of Digital Agenda for Europe, to inspire girls to aspire to a career in ICT.

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n Conclusions The following action points are taken from remarks and discussions in the context of the Women2020 launch event, and are considered necessary for creating an environment to optimise the Contribution of Women to Achieving the Europe 2020 Strategy:

1. Policymakers must immediately place priority on addressing gender equality with specific actions on: n Closing the gender pay gap; n 50-50 representation for political elections, 50% representation in appointed European institution posts, and strengthening the 40% women on boards directive to include all boards; n Making the necessary policy and financial framework available to accomplish the above, starting with the Europe 2020 strategy; and n Include measurable objectives, budgets and timelines for accomplishing the foregoing.

2. The impending review of the Europe 2020 strategy must: n Focus on skills development of girls and women particularly in digital sectors and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics); n Create specific, quantifiable education and employment targets for girls and women in ICT as well as STEM domains; n Set family-oriented objectives addressing issues such as childcare and parental leave; and n Include measurable objectives, budgets and timelines for accomplishing the foregoing.

3. The private sector must: n Engage women in the Digital Agenda implementation, including in leadership; n Proceed with adopting a 40% standard with or without the quota directive in place; n Adopt the 40% women on boards directive in every board and higher management structure; and n Include measurable objectives, budgets and timelines for accomplishing the foregoing.

4. Policymakers, industry and educators must: n Develop and promote curricula that specifically target getting more girls into STEM and ICT studies and careers; n Provide entrepreneurial education; n Guarantee that youths – particularly girls – gain access to the labour market; and n Include measurable objectives, budgets and timelines for accomplishing the foregoing.

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5. The Women2020 Partnership commits to following up implementation of the above, and to continue investigating and reporting on the mentioned topics, notably; n Women’s engagement in the Digital Agenda implementation, including in leadership, at its Women in STEM for Smart Growth gathering in April 2013; n Targets for women-led innovation and enterprises, at its Women in Enterprise for Sustainable Growth gathering in May 2013; n Women’s leadership in the public and private sector, at its Women in Leadership for Inclusive Growth gathering in October 2013; and n Young women and their present and future prospects as concerns all of the foregoing domains, at its Young Women for Europe 2020 gathering in November 2013.

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n About us Women2020 is a broad-based stakeholder group that engages dialogue both online and off. Women2020 dialogues take the form of exclusive luncheons with inclusive online participation through live web streaming, the Women 2020 website, LinkedIn group, Twitter feed and Facebook page. For the full, chronological, programme of the event or an electronic copy of this report, please visit :

www.women2020.org. ____________________________ Women2020 Report Feedback & Inquiries:

Ms. Inge De Prins

Women2020 Rapporteur [email protected]

Women2020 platform is made possible by the generous contribution of our partners and sponsors.

Thank you! The Women2020.org Team

Women2020 Partner & Sponsor Opportunities:

Ms. Cheryl Miller

Women2020 Founder [email protected]

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n Upcoming events The Women2020 series of high-level gatherings continues throughout 2013, addressing topics related to women’s contribution to achieving the Europe 2020 vision. Please visit the Women2020 website for information and registration details. n 25 April, 8:00-10:30 (DIGITALEUROPE): Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) for Smart Growth: Promoting Education, Innovation and Female Employment in STEM Sectors n 15 May, 8:00-10:30 (Google): Women in Enterprise for Sustainable Growth: Promoting Womenled Innovation and Enterprise, and Women Entrepreneurs in Europe n 17 October (Location TBC): Women in Leadership for Inclusive Growth: Promoting Women in Public & Private Sector Leadership n 12 November, 12:00-14:30 (Location TBC): Young Women for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth: Promoting the Contribution of Young Women to Achieving the Europe2020 Vision

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n 5 December, (TBC Brussels): Release Event Women2020 Action Plan

© All rights reserved AWACA / BVBA - 2013