Hello. I am once again in New York (rain swept, grey and cold, with the streets littered with discarded, inverted umbrellas – and weeping British tourists, distressed at the low level of sterling against the dollar) – this time for Working Mother’s annual Work Life Congress. PwC US were once again named as one of the top 10 companies in America for working mothers and Gender Advisory Council member and PwC US Chief Diversity Officer Roy Weathers will be accepting an award at the gala dinner later this week.
Since my last blog entry, the GAC film - “Closing the Gender Gap: Challenges, Opportunities and the Future” has gone live on the website – you can view it via this link or by clicking on the blue button to the right of this article. We’ve distributed the link and copies of the film on DVD to the interviewees, key PwC people and our clients - and the response has been quite amazing; some of the comments I’ve received to date include:
“I am planning to share it with others both internally and externally, but especially my four nieces and my nephew. I want them to know the importance of this message as they enter the workforce.”
“Having had the opportunity to view the film on the Gender Gap, I feel compelled to acknowledge and thank you and your team for the marvellous work done on this film. It was perceptive, crisp and professional but a significant factor was that it spoke the human language instead of business jargon.”
"I just wanted to drop a line and say how impressed I was by the Closing the Gender Gap video. I just watched the full version and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was powerful, diverse, concise, polished, and hard-hitting. The message is clearly conveyed and the number of high profile participants that you interviewed is astounding."
"The film is excellent. It thoroughly gets the key messages across.”
I am armed with copies of the DVD and the companion guide and will be sharing them with colleagues and clients at the Working Mother event. It’s wonderful to see our hard work made real in the shape of An Actual Product after so long in the cooking. Please do take a look and let me know your views, or how you think the film could be used in order to continue the debate which lies at the heart of the gender agenda.
In other news … at the time of writing, there is less than a week to go until the US Presidential election takes place. I still suspect that the final result will be closer than the current polls are suggesting. And what of the female angle? Vidya, one of the current Genesis Park participants in Washington DC, kindly shared this article from MSNBC with me on myths surrounding women’s voting patterns and behaviour. It will be interesting to see how the post election analysis pans out as to the accuracy of these myths and predictions.
Of course, I will still be in New York for Halloween this Friday; I’m going to watch the parade and perhaps I will capture a photo of someone in what I understand to be this year’s #1 choice of fancy dress attire: The Sarah Palin outfit. All that’s required is:
Hair in a bun/beehive/”up do” [“Top tip! Re-cycle last year’s Amy Winehouse wig” – as I heard on the radio this morning]
Glasses
Business suit
Optional extras: gun, moose antler, baby. I will report back, and post a photo if I manage to take a suitable one.
Last night, I gave myself a bit of a break from all things connected with Planet Video (although work on the DVD and the on-line version of the film continues…) and I went along to the launch of PwC UK’s newest people group, the Disability Network. It’s the UK firm’s eleventh network, and has been founded to raise awareness within PwC of the issues of living and working with disability.
(Any UK based PwC people who don’t already know about the network and would like further information on it should email pwc.disability.network@uk.pwc.com for details of their activities and range of support tools).
New UK Chairman and Senior Partner Ian Powell formally opened the event and welcomed everyone to PwC, referencing this launch as just one example of all the great stuff that we do in the firm to support people, both internally and also externally in the wider social community. His comment that, for PwC, supporting those with disabilities is “not about disability, it’s about talent” – really resonated with me, given the gender agenda and the importance of supporting our women.
Ian then introduced a really excellent external speaker: Giles Long MBE, a three times Paralympic gold medal winner and world-record breaker. Giles is a swimmer, specialising in the butterfly stroke, and he started off by telling us that, aged 7, he decided that he wanted to win an Olympic gold medal. He was a very talented junior level swimmer until, aged 13, he was diagnosed as having a rare bone cancer which led to the removal of part of the bone and of the muscles in his right shoulder and arm: the very muscles needed to give the range of movement needed to power your way through the water.
Try raising your arms above your head as you read this … and then imagine not being able to do that with your right arm, because the muscles that you need to do so just aren’t there any more.
And then imagine having the grit and strength of personality to get back in the pool anyway, several years after you’ve gone through gruelling chemotherapy and hours of agonising physiotherapy, and re-learning to swim all over again by changing your breathing patterns and using your left arm and shoulder muscles.
Seven years after his diagnosis, Giles entered the Paralympics in Atlanta in 1996 and won his first gold medal, followed by numerous wins at other events and more medals at the Paralympics in Sydney (2000) and Athens (2004). He showed us the footage of his gold medal winning swim in Sydney and honestly, the applause from our audience was as loud as if we were actually watching it live in Australia.
Giles’s mantra is about the power of change and he told us that he trained and trained and improved by telling himself that: “Every single day, when I go training, I will change one thing”. All those years of swimming 50,000 metres a week and getting to the pool for 5am have paid off and have made him one of the UK’s most successful and inspirational swimming stars; he’s now a motivational speaker and writer.
Although he didn’t talk about his new book (“Changing to Win”) or his concept of CHIMO (Change – Inspiration Motivation) during his speech, I picked up a (signed!) copy of the book afterwards and read it straightaway. It’s a fantastic read and I was going to offer it to a blog reader but I’ve since changed my mind – I’m afraid you’ll have to buy your own copy, because I enjoyed the book so much that I want to keep it and re-read it.
It really is that good; yes, I’m a speedy reader, but reading 250 pages in only a couple of hours is fast even by my standards. Perhaps I was inspired by Giles’s descriptions of swimming the 100 metres butterfly in 1 minute and 8 seconds.
I’m the least athletic person in the world, but I took so much from Giles’s story and I think his ideas around change and motivation will resonate with us all.
After he signed my copy of “Changing to Win”, I had the opportunity to handle the Olympic gold medal, which was really quite cool – although I did apparently fall into the trap of saying what 99% of the non medal winning population say when THEY encounter an Olympic medal:
“Isn’t it heavy?”
The shame.
I think I also said the same thing to Sir Matthew Pinsent when he spoke at a PwC event in 2005. Must change that.
Note to self: think of something new and original to say to the next Olympic medallist who crosses my path.
So, thank you Giles for launching PwC UK’s Disability Network, for being such a witty and inspirational guest and for writing an excellent and thought provoking book. And good luck to Clodagh, James, John and all of my other colleagues who are doing such great things with the new network.
As promised …. here’s the trailer to the new PwC film, "Closing the Gender Gap" – just click on the link on the right, make sure you have the sound enabled on your PC - and enjoy.
It’s a short (two minute) taster of the main film but will, I hope, provide a sense of the main themes and it also highlights a few of the participants.
The interviewees are, of course, all captioned on the main film, but on the trailer, in order of appearance and voice, you’ll see and hear:
Our global CEO (and the founder and executive sponsor of the GAC) – Sam DiPiazza;
Dr Kedibone Letlaka-Rennert of the International Monetary Fund: I met Kedi in Johannesburg and we filmed her at the Working Mother event in August;
Dr Lynda Gratton of London Business School: filmed in September, here in London;
Haifa Fahoum Al Kayalani, Chair of the Arab International Women’s Forum: we were connected to Haifa by Elham Hassan, one of our role models, who is the Country Senior Partner of PwC in Bahrain.
You can only hear the voice of R (Gopal) Gopalakrishnan in the trailer, talking about how “a woman at the top acts as a lodestone”, but he’s in the main film in a number of places. He’s an Executive Director of the huge, Indian-based conglomerate Tata and we caught up with him earlier this month, on a Sunday afternoon at his hotel in London whilst he was in transit. Again, our GAC connections brought us to Gopal, by way of GAC member Bharti Gupta Ramola who approached him and asked him to talk to us about Tata’s many initiatives for women.
Alison Maitland – co-author (with Avivah Wittenberg-Cox) of the now best-selling book “Why Women Mean Business”, as previously mentioned on many occasions here on the Gender Agenda.
Maureen Frank of Emberin Consulting – Maureen is a very good friend to PwC in many offices and countries - and in the film she talks about the issues facing women in business in both Australia and India. As she says on the trailer: “Why wouldn’t you [change?]”. We also filmed Maureen in South Africa, in PwC’s offices in Johannesburg.
Kevin Daly is Goldman Sach’s European economist, and we met when he was on the panel for our London book launch for “Why Women Mean Business” in January. He was the very first person who we filmed for this project, and eagle eyed watchers will see that we helpfully shot him with a backdrop of the London Eye to assist with that global look and feel...
Later this week, I’ll share a link to the main film, and you’ll also be able to download a copy of the companion guide, which tells you a little more about the film, why we made it and who’s in it.
This is quite possibly the shortest Gender Agenda article that I’ve ever written, and perhaps we all deserve a break after my epic Sarah Palin piece from last week; but I have to share that we are nearly ready to go live with The Film!
Yes, after a long, tumultuous and at times painful four months, the GAC video is nearly ready. I’ll be reviewing the final cut (which lasts 25 minutes) and the trailer (a mere 2 minutes) later today and sharing the latter with you as soon as it’s signed off.
We’ll be making the film and the trailer available via DVD and you’ll also be able to watch or download them from the “Read, watch and listen” section of the main website, along with a short companion brochure which provides some background as to the making of the film and shares the names and career details of the eleven featured interviewees.
Our final title is: “Closing the Gender Gap: Challenges, opportunities and the future” and the participants come from the US, the UK, Ireland, Australia, India, Brazil, South Africa and Jordan. My name appears in the credits as an Executive Producer, so I’d better warn my family now that THIS will be the film we’ll be watching on the TV on Christmas Day. I know my fantastic mother (and such a role model) reads the blog, so Mum: you’re on standby!
Here’s a glimpse of the DVD itself – we’ll share the trailer with you as soon as we can.
Earlier this week, I attended Newsweek magazine’s event, which both examines and celebrates women in leadership. It’s held in the spectacular setting of the New York based American Museum of Natural History, and attracts a high profile and eclectic crowd of women and men from politics, the arts and business. PwC US were once again a sponsor, with several of our Partners serving on the advisory committee, and they kindly invited me along to listen and observe.
The opening panel discussion, entitled “Power and Politics”, was kicked off by Newsweek Managing Director Ann McDaniel, who reminded us that, a year ago, the then newly-elected Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, had been amongst us – “clad in leather jacket and cowboy boots” – so who knew who would be sitting next to us this year? The panel – including author and former White House Press Secretary (in the Clinton administration), Dee Dee Myers, was moderated by Claire Shipman of ABC News, who opened up with the statement that:
“This is an historic election year, with as much focus on the women in the race as on the men.”
Dee Dee Myers suggested that Palin is causing a split between women; she’s revitalised the McCain campaign and speaks directly to a large part of the US electorate and yet is also the caricature being lampooned so successfully by Tina Fey on “Saturday Night Live” – which reminds me to note a quote from Ms Fey in which she observed, ruefully, that:
“I was reluctant to acknowledge there was a resemblance. But my kid saw her and said, “That’s Mommy” so I thought, Oh, great.”
(On the same note, I heard Palin’s “gosh, darn it” speech mannerisms being described earlier in the week by a (male) commentator on American National Public Radio as making her sound “like Marge from Fargo”)
Michelle Barnard, a political analyst from MSNBC, noted that Palin’s presence had created a great: “… wave of debate about the nature of feminism …. Until Palin, many women on the political right felt disenfranchised. But now, she’s shown that there’s a different way to be a feminist: it’s OK to be anti-abortion and pro-hunting.”
She continued with this theme by suggesting that women with those beliefs had never been represented, until now.
“Sarah Palin has shot and killed the old feminist movement.”
Bay Buchanan, a political commentator on CNN and FOX News, then went one step further and posited that Palin has:
“… Taken a plateaued movement and moved it to the next level. She has also proven to women everywhere that you can be yourself – it’s no longer about trying to be like or dress like a man.”
Actress and activist Rosario Dawson weighed in with the view that Palin, like Barack Obama, represents change to a younger generation – I’m sure I was not alone in holding the thought captive that that was perhaps ALL they have in common. However, she also noted that:
“A lot of people find it appealing that she is relatively young, and a mother … for some people, it enables them to look past her politics.”
I apologise now for not catching this next speaker’s name, but she was seated in the audience rather than on the stage, but yet was a de facto panel member. I gathered from her wealth of knowledge and statistics that she is a respected pollster, and she spoke with great conviction about the issues which have been proven to compel female voters – namely, security and affordability. She also suggested that her organisation’s survey indicated that both Obama and Palin are viewed as “likeable” and that they also pass the “are you like me?” test which so often compels voters to cross traditional party lines.
Apparently, in response to the poll question: “Who best understands women?” Obama scored 52% and McCain 18% when voters were polled in July, pre Palin joining the Republican ticket; however, by the end of September, McCain’s score had risen to 44% following the addition of Palin.
Dee Dee Myers then suggested that, if we wanted to see what progress looked like, that we view a few episodes of the 1960s set TV series “Mad Men”, with its depiction of women as either housewives, secretaries or chain smoking, unfulfilled, department store heiresses.
“Let’s leave Palin [as a person] alone and instead debate the hell out of her policies!”
The discussion continued, with the point being made that women voters now have the power to decide who will be the next President; the Republicans have realised that women make the bulk of society’s economic decisions and are also more likely to actually VOTE. One of the key issues facing McCain and his team is that they have only a few short weeks to convince some very worried people – and this goes to the issue of affordability – that Palin can handle the economy.
Several panellists agreed with the pollster’s statement that Palin is very appealing (in a political sense? Perhaps not necessarily so) to working men –
“… Don’t underestimate this; Bush got elected because people felt that they’d like to have a beer with him. The charm factor comes into play very strongly for Palin – people do seem to like her.”
The point was also made to this strongly urban and New York-centric audience that only 28% of Americans live in major conurbations such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles; Palin has a strong appeal for many of those who live outside the big cities. And:
“Nobody is now saying that there shouldn’t be a woman on the ticket – the debate is more around which woman.”
Myers added that, in her view, Palin had acquitted herself:
“… well against [Joe] Biden [in the televised VP debate]. True – she may not have much experience but, then again, nor does Obama. But she does appear to have the qualities to help her succeed.”
To loud applause, Bay Buchanan declared that:
“Women candidates [and I think this is equally as true of women in business as in politics] cannot go out there and say – ‘I’m a girl, don’t be mean to me’ – we have to realise that perceived attacks and debates are part of the process for both genders.”
And the panel agreed that, whoever wins next month, Palin’s selection is a plus for women and it’s opened a debate – if not a Pandora’s Box. Palin’s reaction to the mockery has been an example – she has shrugged it off, after five weeks of criticism and satire.
Good gig for Tina Fey, though.
The conclusion was that, just as Hillary Clinton redefined the role of a First Lady in the early 1990s, Sarah Palin has redefined the role of a Vice Presidential candidate.
Although the second panel was entitled “Power and the Workplace”, it was again heavily focussed on politics, with yes, particular light being cast on Sarah Palin. This panel featured Tina Brown, who told us that she is working on another biography, following the success of “The Diana Chronicles”; this book will be called “The Clinton Chronicles.” With her customary frankness, Brown declared that:
“I disagree with almost everything she [Palin] says – and yet I admire her, too …”
- And my own personal view was that many of the liberal women in the room shared that degree of ambivalence.
The final session was a Q&A between actor (“I don’t like to be called an actress”) and educational activist Cynthia Nixon (wearing a pair of absolutely fabulous Christian Louboutin shoes) and the greatly-admired-by-me writer Anna Quindlen, which was a gentle and admiring trot through Cynthia’s career, in which she suggested with personal conviction but in the face of ill-concealed tittering from much of the audience, that:
“Yes, “Sex and the City” was a feminist show – absolutely! It was about four very different women making four very different types of choices.”
I’m not sure that Anna was convinced, and nor was I, but anyway – Cynthia was bright, charming and does great work on both the stage and as a breast cancer awareness activist, so we’ll let it go …, unless you agree?
Veteran broadcaster and interviewer Barbara Walters was the luncheon keynote speaker and she discussed her just-published memoir with us and then signed the copies we were each given in our gift bags. I later discovered that the book itself – hardback, $29.95 list price – weighs a mighty 3 kgs – as that was the amount by which my suitcase was overweight at the airport. I swiftly removed it and carried it as hand luggage. Not even the greatest book in the world is worth a $100 excess baggage fee. Sorry, Barbara.
Finally, I know that at least one person reading this will be thrilled to know that I spoke very briefly with the extremely charming Gayle King, known to many through her association with Oprah Winfrey and her involvement with many of Oprah’s corporate projects, such as “O” magazine. She was absolutely delightful and is probably the closest I will ever come to brushing shoulders with Oprah!
Many of the women profiled at the Newsweek event are featured in the October 13th issue of “Newsweek” magazine (guess who’s on the cover?) so check it out either on the newsstand or on-line.
I’m now back at home and will be spending the next few days finishing both the video and the trailer and preparing for our sponsorship of the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society in Deauville, France. More on the movie next week. Buy popcorn!
One final thought: a thing that I noted during the course of my week in the US, has been the somewhat marked absence of Clinton, H, from the proceedings. With only a few weeks to go, I’m wondering when, if at all, she’s going to make an appearance and stick it to Sarah Palin. Isn’t she the one person who could do so without being charged with sexism?
I’m now in New York once more, but I had a couple of really interesting days in Washington DC last week, sharing, learning and collaborating. On Wednesday, I cleared Security at the World Bank and then had a meeting with Amanda Ellis and her team. Amanda runs the World Bank “Doing Business” gender group and we’ve been exchanging emails for some time now, but never actually had the opportunity to meet, due to our respective travel schedules.
The World Bank Group’s action plan on women uses the tag line “gender equality as smart economics” and it focuses on partnering with key business leaders in order to promote women’s economic empowerment. PwC global CEO Sam DiPiazza has just joined the Private Sector Leaders Forum – a group which Amanda described as a collective of:
“… influential global business leaders who create opportunities for women, either as an integral part of their core business, corporate social responsibility agendas, or diversity and inclusion initiatives. An annual event will be an opportunity to exchange ideas, showcase programmes, promote the transfer of best practice from around the world and learn from the tangible examples of gender equality as best practice. And the high profile recognition of the value of women’s contributions, together with committed private sector champions, is expected to translate into practical support for women and to make a difference to our global economy.”
Two of Amanda’s team, Thuan and Jozefina, are doing a great job on a website which outlines more about this project and how PwC and others are becoming involved, and I’ll share a link to it once it’s live.
Over coffee, Amanda and I discussed the recent PwC support for the Selfina project via our Ulysses team, who spent time working with women in Tanzania and helping them gain access to micro-credit. The female member of the Ulysses team, Dyan Decker from PwC Los Angeles, wrote a blog entry for us just before she left for Tanzania, and she will be providing us with an update later this month.
Amanda and I talked about the power of sharing personal stories as a way of making issues and problems come to life, and she told me about Dr Victoria and how her inheritance of a cow when she was widowed led to her setting up a leasing company in Tanzania, which has now helped over 10,000 female clients.
The following day, I spent time with the current batch of future PwC leaders at Genesis Park where the DC site is now led by Gender Advisory Council member Sue Bannatyne. Sue had invited me and global mentoring expert and blog contributor Maureen Frank to present to the group of fifteen and to talk about gender as a business issue. We were joined by my PwC US colleague Joanne McDonough, who led us in a workshop which examined gender differences, bias awareness and the recognition that we all exist, operate and behave on a gender bell curve on which we will be varying shades of pink (female), blue (male) or striped (some of us!). The GP group were a fascinating audience and it was a very interactive session; the participants attend this five month residential development programme as nominees from their home countries, and so we had people in the room from the US, Australia, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Taiwan, Brazil and Hong Kong. The different cultural perspectives, and the relative youthfulness of the group (they are primarily in their mid to late twenties) led to some very differing mindsets and experiences: from “it’s simply not a problem in my office” to “I’ve never encountered any sexism or seen any problems” to “it’s just about the talent, right?” over to some more negative comments – about both why PwC chooses to focus on gender and at what point in someone’s career it becomes a “problem”.
It’s always been my sense that some issues, and I hope that gender differences are one of them, will wither on the vine over time, as a new generation of leaders - who have working wives, sisters and mothers - emerge and think nothing of working alongside female peers. Last Thursday gave me great hope that we have some of those leaders here in PwC.
And so to New York, where I’ll be at the Newsweek “Women in Leadership” conference tomorrow, sponsored by PwC US – the keynote speaker is Barbara Walters and once again, my favourite writer Anna Quindlen will be moderating. I will report back!
I’ve also JUST received a rough cut of the video – it’s looking fantastic. The director and edit team have done a great job.
