Our State of the (Women's) Nation Address

My fellow global citizens,

We celebrate International Women's Day on 8th March and, as Heads of State around the world are delivering their state of the nation/union addresses, I thought it was an opportune time to assess the state of the women's union.

While this is a subject upon which I could speak for many hours, let me focus my address on some recent studies from the UK and the USA that I believe shed light on the achievements and challenges for working women today.

On the upside, we are encouraged that a recent study has provided evidence about the benefits women bring to companies in terms of profit.

New research from Professor David Gaddis Ross, Assistant Professor of Management at Columbia Business School, has shown that companies benefit when they add women to their senior management teams. In studying the relationship between the percentage of senior female managers in a firm and the firm's economic success, Ross was trying to understand "whether companies with a higher level of female participation do better and, if so, why."

In investigating the connection between women senior managers and firm performance, Ross and his team examined a range of performance metrics including the market-to-book ratio, return on assets, return on equity and annual sales growth from 1992 to 2006 for the largest 1,500 U.S. firms. The researchers analysed the relationship between these measures and the percentage of women in senior management positions up to, but not including, the CEO level.

Their findings showed that having a higher percentage of women in senior management positions up to the CEO level, in most cases, even having a single female, is positively associated with better firm performance. Overall, the data they gathered suggest that firms that promote women to senior management positions enjoy economically superior performance because of the complementary set of interpersonal management skills related to inclusiveness and the encouragement of employee voices that women bring to the table.

Now, of course, my fellow citizens, this is not news to many of us. Indeed, as Ross points out, the findings are "precisely what many feminists and others have argued for years."

We are also gratified that the impact of women entrepreneurs has been noted in new global research released by the US-based Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Their findings reveal that women are increasingly defining the entrepreneurial economy and will create 70% of the global growth in income at the household level over the next five years.

The importance of the female market should also not be underestimated. BCG's research, which involved a survey of 12,000 women in 22 countries, found that women spend over 70% of consumer dollars worldwide. The study also found that women account for half of university students across the globe.

The findings led CNN to declare in October that, "the largest growing economic force in the world isn't China or India – it is women".

But sadly, my fellow citizens, it is not all good news.

According to the Standard & Poor's ExecuComp database, less than one-third of the largest 1,500 U.S. firms in 2006 could count at least one woman on their senior management teams. And when it comes to chief executives, the numbers are even more discouraging: only 2.5% of these 1,500 firms had a woman CEO. Progress is disappointing; in 2006, 12 women were running Fortune 500 companies, an increase of only 11 women in 10 years.

And despite the contribution of women to a firm's profits, it seems the relationship is not always mutually beneficial. BCG's report also shows that women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar men do.

But an interesting study from the Pew Research Center in Washington on men, women and the economics of marriage has given us hope that times are changing. For, despite the fact that men still earn more, with 78% making at least as much or more than their wives, the percentage of women earning more than their husbands has jumped from just 4% in 1970 to 22% in 2007, the study said.

The study also showed that today, the majority of wives are equal to or better educated than their husbands. The study looked at spouses aged 30 to 44 i.e. at a stage of life when typical adults have completed their education, gone to work and married - over a timeframe of nearly four decades.

And then of course, my fellow citizens, there is the vexed question of how motherhood is impacting the progression of women's careers and professional lives.

According to a survey by the UK National Childbirth Trust, one in three new mothers believe that taking maternity leave has harmed their career prospects. The survey of over 1,500 mothers who had recently gone back to work found that 32% felt their promotion prospects had been reduced since having a baby, while 13 % said they had fallen in seniority since returning to work. Despite progressive employment legislation, 39% of those questioned said they were finding it "difficult" or "very difficult" to return to work after taking time off, while 31% said their relationship with their boss had deteriorated since they had become pregnant.

My fellow citizens, how do we ensure that women continue to add value to the bottom line when motherhood is made an impediment to progress? The vast majority (88%) of mothers wanted to work flexibly on their return to work. However, one in six said their request for flexible working practices had gone nowhere.

This situation is not confined to corporations, with a former Royal Navy chief claiming that the careers of women in the military are being derailed by motherhood. Carolyn Stait, formerly the Commander of the nuclear HM Naval Base Clyde, herself accumulated 32 years of service and at one stage of her career was tipped to become the first female head of the Navy. But, she says, many of her female contemporaries have left the force after seven or eight years to raise families.

Stait has observed that while there is no glass ceiling in the Royal Navy, career progression was dependent on being "mobile and deployable". The differences are more challenging for women than for men, she says, because the majority of women reach the point where "the desire to have children becomes greater than thoughts of furthering their career."

In some areas, women continue to make progress and to chart new gains and achievements. In many areas, however, the benefits that women can bring to business, to services and even to the defence of their realms is being undervalued and underutilised.

My fellow citizens, in short, the state of our (women's) union is improving, but can be so much better.

We wish women everywhere a happy International Women's Day!