Prosepra is a woman-owned consumer electronics company. In our many roles of product designing, outsourcing, quality controls, and distribution channels, we have found women are effective and powerful leaders when they love what they do, and are inspired to bring their insights and intuition when they make sound business decisions. Women have contributed significantly to our company’s growth; in return, they grow together with the company. I have two examples. One is in the US, We have had male chief designers for three years prior hiring two capable ladies to turn our business around. They have been tremendous. Our corporate images and product presentation are greatly enhanced, resistance of sales to key accounts is dramatically lowered, and revenue grows persistently even at this challenging economic time. Their talents and detailed approaches to study our market, put their hearts into designing retail packaging, Web site layout, and ergonomic aspects have paid off our investment.

The second example is in China. Chinese women are mostly given great responsibilities and equal education and rights when compared with many other developing, and even developed, countries, thus we are comfortable hiring ladies in China when we decided to set up an office in Zhejiang province. We needed an effective leader to negotiate contracts, maintain cordial relationships with factory owners, guarantee quality, and solve important issues independently. We had options of several men and women, but finally we nodded with a lady who is confident, experienced in foreign-trade, and has superb delegation skills. She has since risen like a star, and a few more young women followed her path. We feel women are equally capable, effective, and can earn top dollars like men if they are given the positions and the platforms on which perform.

I’d encourage people interested in this topic to read the Corporate Gender Gap and India Gender Gap reports produced by the World Economic Forum. They provide an excellent view on the landscape of women’s issues in the corporate environment and actionable steps to improve gender equity.

The significance of the impact that successful private and public sector partnerships can achieve in developmental work cannot be understimated. Cell C, a mobile operator company based in Johannesburg, introduced the “Take a Girl Child to Work Day®” project in South Africa 7 years ago. Through public and private sector partnerships the company provides an opportunty for Grade 10 to 12 girl learners to spend a day at “work” learning about the true nature of the “world of work’ and the various career opportunities offered. From a mere 5000 learners and just under 100 companies in 2003, the project now attracts support from over 700 private sector and goverment organizations that host around 45,000 girl learners, annually. The growth and reach of the project was made possible by the partnerships Cell C secured with goverment and other private sector players.

Our company employs women in all cadres, including engineers. Through the years it has supported lady engineers like my wife to grow to the senior executive cadre after joining as a Graduate Engineer Trainee. Another entry cadre exists for apprentice trainees. The works has a full fledged creche to support lady employees with young children and the creche has recently been renovated and made attractive. Besides this, our company supports women—particularly those from lower sections of society—through the All India Womens Congress by providing employment and skill acquiring opportunities in AIWC-run ancillaries. In the long run, these initiatives contribute towards bringing gender equality which in turn promotes social harmony.

I am pleased to see that the private sector is participating, promoting, and recognizing the intrinsic value of micro-financing the businesses of women in developing nations. Research and experience has continuously shown that empowering women economically allows them to improve the lives of their families and communities. Their children are able to receive proper education, which subsequently allows them to be productive contributing members of society, health systems, and our global economy. Thank you for your work!

As these comments from leading men and women reflect, women cannot be ignored. Thought leaders, pointing to a boatload of economic, social, and anecdotal evidence, repeat a simple truth. Sharing wealth, knowledge, and opportunity to educate, empower, and reward women fairly is essential to finding lasting solutions to economic, political, and social problems. McKinsey, bravo for continuing to beat this drum and lead a vision for change.

The U.S. Department of State’s Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues Office appreciates those innovative and inspiring efforts taken up by our private sector partners. It is encouraging to see that statistics and data support our long-time belief that empowering women and girls leads to long-term prosperity and economic growth. We can no longer afford to ignore women’s participation in our economic activities. Harnessing women’s talents and enabling their realization of potential is not only good business, but smart business.

While empowering women may not directly yield immediate benefits for the corporate, it will create a strong sense of brand loyalty towards that company, not just among the women who directly benefit from the investment, but also within their families and children, who as future consumers are likely to be loyal to the brand. Of course no one doubts the benefit of women’s education and empowerement to the community, but just wanted to point out one of the subtle long term benefits it may have for the companies.

At the first Clinton Global Initiative Asia meeting, Standard Chartered Bank announced a commitment to provide financial literacy education to at least 5,000 women across Asia. Since then, we have incorporated financial literacy into our Goal programme (as mentioned in the article), run programmes for AIDS widows in India, held workshops for women entrepreneurs and developed an online resource centre with educational content specifically designed for women who are starting or growing their own businesses. The latter will be officially launched on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2010, with additional educational content, videos, multilingual access and an interactive platform for best practice sharing.

These initiatives engage our female customers, support women in the community and also facilitate employee involvement and volunteering. We believe women are an incredibly powerful source of development and that our inclusive approach enables us to best understand and support all our stakeholders.

I am constantly reminded of the inequities that exist for women throughout the world, regardless of economic status, education, or social background. While it makes us feel good to talk about how we can help women in economically-challenged countries, I work with an organization, Athena Collaborative, that addresses a small part of what takes place in developed countries. For example in the US, women obtain more college diplomas each year than men, yet the pay inequity continues, and the glass ceiling remains firmly in place for most women. While women contribute to household incomes, they are still almost entirely responsible for home-management, and everything to do with raising children. The social balance between women and men is one of the most difficult challenges facing all of us. It cuts across race, economics, borders, and education. To make a difference, we need to change the direct and indirect messages given to men, beginning when they are boys, so that they feel empowered to take the responsibility of their role as partners, husbands, and parents.

One tried and true way that companies can empower women in developing countries is by investing in their recruitment, training, and promotion. This is not just a social investment; it is good for business too. A recent study of 226 microfinance institutions (MFI) in 57 countries indicates that when the CEO is a woman, the MFI shows a higher return on assets. Women’s World Banking is a network of 40 MFIs explicitly committed to empowering women. While for three decades we have focused on women clients, recently we have begun working with our network partners to implement responsive policies and practices to ensure that institutions attract, retain, and promote qualified women staff members. Furthermore, we launched the global WWB Center for Microfinance Leadership, which includes courses and workshops, taught by the faculty of the Wharton School of Business, to cultivate principled, visionary leaders in microfinance and expand opportunities for all qualified staff, regardless of gender.

Common throughout all of our efforts is our commitment to continue to build a network of strong financial institutions around the world and ensure that the rapidly changing field of microfinance focuses on women—as clients, innovators, and leaders.

I agree fully with Leslie’s comments, below. I do not think that promoting, supporting, or developing leadership of females is a female’s job. It is the responsibility of the entire company. I do not believe that terms such as ‘equality’ should be used as it is rather ‘harmonisation’ of the company to employees that it respects and values.

As noted I feel that somehow many men (and some women for that matter) feel that to be successful in business they need to be mean, tough, warriors. I posit that the profitable and successful organization of the future will be the ones that have harmony between the ying and yang personas of male and female characteristics. Neither one is superior to the other, and neither can co-exist eternally without the other. There is a time for nurturing and for destroying. The wisdom comes in knowing which one is required in each given scenario.

This article gave me percpective on how to develop a new national program on women economic opportunities and empowerment.

For small companies, one easy way to contribute is to join Kiva.org and lend/donate to companies owned by women. Our Business and Professional Women’s Club in Saskatoon has been doing this for a few years now and have been able to help small women-owned companies in developing nations. With as little as $25, a small company can make a difference.

Perhaps it is rightly being said that the 21st century is the century of the woman—finally she is coming into her rightful and legitimate position. However, having said that I remind myself that peace in society is based on inequality, not equality. A hierarchy ensures that the final authority rests at some place. In the next hundred years, either we make women completely empowered to the extent that she ascends to the top of the pyramid and men willingly accept the next rung, or if the male ego continues to be too strong, beyond a point, empowerment will have to cease.

Where corporate initiatives fill the gap in delivery of education, health, and social services usually expected of government, they are always well-received by benefiting communities, and generate good-will. Whether they advance the interests of the corporate sponsor is dependent upon the programme structure. The Shakti programme delivers what it is designed to do, namely, to develop direct marketing services for household consumables through the medium of trained employment-potential women. Investments in primary education and adolescent health are less geared to deliver direct benefit to sponsoring companies. They are valued by the benefiting communities and thereby play a role in creating a friendly environment for the company where it locates its business. To draw a direct connection between female literacy, maternal health, etcetera, and sponsoring company profits is, I believe, a bit of a stretch, unless you stated specific boundary conditions or listed specific examples. If there were a strong and generalisable connection, it would not be a small minority of companies which opted for this route.

I have the greatest respect for Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea) who has dedicated his life to promoting community-based education and literacy programs, especially for girls, in remote mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Next comes Matt Flannery, Kiva Co-Founder and CEO. Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals—including many, many women—to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

Cisco Systems has sponsored a business loan program for women and applied their technology to educating girls. And I am sure there are more programs by firms as part of their social responsibility and sustainability initiatives. Interestingly, as I write this, in the background I hear on the news that the NGOs in Haiti are now limiting distribution of food and supplies to women, having found they are more likely to be distributed to families. So there you have it.

My company has funded 8 village banks (micro-financing programs) for women in Asia. This is one of the ways we use some of our profits to make a difference. While our staff are proud of these efforts, I don’t think there is a direct relationship between these efforts and our company performance—nor does this matter to me. Results will not be seen in the short term. It’s the long term that matters. If every small company like mine can do a little, the impact will be great.

It looks like all respondents thus far to the commentary are men. This is deeply encouraging to me. I feel like most organizations still view economic development of women and girls and the leadership development of women as being in the domain of woman. I’ve hypothesized that the more influential women we have in global corporations, the greater the investment in programs that will benefit women and girls in developing economies directly, and the funding of organizations as well. I’m heartened that so many men have read and commented on this topic, and are hopefully proving me wrong. Please see Catalyst’s 2009 white paper on including men in gender development programs. This links “enlightened” men to those having had women mentors, and those who believe in fairness and equity, and finally those who aren’t afraid of male peer pressure to “act like a man,” which typically doesn’t involve interest in the development of women.

In the European Union, hiring women can result in higher funds for companies from governments. The aim is to equalize the number of working women versus men. This is essential, especially for the new EU members, where the difference in proportion between the number of working men and women is the biggest. Thanks to such solutions many women can work, become financially independent, and, as it’s mentioned in this article, spend more on their families.

I like this article and I also am fully supportive of any initiative to encourage female participation in the economy in general, but also to encourage more “female” traits in business decision making and strategy planning. In fact, using female archetypes in the work place is a pet topic of interest of mine.

A recent Economist issue focused on how females now make up just over 50% of the workforce. I believe that there are many initiatives that may cost relatively little but could in fact provide huge economic benefits to employees and in turn to the company. For example many large corporates in Johannesburg, and I am sure elsewhere, provide on site creche or child care facilities. This enables mothers (and fathers) to perhaps work longer or come to work knowing that their children are nearby and looked after. I am sure that increased productivity and reduced days off due to child care issues will more than pay for this cost. One pharmaceutical company goes even further by trying to recruit single mothers, it has a flexible work structure and employees may work up to 60% from home. The company is really accomodating to the mothers and is rewarded with increased loyalty by the staff. In addition office rental is kept to a minimum since so much less office space is required.

We work in linking two worlds together: the large pool of unemployed rural youth in villages and companies which need entry level manpower. EGMM(www.egmm.ap.gov.in) is the Jobs Mission of the Andhra Pradesh government which invests in identifying youth, skilling them in short term, market linked courses and linking them to jobs. Set up 5 years back, the focus of the work is to get the vulnerable and girls into the program. This stems from our firm belief that investing in a girl means impacting the family and a new generation.

Initially, there were many challenges ranging from parents wanting to get their daughters married early to families prefering girls to remain at home and help in housework. By sensitising the mothers of the girls, today 51% of our youth in jobs are girls. We have given them a basket of choices through our work. Formerly, rural girls were either teachers or health workers. Today girls work in retailing, sales, banks, rural BPOs, telecoms, and other sectors. A father (shepherd by profession) of one of our alumni working in HDFC rural BPO told me, “We considered her birth a curse. Today she is bringing prestige to our family”.

ISB recently did an impact study of EGMM work on girls. The study showed that the girls became confident and had greater self esteem. Professionally, they wanted a career path, postponed marriage plans, and told their parents they wanted to work even after marriage. They use the additional income to invest in assets like house construction, refrigerators, TVs; education for a sibling, and gold for marriage. Caste barriers crumble with economic empowerment. The self confident, independent working girl in the village is looked up to with pride by the community, and based on the positive social and economic outcomes, has had a ripple effect in helping more girls enroll in our program.

Much has been written about the economic power of women and how investments in female education or providing loans to women-owned businesses has a multiplier effect on the community. Education and opportunity is a magical ingredient of success for women in developed and undeveloped countries. While there are many examples of “this giving”, two stand out for me. The first is, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Leadership Academy, providing business and management education for women. The other is the Wadhani National Entrepreneur Network providing education and leadership skills to young women entrepreneurs.

Women across the world bear a disproportionate burden of work load and have little time, particularly in the rural and poorer communities for self-development. Microfinance and other laudable programs while providing the basics of economic freedom, are all externally directed. I would like to see our corporations conduct meditation and yoga classes for the underprivileged as a foundation program that builds their self-worth. Knowing the self is the key for all growth. This then becomes their personal infrastructure for inner growth from which external growth is built rather than the other way around. Stories such as El Sistema that started in Venezuela are reminders that an inside-out approach brings as much joy and happiness and economic liberation.

In an industry dominated by women—travel and tourism—I am now taking my masters degree in tourism management through the initiative of U21 Global and Mastercard. I commend their great efforts in coming up with this programme of granting scholarships for women in the travel industry annually. For employees like myself who is required to travel much for work reasons, this study programme has been helping me to achieve a long dreamt goal of furthering my studies and experience in my career.

Here is a thought on a slight tangent: businesses that continue to look at the world and their markets through a “male-centric” perspective will likely overlook certain types of talents, trends, and needs that a broader perspective would not. Finding opportunity in uncertain times can be supported by strengthening sophisticated and flexible modes of perceiving environments, to allow for discovering emerging patterns. Anyone who is deeply emeshed in a mono-culture, tends to be blinded by their own culture. A pluri-culture (such as men and women) is more likely to uncover blind spots.

The biggest economic empowerment is that of the blogosphere and how the freedom to publish freely and be heard has created massive networks of helpful hands. Social media enhances what has always been our culture—women-helping-women lead better lives. We support one another globally and because we provide economic and emotional support, the world is becoming more balanced, more civilized and more sustainable.

Women’s eNews has been covering this story for nearly ten years and it still amazes me that the business case for investing in women still has to be made. Women are more than half the population with control of the vast majority of family buying decisions and incredible entrepreneurs. Who is left that we have to discuss this with?

Economic necessity has propelled many women into the job market. Economic independence and cultural changes has reduced gender inequality in many societies. However, the woman continues to be the main “carer" for young children and elders in the family. Governments and employers in developing countries like India that are still socially conservative would do well to recognise this and provide flexible working conditions and child care support to women. This will boost participation of women in industry.

This piece is the perfect example of how an earlier article, “Using knowledge brokering to improve business processes” could and should work, albeit, in this case the source of the idea/insight is the humanitarian/international relief sector and the potential beneficiaries are businesses.

CARE, for example (and other international development agencies), have known that effecting change in women is a key to bringing about major social, economic and political change, especially in developing countries and particularly if the goal of development is large, enduring, structural change. The fact that that insight appears to now have found fertile soil in business strategy only confirms the importance of looking outside one’s own comfort zone for important insights. In the case of women, consider just how rapidly and profound the change in women’s economic status in developed nations came about and how large the impacts are.

The observation applies to and in developed nations as well. The Canadian Aboriginal environment shows a strong relationship between educated, healthy, empowered women and economic and social progress. This is striking when looking at relatively advanced economies of the Mohawk First Nations and other First Nations also near urban centers. The Canadian Government and some First Nations are making efforts; however, these efforts and the efforts on early childhood education and well-being need to be doubled and re-doubled.

A decade and a half ago, Deloitte began a major effort to understand why so few women made it to Partner, while incoming classes were 50/50. Based on a firm-wide effort, Deloitte now has a higher percentage of women partners than any major professional services firm. The current Chair of the US practice is Sharon Allen and women fill many other leadership positions. I knew Deloitte had turned the corner, when the data for women partners showed a steady upward trend, but not more each year. That is, it made the case that standards were not lowered. Some years more qualified than in other years. This is crucial for success. Performance and merit, remain key, but the impediments to having merit show through have been reduced. That’s the way forward!

This is a great example of what folks like C.K. Prahalad (author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid) and Porus Munshi (author of How 11 Indians Pulled Off the Impossible) have shown us about entrepreneurship in bottom-of-the-economic pyramid (BOP) economies. Echoing your views in this article, the GEPA organization is one of my favorite examples of the opportunities found at the intersection of BOP markets and helping women. You might recall that 60% of hand-stitched soccer balls are made in the city of Sialkot, Pakistan. Historically, stitching was done in peoples’ homes where child labor was commonly used in the production of the balls. In 1996, during the European soccer championships, activists lobbied to end the use of child labor. This eventually led to the Atlanta Agreement, which sought to reform the industry to eliminate the use of child labor in the production of balls. The Atlanta Agreement got ball production out of the home and into stitching centers, which can be monitored more easily. This also led to the centralization of production in approved “stitching centers.” On the one hand, the centers make it easier for the Independent Monitoring Association for Child Labor (IMAC) - an organization created to watch over the Atlanta Agreement - to make sure no child labor is used. On the other hand, the centralization sometimes forces workers to commute further to get to work. Child labor has to a large extent disappeared from this sector. Moreover, global fair trade companies like GEPA have set up village-based stitching centers which solely employ women. Custom and religion prohibit women from working with men in Pakistan, and the women-only soccer ball stitching centers give them an opportunity to have a job and improve their families’ incomes. We can see this in the public sector, too, in schools such as Riverside School, an innovative primary and secondary education school in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India (see a great video on it in TED). Thanks again for the inspirational and spot-on article.

In the Caribbean’s past, slavery and other labour programmes have resulted in the male being absent from the home, while offshore earning a wage. The society became matriarchial and in Barbados women have more mortgages, saving accounts, and car loans. This is so for most of the English speaking Caribbean except for Guyana and Trinidad where the population has a significant portion which is of Asian origin.

I am an advisory board member for Black Women in Sport Foundation, in Philadelphia, PA, USA. The program was started by two professors at Temple University in Philadelphia to encourage women of color, and coaches, to participte in non-traditional sports like fencing and tennis. Since its inception, the program has fostered a network of women who continue to mentor women athletes and coaches to attain their college degrees through competitve sports. Many have gone on to compete in the Olympics. Their ranks include executives from professional sports to major corporations like American Express and Nike.