 So, a very good afternoon to all of you and welcome to this session, Closing the Economic Equality Gap. My name is Falot Piotr Konitzka and I'm the Director General of SIDA, which is the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency and that's why we use the acronym SIDA. It's a very long name. It's such a privilege to moderate this session. We have a number of distinguished panelists and a very interested and engaged audience, so I'm convinced that we will have a very fruitful hour together. The panelists have always said to me already that they want to discuss and debate, so I'm very hopeful. It's also a privilege for me to be the moderator on this very topic. I don't think it's a secret to you that gender issues and the subject of today is at core and at heart of what Sweden is promoting and we have a lot of experiences around that. The development work that we do at SIDA is actually 85% of the interventions or contributions that we bring are in one way or another targeted towards a gender objective or a perspective. So again, I'm very grateful for having this opportunity together with you. I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview of these fantastic panelists before we get them going. First of all, let me turn to you from Sil, and I also have a difficult name to pronounce. The head of you and women and before we give you a hand, let me just congratulate you to the flagship report, Progress of the World's Women 2015 to 2016. It provides a very timely argument for why women's participation and influence in the economy is transformative and central for achieving the sustainable development goals. It is a right in its own, but it's so very important for development, so thank you for being here and please give that EDE. We also have Mr. Colin Dyer on the panel from Jones Lang La Salle. You can give him, I'm not sure too. I think it's better that we start this way. You may not want to applaud later when I hope so. So Mr. Dyer, you are the president and chief executive officer of John Lang La Salle, and it's a company that sees improving numbers of women and minorities at all levels as a strategic priority, and you actively promote women, and as a result of that, it translates into stronger professional relationships, increased engagement, and higher promotion and retention. We believe so, yes. You believe so, and that's what we want to hear more about, so thank you. But we cannot only talk about what's inside a company, the work being done inside, but the role of SAFARICOM to enable mobile money transfer services cannot be underestimated, and the role of such services has been proved to strengthen women and women entrepreneurs. And the CEO is here, Bob Collymore. Give him a hand, please. And people tell me that you have said that CEOs have no choice but to engage in sustainability, and the days of focusing just on profit are over. I think that's only the smart CEOs will do that. So we will challenge you on that later on, I'm sure. The work of these companies and CEOs are of course very vital, but just as vital is policy and decision making at the political level. Rwanda has been a forerunner when it comes to representation of women in parliament. It is also a country that is doing good in its effort to close gender gaps, ranking number seven in the latest global gender gap report from the World Economic Forum. Minister Gatete, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning of Rwanda, very welcome. Lastly but not least, it's an honor to have one of the greatest representatives for the struggle for gender equality on the panel, who have really moved gender equality issues to the core of the development discourse. Please welcome Madame Grasamachel. There are three key discussion points for us to take on today. In various ways, these panelists are linked to these three questions. We are going to touch upon equalizing pay for equal work, on increasing percentage of women leaders in the boardroom, and on updating economic policies and social institutions. We will rally around those three issues, and it's my job to see whether we have talked about them in the end. I want to say to you that the gender gap report that I mentioned earlier shows that there is progress in women's economic participation, education and political participation on this continent. The number of female entrepreneurs on the continent is also increasing. But the fact is that on a global level, women earn 10 to 30% less than working men. Women are only half as likely as men to have a full-time wage job, and women spend twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic work. And this discussion is about how we can make even further progress in terms of policy and efforts of the private sector. May I start with you, Grassa, to get this going? How do you see that you, and maybe even more so, your fellow panelists, can speed up the work to close the gaps? Let me begin by being a little bit irreverent and say, I don't think there is much progress in economic advancement of women. I think if you look to African economies, we have in every single country of ours two economies. There's the formal and that is informal. The informal, which is made up mostly by women, it's just a second with this survival. People struggle and spend their lives, women, just to get the minimum to survive and maybe to succeed, to send their children to school or to treat them well, but they don't prosper in the formal sector. Then you have the formal, and the formal sector, it's precisely where I think, I wouldn't call progress. You have a few faces, very few faces of women who are in formal economy, whether it is industry, whether it is in the boardroom, very token. So my view is that we made progress in political representation, but in the economy, we have to tackle this from scratch, in my view. And this is what much later maybe I can try to share. This is what my organization is trying to do, and I have been a political activist, and I know that we still have a long way to go politically in political field, but I decided the rest of my time, now while I'm alive, I'm going to focus on the economy, because that's the place now we need really to free women from all those things you were mentioning. I mean, there's no one single country today we can say they pay equal work, equal. I think one of the flags which Pumzi is to live as legacy is precisely to bring strongly this issue, equal work, equal pay. And it is economy, it is work, and it's not only political. So I just wanted to begin by saying maybe we should accept that in this new phase of social development and sustainable development goals, we need to tackle this issue from scratch and not believe that there's progress. It's minimal. What can we do then? That's what your question. Yeah, exactly. I think we need to have very targeted programs of training, first, second, putting financial resources into their hands. And when I say training, I mean enterprise development, you can call it what you do. But entrepreneurship, yeah, they are entrepreneurs. Women, they are informal. But if they are to enter the formal, they have to be trained. They have to be given skills to control effectively their business. So try your best. Do a hundred a year. Do 200. Do 2,000. But we just have to have targeted programs. Talking doesn't help anymore. That's, I completely agree. I think a moderator can have a view. Yes, why not? And just to share with you, there is a competition between Swedish companies called Battle of the Numbers, because they realize that they have very few women on top positions and in boardrooms as well. But they see it as they just need to be more competitive in enabling women to be part of the workforce. So it's a business case for the company. So they actually challenge each other. And one of the companies won. And I'm not going to talk about that, obviously. But numbers is important. That's what you say. So what do you think when you listen to Graza here about your experience from John Lang LaSalle? What do you hear? What can you do? Well, our experience is largely based around the Western New York Stock Exchange listed corporation, which is in the formal sector, I have to say. I'm pleased to say. Although I think the point you made, Michelle, about the targeting of programs does apply to the corporate sector, it's applied to Sweden. And Sweden has applied targeting in a very effective way. And that's what we've also done. Because within US listed companies, unlike I believe Sweden, there is no obligation to have a certain proportion, for example, of women in the boardroom. We have gone out and said to ourselves, that's not right. We want to have a significant representation of women in our boardroom. And we have 40% of our external directors are female. And by the way, they're paid the same as the males. And I'll come back to that a little later on, because it may sound flippant, but there's an important point there. So that's at the boardroom level. But the issue and the solution, this targeting issue, I think, is relevant right through the organization. And it's part of a broader issue. If you look at Western universities, Europe, US, the graduation rates now are 60 female, 40 male, or getting close to that. When it comes to hiring, our rates are 50-50. When it comes to the very senior level, it's around 10% of women at the senior level in the organization. And so throughout the organization, through the process of hiring, through the process of promotion, we're now introducing targets, not quotas, but targets, which we are aspiring to meet. The hiring part is quite easy, because you can generally bring the human resource people to bear, and they'll do as they're told. The difficulty comes in the promotional part, where the unconscious biases of our largely dominant male senior managers take over and tend to include and promote males and tend to have the reverse effect with females, which only magnifies the effect of females taking on family challenges at the same time, which, like other professional service companies, results in this degradation in proportion of females as you move up through the organization. So targeting a certain level of positive discrimination at all levels, including the boardroom, I think are essential parts of at least our toolkit as we develop this program of enhancing the level of women in our organization. I think we need to be a bit careful with this battle of numbers thing. And I would be a little bit uncomfortable about it, because I think we need to move one step back before we get to that point. And I think it's great to do that in Sweden, because we already got quite a good degree of equity. But in regions where the girl child isn't given the basic education, and I was eavesdropping in one of Mama Grash's conversations earlier, where we talked about we have to move the girls past primary education into secondary education, because if you don't do that, you end up with tokenism. And that's the last thing we need. So I urge that we really do start from looking at educational opportunities right at the beginning. And by way of example, and I have one of my colleagues here who happens to be my number two in the company. And she will tell you that one of the big problems I've had, I was a little challenged, I'd have, is you talked about male bias. The same bias actually applies to women when they hit leadership. And I think women behave, when they get to that point in leadership, they behave just like men. And they have the same biases. And they don't. That's an elephant in the room. But I think it's true. And we have two very prominent women leaders here who are the exception rather than the rule. I've seen so many women when they hit the C suite, or they become the C, or whatever the leadership role is, they just behave and they have the same blind spot. So just quickly, by way of examples, I went to my technical director and said, why is it that you only have 17% women in your team? And the response is that, well, the technical colleges aren't producing women. And I said, well, why are you telling me your problems? You need to go and fix the problem. And so what he did is that he actually went to the women in his team and said, well, you fix the problem. And so now, if you come to our offices on Saturday morning, you find lots of little seven-year-old girls who are getting into science experiments and learning about maths and learning about all the things because that's where the investment is. Whether those children become employees at Safari come at the latest, it doesn't really matter. You have to build a capacity from the ground upwards. And then we can start to have the battle of the numbers. And I think research also shows that if a woman is on her own, nothing is going to change. And maybe that behavior, which you described is occurring. So if you give opportunity, then you should try to bring two or three or four women into a new situation so that they can add something that might be different than just copy the models that are out there. Fumsil, when you listen to this, what do you want to see happen more than you see? I want to emphasize that actually the report is not very complementary. Yes, there has been some problems, but there is an illusion of progress rather than genuine progress, simply because we've been very busy but not doing things that give us real change and fortune. So it's not out of lack of trying, but maybe we haven't been addressing the real things. For instance, unpaid care work, which impacts on the largest majority of women who do not have any opportunity to enter into the formal, and sometimes even the informal economy, because they're tied up at home by the duties that are not paying. The man is the breadwinner, the woman is the caregiver. Breadwinner, you earn money. Caregiver, you don't earn, but you work. And in the fullness of time, the man would have accumulated pension, salary, and all everything that status, independence, and the woman would have accumulated being dependent, no resources, and poverty. And there's just too many women in the world who are stuck in that. So in Africa, the numbers are very high. So this is one single thing that if we were to address, firstly, recognize that there's something that is called unpaid care work. Redistributed, reduced it, and in some cases, remunerated. Just childcare. Numbers are not very good in Africa, but in the US, unpaid childcare caused about $3.2 trillion US dollars in 2012. Now that is work that women are doing free. If it were to be paid and organized in such a way that some of it provided jobs for teachers who provide early learning education, that would improve the quality of education of the children, that would give the women some income, that would free some of them to go to work. So it's a win, win, win, win, win. And across the world, that's part of the economy that is trapping a lot of women. And it does need government policy and willingness also by the private sector and society to relate to it. So the report problematizes all of those issues and asks of governments, private sector, and general society to take action. But when we talk about representation at board level, Africa comes after the European countries in terms of representation at board level, according to the reports recently released by African Development Bank at 14%, which is low. But I think we need to be increasing the representation of women as well as the quality of the representation of women. And quality means that women who are also willing to bring about changes as they get into that, because it's not enough to increase the numbers. We also have to increase the responsibility of the people who get into these positions, as well as give responsibility to men who for a bit of time are still going to dominate. It is a luxury for us not to expect, require, and find mechanism to make men utilize the positions that they have to create the changes. So it cannot be women alone, because there are too few, and it's going to take us a bit of time for us then to increase, but the emphasis on what do you do once you get there is just as critical. So we have been talking about targeting, but not as a token, the need to go from talk to action and targeting can be helpful. But use it carefully so that you don't neglect what has to be done in the earlier stages. I think that's very important. And we also see that I think it's relevant, as you say, all over the world, that to get women to get equal pay, you have to have more women to work more and more men to work at home more. And that is not for this, absolutely. And it has nothing to do with one continent on the world. It's a global phenomena. So Rwanda, you have been very successful in many ways. And I think you are leading on female representation on the parliament, aren't you? I think you are. At least you're better than Sweden. So I'm not going to pretend that we won that game anyway. But I think it's interesting to hear from your minister. How can you assure or what can you do to continue this work and maybe increase the number of females or women in boardrooms and other parts of society? How can you do that in Rwanda? Yeah, thank you very much. I think really the solution is not only the numbers. There is a whole lot of issues that we need to address. And that's why, for us, we opted for the, I would say, not only a policy framework, but also legal and institutional framework to be able to address this. After the genocide, when the whole population was 54% female and we needed to develop, there's no way to develop with a number that is less than 50%, which is men, only developing the economy. So the president came up with a statement saying, gender equality is not just women's business. It's everybody's business. Gender equality and women's empowerment are critical to sustainable socioeconomic development. So when he made that statement, then it was followed up by action. It means that we have to identify the issues that have caused the women to lag behind. And those issues then have to do something about. We started by saying, if we believe in it, in equality, then we should put it in a constitution. And that was voted by ordinary people. It's in the constitution. And that's why we also have 30% minimum in decision-making organs of the government to set as an example. Then secondly, we looked at all the other issues. Inheritance, it was only men that were almost taking all. So we had to change the law and making sure that there is equality in terms of inheritance. We did the same for access and ownership of land. And that law was also changed for equal land ownership. Actually, currently, when we did it, it yielded results because we are the process of land registration. And currently, the land that is owned by women only is 28%. For men only, it's 18%. For joint ownership, it's 54%. And there is 2% by the government. So at least that one has yielded results because now they can use it as a collateral for accessing the bank. At the same time, there is also equal pay in the labor court. It's now legal. And also the gender-responsive budgeting. There is also a law on that. It is in organic budget law. So that means when I'm preparing, because I should not have an option of really believing in it or not believing in it, it says if I'm preparing my budget and I make sure I coordinate all the other institutions as a minister of finance, I have to think of if I presented to cabinet what the president is going to say. And then if I take it to parliament from cabinet, I know that the head of the economic committee is a woman. The head of the social committee is a woman. The head of budget is a woman. The deputy speaker is a woman. The speaker is a woman. And it is a house of 64% women. Now, how can I get through with that if it is not gender-responsive budget? So I should not be given an option because the law says this. That means that once you put it in the law, it binds all of us, which is very important. Day number two, we must have institutional framework. We must have a ministry, a gender monitoring office. We must have the women who have what you call the women council all over the country. And you have also the forum for the women parliamentarians. They work together and making sure that what we are doing is correct. But one thing that we are working on now is making sure that it's not just the numbers. Do we have the indicators in the economy, in the social, so that something similar to the ease of doing business by the World Bank of saying we have a checklist so that we can measure ourselves against certain standards? Where are we? What's the baseline? And how can we measure ourselves every year against those baseline? For example, the women who are accessing loans from the banking system currently for us is 40%. When we saw that they were far below, we had to introduce a facility for guarantee because they don't have the collateral so that we can now provide 75% of the guarantee for the women. And that is increasing their own access to finance. And then you look at all the other areas. But what we are working on now is to make sure that we have the numbers. The central bank has instructed all the banks to desegregate every data by gender so that we can easily measure. And the others are also doing the same. The National Institute of Statistics is also trying to desegregate the numbers so that we can know where do we stand? What's our target? How do we reach there? What kind of policies do we need to change so that we can reach where we want to reach? And this would inform the government in terms of policies because otherwise we'll be talking about numbers, but numbers is not just the overall solution. We need to make sure that we are serious and we guide the entire narrowing of the gender gap until it's gone. We've done it in schools. We know that in primary school, there are more girls than boys. In secondary school, there are still more boys than girls, but in terms of completion, there are more girls than boys. And then we continue, and that's how we take decisions, but we need numbers. This is very crucial. Please. In practice, have you had resistance and what sort of resistance and from whom to this process? Yeah, definitely we've had... There's no gentleman who is a CEO who would want to have anything less than that, especially because initially, the women in the world that we are so behind that even some time back, opening an account, you need the approval of your husband or your uncle or someone who is a close relative, who is a man. So that's how far we are. So we have to do something about it. And even to test that, we are saying the whole basis is family development. And for a family, there was an experiment that was done where you are giving money to women and men. And on average, you find that 94% of the money by a woman was spent in the family. But of course, when you give money to a man, I think the buy is the first place that you go to. And 54% I think, if I remember very well, was the money that was spent in the house. So you can imagine in terms of social development of a household, which is a unit for economic development. If you empower women, then you are supporting the entire family unit. You see, I don't think that it's actually particularly smart. I just think to do the other thing is particularly stupid. Because there's not an accident that Rwanda has the kind of growth rate that it has. It's not an accident that certainly my company is as successful as it has. Because I have 50% of women, not quite satisfactory at the senior level, where I think it's about 40% or 36%. But the result of that is we make much better decisions. And because we've done some of the things like we've provided childcare facilities in the office, and when we asked ourselves why weren't women moving up to the C suite, it's because they have the double shift, right? And they have to worry. My number two is sitting here, who incidentally also happened to be a young global leader. When she's finished work, she has to go home and she has to do that stuff. And we said, let's get rid of, or at least let's relieve that problem. The result is that I get, this is clearly evidence here, is that I get the smartest women in Nairobi working for my company. Because if I'm paying the same salary as the guy next door, who happens to be Barclays Bank, she will come and work for me because I will take care of those concerns that she's got. I will provide things like breastfeeding and breast-expressing facilities, because I, you know, fundamentally, I believe that it's just wrong to ask women to be expressing milk in a toilet, not in the 21st century. And certainly not in my company. The result is that... Well, thank you, but I mean, the fact that I'm getting applause for that is a statement in itself. It shouldn't be. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. And so you get the kind of GDP growth that you get in Rwanda because you just make smarter decisions. But I think... Ah, yes. Can I come in on this? I mean, this conversation, I think it brings three things which I would like to mention. The first one is there has to be a top level, whether it's leadership, political leadership, or if it's business leadership, there has to be a very clear understanding and making a strategic issue of development of the country, of the nation, or of the company to say, to treat women as equal and to give them some, not only, but it's even some privileges so that they can become equal. You have to do that if you are to succeed. So I think leadership at the top to take that as their responsibility. It's one important issue we heard here. The second thing which I wanted also to mention is we haven't yet, in a comprehensive way, identified what are the issues we have to deal with and to respond and to change if we are to talk of equality. Because we are saying equality. And Pomsile just mentioned one. When did we begin to talk of unpaid care work and to understand that it's a fundamental element of equality? No, we have been concentrating on workplace and even in workplaces that's what we know. I think we need to identify this to bring all the issues at the center equally. The third thing I want also to say is that when we say targeting, we need to have very clear indicators. Let me tell you, in our experience is that you don't find in African countries and sometimes even in UN family, information which is accurate and let alone information which is gender-disaggregated. We don't have the information. So when I said at the beginning that I don't think we are making progress, I don't think even we have the understanding of all the dimensions of what it means if we are to bring women into equality, particularly in economic terms. So I think one of the huge challenges we have in this SDG era in which we are, let's characterize poverty problem. This is one. The second, I didn't begin by saying this, but I think it was very important that CEO of SafariCom did raise, is that when we say women, actually we have to understand we have different kinds of women. Not all women are homogeneous. There's no homogeneous. In age, what we have to do with a girl child, it's not necessarily what we are going to do with adolescent. It's not necessarily what we have to do with the young. And of course with adults and then with old. But our strategies in many cases, they focus in certain age group. Even myself, I started by those who are already adults here and I say we need to train them so that they can. You see what I mean? But I'm very comprehensive understanding of a lifespan of a human being who is a woman, who is a female, and to say how do we begin to build equality? Because we are discussing equality. How do we begin to build equality? It requires a complete mind shift of what we are doing. I think it's called complete. Because even in what we agree, like education, we know everyone has the same right to education. And you can say in numbers we have made. Until now, the biggest challenge of a child in school, rests on the shoulders of a girl. Even when she's in school. Not let alone when she doesn't even get us extra education. But the point I wanted to make is that I think we really do have to go to the drawing board and make it clear for us all the dimensions which we have to take into account if we are to move with the roots. For equality. Exact, for equality. And not only take pieces of each. We have to think about that in an African context as well. I mean, whenever I talk about water, water is health and hygiene and stuff. But it's a gender issue. It's an equality issue. Because as I'm driving back from Kakemega or somewhere and I can see streams of girls carrying water in their heads. You know, if they're really unlucky, they'll probably get raped on the way back. And so we have to address all of those issues. That's what I am saying. We have to put them in a company so that we have all the dimensions very clear and we know what we have to deal with. And it's huge. It's absolutely huge. And it attaches every single aspect of our life. And that's why, for instance, when we are thinking about development in different sectors, we put a gender perspective. So what's different if we are trying to think about gender equality when we build a road or when it's water? It's difficult, but it's an attempt. And it's a game changer if you have that perspective. So minister wanted to just replicate and then proceed. I just wanted to support what Graciel is saying, really very, very important, is that somehow we need to put everything there, understand what are the challenges. You can list them. Some of them have an answer in a law. Others have an answer that is maybe qualitative things that you need to do. Like, for example, when you put the law on gender-based violence, then we knew that we had to, for us, you have the Kori Sanje. It's one stop center. And we make sure that it's on every district. We are developing it as a kind of model which was solving certain problems, involving so many institutions. But also some of them are qualitative and some of them are unique for a country. So we have to find common issues that really you can find in almost most countries. And those are the ones which are saying, what are the indicators? Whether qualitative or quantitative. And then the others that are unique for each country which it can deal with. So that every year we can all give, the reason for ranking is because we can learn from each other. One country may have succeeded in one area and then you go there and see how they did it. That's the only way we can keep continuously improving. But now, whenever you go to many workshops or conferences, then you hear the numbers. The numbers are not, they are good. Because you have them, for example, for us the whole judiciary 40%, executive 40%, you go up to the local government level, that's fine, they take decisions and all that. But then there are so many other issues that need to be addressed. That we need to list down, we need to understand which one they are and what we are doing about it. And making sure that we have the right data that progress we can keep informing our police and making and our decisions. Yeah. Also, I think one thing that we have to emphasize is that it is not, we have years, we have to train and empower women and enable them. But actually in the end, it is not about women having to do something because women have done so much. I don't know what to ask of women anymore. It is society that must change so that it acknowledges that it is made up of men and women. The fact that there are countries, and in many countries, having a child is a burden because you lose part of your income, you lose part of your promotion at work. It's almost like women get punished for giving birth to the next generation. Society has not worked out what to do with someone who gives birth. You cannot tell me that men get to be paid more just because they don't give birth. Therefore, they work harder. We know people who come to work every day and are underperformers. The fact that women may take time for maternity to provide a national service. And then they get a motherhood penalty, as the ILO calls it. So it is that mindset that makes these things that are of national interest a specific problem of a woman for which women get into trouble. I mean, I knew of a woman in an EU country where in that country, when you are in maternity, you are not supposed to call anyone in your work and find out. This is just to make sure that when you are out of work, you're so cut off that you actually have a problem of reintegrating when you come back. Now, why go to such an extent to actually punish a woman? Like, you know, how dare you did it? You're gonna stay out. When you come back into work, you've got to actually re-qualify. Because then what has happened is that the world is an affirmative action place for men. They didn't have to do anything. They just said to be born a man. And men who want to change that part of their responsibility is to actively denounce that privilege. And this is the man we call the he-for-she, the men who are expressing positive masculinity because they are actually trying very hard to say, I'm not interested in this privilege. I want an equal work and that which is accruing to me in an unequal way to my counterpart who's a woman, I actually want to change so that we can create a world that works for everybody. And Colin, you said early, you can applaud as much as you want. You said early on, we actually pay equal. So I think you are one of the leaders, he-for-she is. Please, you wanted to react earlier, so welcome. Yeah, I think all of us here in this room were probably the choir and you're preaching to the choir with respect. We would agree with what you're saying. In some ways, we're not the problem, at least we're prepared to be convinced. But you've laid out the case, I think both of the ladies of the panel, sorry, opposite me. When you go from that conceptual, if this is the problem, to what do we do about it? I think Lurando has had a very unique experience in that it was able to, as I've understood your words, Minister, make a very significant change to the legal system and with that probably the way society thinks or is beginning to think about the issues that the ladies have described. When you come down to what we do running corporations, we're at the sharp edge, if you like, in the formal and Western economy, in my case and in the African economy, in your case, we're at the sharp end of what we do to actually implement things. What changes can we make? Where the law hopefully can help us. So examples of that in most countries now, there are laws about equal pay, most Western countries, at least, there are laws about equal pay. In some countries, there are laws about proportional representation in boards. Those are helpful frameworks. But in practice, when it comes to executing on that, equal pay is a hard thing to measure and it's a hard thing to prove or disprove because pay is basically opaque in most, even in most Western organizations. People do not know what other people earn. Even colleagues doing equal work. So right there, you have an issue of how do we then go about, in a practical sense, making the pay scales uniform and defensible and transparent, at least within the company, and transparent potentially between colleagues within the organization. So going from the conceptual to the practical is a difficult journey. And when you get to the practical level, I think what you will see gradually around the corporate world is people understanding and accepting the need to move in the conceptual direction that you've described. And we are using the help we can get from the legal system. We're using the help we can get from the direction that leaders set in our organization to try to move the agenda forward. Thank you. It's a very interesting point. I think we often discuss private public partnership but I would suggest that this is not necessarily a partnership. This is private, public and iterative process where the issue can be advanced by different actors taking their different measures and should really inform each other. I think this was very useful. Smart economics. You're talking about providing daycare center. I could challenge that and say, do I need to be visible for you to get that service? Or is that service a public service that makes the opportunity for even more women? So is that your responsibility or your responsibility? Or a combination? Yeah, I think we need to be careful that we're not finding private sector solutions to the public sector problems. Exactly. I'm looking after my employees. Incidentally, I've also shied away from talking about gender. I mean, I started, I used to talk about gender diversity but now I talk about diversity and inclusion. And so it moves this thing away from people saying, oh Bob, you know, he just cares about gender diversity. Actually, I care about inclusion and part of that inclusion story is a gender story. Thank you. And I also care about inclusion, which means that we are turning into question mode. So if I can be helped, I have a gentleman here in the middle and a lady there. Well, first of all, thank you very much for very informative and thought provoking discussion. I just have a question. In view of the fact that the involvement of women in the informal sector, especially in emerging markets, is greater than their involvement in the formal sector, what is the extent to which legislation that touches the formal sector address the issue of the exploitation of women or the gender inequality at a broad and significant level? Okay. Do you know what? I think we will listen to two more questions and then start to answer. So the woman here at the front and then the woman there. Thank you so much, Mrs. Mamma Marshall and Mamma Lambo. Thank you so much. It's great to hear you all speak about data, technology and the lack of really proving that women are being empowered across Africa. I've got a technology hub in Senegal. I'm from Senegal. I was born in Senegal, grew up in an orphanage and I'm 40 years old today. I'm a young global leader and I've never seen any regress on women empowerment until now because we can't prove it. Within your organizations, what can you do to help us use technology to empower young girls through science, technology, engineering and mathematics? Because in Senegal, the women are progressing very, very fast. Thank you. Hi, I'm Nadia Musaji. I'm a global shaper from the Cave Town hub so welcome to my city. And in my day job, I have a company that develops women engineers in Africa. And so my question is, is if we've been talking about gender parity for a very long time, I'm new in the space and I've been working on it for 10 years already, right? We're now talking about diversity and inclusion. I did, there was this app that would tell me when I would have gender, when we'd close the gender pay gap and it was apparently when I'm going to be 60. Is that accurate? I mean, for the next 30 years, are we still going to be talking about this? Is there a way to escalate it and speed it up? Or at the web in, you know, 2045, are we still going to be talking about gender equality? Thank you very much. We have three different questions. What we do for women in informal sector with the legislation really target them technology and then how can we escalate? Who wants to start? Yes, please, Colin. Well, I'll take a piece of the third question, if I can, and slightly twist it. You talk about, are we still going to be talking about this problem in 20, 30 years time? And I think the answer is yes, thank you. And I'll tell you why I think that. And this is the experience we had in what I described earlier of targeting. We have sort of three fundamental layers in our business and we promote into those layers. We realized that, I realized that it's easier for me to force change at the top because there are smaller numbers. So when we started to push the numbers of women we wanted to see promoted to the most senior level from sort of 10% to, you'd think 50%? No, you've got to start with 15. And then that's ambitious because the pool of women in the next layers down are not there. And after two or three years of that you discover that you've actually exhausted the pool anyway. So you then go to the next layer down and start that. And all in all, this is going to be a multi-decade process to bring people through, women through, from the lower levels of the organization, from starting level, keep them in the business which is really hard for all the reasons that have been alluded to and then bring them through to senior levels. So it's going to be on the agenda for some considerable time to come. The legislation. Yes and no, though, because we can actually also address some of these issues significantly. It's the same thing when you talk slavery or racism. We still have residues of slavery, residues of racism, but you cannot be racist with impunity in most parts of the world. You cannot enslave people with impunity. With gender and with the discrimination of women, you can just do it and get away with it most of the time. The fact that you've got unequal pay, I don't believe that a CEO of a company cannot go into the treasure of their company and get information and look at how much people are paid, look at their qualifications, look at their CVs. Of course you can, but it's not systematically gathered and it's not systematically recorded. That's the starting point. So that you can change, I don't deny that, but that's the starting point. Yeah, but 60 years? Can I come back, come in on this, whether we will be talking about these issues in the 30 years, we're going to talk about these issues for generations to come. I think we should be very clear about that. Because we are talking of changing society. What we are tackling now is to say, we need to have legislation. We need to have institutions. We need to have information which is accurate. We need to have strategies to address problems. We have to have measurement of how far we have gone and where we are lagging behind, et cetera, et cetera. That shows that we are still at the beginning of the journey which we have to take. But there's the much fundamental issue which is the attitude of people. And those attitudes, my baby, they are going to continue to include into your babies. Because attitude and how society completely change, it's a long, long process. And an example is what Pomsile just told you. Although it's generally accepted that slavery is totally unacceptable. But there are people who are doing this. And even in gender, we will move maybe in numbers in what can be quantified in legislation, in institutions, we will move. But equality, it's something which brings the quality of attitude we have to have to accept and value. To value a man and woman as human beings with the same kind of human dignity. And that is a long journey. It's a long journey. So we'll continue to talk about those things. So I think I hear both that we can speed up some things, but we will still have to continue to work on attitudes. Yes. But your questions are too good because the panel becomes so passionate that I can't. So you can come in and then I will ask for two more questions and very brief answers. No, I just wanted to say that the issue we are discussing is not a simple issue. It's a human rights issue. And when it comes to a human rights issue, as long as it's there, we'll keep talking about it. There's no way we can stop talking about it until it is addressed. I think the point that was being raised, which I think is very important, is how fast can we address as many issues as possible concerning the gender gap? And that one, that's what we should be doing, but we cannot stop talking about it until it's done. Yeah. It's very good. Just very briefly, I mean, I share from Zuri's outrage, a mural outrage by the thought it might be 30 years, but in the same way as corruption fights back, misogyny also fights back. You know, in Kenya, we now hear people say, well, what about the boy child? I think, well, what about the bloody boy child? But, I mean, to also answer, May I ask a question? I think technology gives a degree of transparency, and that will help. And so... In access. And access. And so, whilst you might not be able to go into treasury and look, you know, the girl or the woman will be able to actually go online and she can find what her worth is because she can see what pay parity is. And so technology is going to start to address that. I don't think that somebody answered the question of legislation. Informal sector. Yeah, we don't... The legislation, yes, can help to address the informal sector. Again, not solve the problems completely. 75% of women who work outside the home work in the informal sector. The work is unprotected. It has no minimum wage. It has no social benefits and so on. So you can target some of the sectors in which the women are a majority and regulate it better. In the point in case, it's domestic workers. It's happened here in South Africa. There was a lot of outrage, but in the end now, domestic workers have a better quality of life because it's a regulated work. It's got minimum wage. And if you're a domestic worker, you are not fired because you've gone on maternity. In most of the world, it is not like that. Despite the fact that there is a convention protecting domestic workers. Only 38 countries have rectified that convention. Now governments here are choosing not to protect women in an informal sector in order to make it work better for women. So agriculture, there's something we can do. You could do something about land titles as they've done in Rwanda. So yes, legislation can improve and enhance the quality of jobs in the informal sector. Thank you very much. Very clear. We have time for two very brief questions with brief responses. I will take, yeah. Thank you very much. I'm from Namibia. And I would like to thank all the panelists. I want to say that Namibia's experience has been similar to Rwanda's. We have had exclusion of women that has been very crude and very... Every day in every aspect of life, women were actually considered minors. You needed the permission of your husband or your male relative to enter into contract. Any kind of contract to open a bank account, to take a loan, to go to court, to do anything. And we took that legislative approach that Rwanda did. And there was a lot of resistance. I remember that in parliament, the debates were very hot. People took the Bible there. It's not Christianity does not allow that. Even God is the father and all of this. And the president really had to intervene and say we have a two-third majority in parliament. And enough with the debate. Swapo members are now going to vote. This bill is now going to be enacted. And it was passed. We put it in the Constitution. We had a married person's equality and so forth and so forth. I just wanted to say that the issue of inclusion is not only an issue of human right. I agree that it's an issue of human right. And we need to talk about it to the extent that we talk about other human rights issues. But we need also to acknowledge that it's about sustainable development. And that is very, very important. I'm sorry, can you pose your questions? Oh, sorry. Not a question, maybe just that one comment. It's about also sustainable development. There is something in for everybody. People shouldn't think that they are doing a favor to women by including them. They are doing themselves a favor. And I think that's the greatest motivation. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Hello. My name is Bridget Radebe. I just wanted to ask a question. I'm happy we've got two women leaders that I personally know. I'll form a deputy president and I work very closely with her when she was the minister of minds. You are now in a position in the United Nations where you can participate in peer review. Where part of the peer review procedures can be also on these issues that we discuss today that's affecting women. To the extent that we can encourage governments of countries to implement legislation. The legislation that you were personally very much involved in in changing the abilities and the opportunities for women to participate in the economic and political and social framework of our country. Mom Grassa, similarly from the United Nations also at one stage. However, you're part of the elders. To which extent can you also use that platform to take further because today we're meeting and then you have the World Economic Forum. But you come from positions outside the World Economic Forum too that you could also spearhead and implement and take forward whatever it is that we're having. What I want to say is that in our country legislation assisted many women. I personally could not enter the mining industry because the law said women were not allowed to participate. But then that law was changed and many other laws assisted many women in this country. So we know what the law can do. And you have women here that can assist. Thank you very much. I think it's a very, very good imperative for ending this session is what can you actually do in the positions that we all have where we are able to continue to influence. Can I have just one sentence from all of you? The most important thing that you take away from this session and what you can do, please. Really sorry. I think that it's a long, it's a long haul. Cultural shift takes a long time to fix. In the meantime, those of us who are smart enough will take the competitive advantage by going for gender diversity. Thank you very much. I think I've learned. And it is complex. It starts with a full understanding of the full breadth and depth of the issues, which we've heard, continues with a legal framework to help all of us do the right thing and have incentive to do the right thing. It takes measurement, it takes targeting and it takes leadership at all levels in all organizations, in all walks of life. And even then it's a very long journey. Thank you. Minister. Thank you very much. First of all, for the gender-balanced panel that we have. And I just wanted to say that for me, I'm very optimistic. There is already a lot of progress because now we are discussing it. Previously, you could never even discuss it in any forum, but now we are discussing it. So that's progress. Secondly, we still have, I agree with my colleagues, we still have a long way. And we need to develop the leadership at the government level, at the private sector level, at the local government level, and also in the sense of society, so that once you have the leadership at all levels, then you can push these issues and make sure that we add you with debate, but also we implement. Thank you. Thank you very much. I was among those who said this is a very complex and very long process, but I think we need to set up goals. We need to have some targets. We need to define exactly what we have to achieve in a certain period of time. Knowing that it's long, it's big, but without defining in a certain period of time, goals, targets, institutions, commit to it, you will never be able to measure the progress we have made. And I think that's where we are now. Thank you very much. Well, I think it's important to acknowledge that there has been some progress, but it's just not enough. So the glass is half full, not half empty. We have got to work very hard and use the experience and the evidence that we have now about what works and what doesn't work and do it in scale. Because these many pilots now, we really cannot because it's a life of a woman while you are doing a pilot that misses out. We also need to be careful about talking up progress because there is an illusion of progress and success. You must always use the numbers so that you can have a reality check about how much progress we have made. And lastly, it is also very important to work in partnerships, that we don't work in isolation so that you can leverage. I think the point that Bridgette is making, where you have a convenient power, you try to use that power for the benefit of a large number of people and across each other. The fact that you are sitting as a private sector, men and women, government, and I think that for me is the right direction that we are taking. Thank you very much. The glass is half full, but we have to be realistic. We have to move from pilots to scale. We have to use the numbers for benchmarking and learning. We have to balance targeting and patience, targeting that will move the process, but understand that some of this, the deep thing that we are discussing will take some time. I think for me this was fantastic. It was such an inspiration. Partnerships and dialogue is very important. Thank you, audience, for putting very good questions and statements to this discussion. I'm sure that we will now enter the whole World Economic Forum and inspire them on this important topic. Thank you.