 According to the World Economic Forum's latest gender gap report, two years of COVID-19 have thrown gender equality back nearly four decades. I'm Adrian Monk joining you from the World Economic Forum in Geneva. In today's agenda dialogues, we'll be talking to some outstanding women leaders and their peers on how to get back on track and what it'll take to ensure a more inclusive recovery. Our guest today, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, Chair of South Africa's Industrial Development Corporation, Busy Mabusa. And I'm pleased to say we have two guests joining in the studio in person, something we've missed for the past couple of years, here with us, CEO Fidelity International Anne Richards and the CEO of Unilever, Alan Jope. And to lead our conversation, my colleague, President of the World Economic Forum, Borga Brenda. Thank you, Adrian. It's really great to have guests in the studio again. I think this is the first time in 19 months that we have guests here. So, Anne and Alan, great to see you here. And also for our guests joining virtually. As also, Adrian was alluding to in the introduction, COVID-19 has had huge negative impact on global growth. Many countries are still struggling to reach a pre-COVID level when it comes to their GDP. Some countries will only reach that in 2024. And we know that more than 100 million people has fallen into extreme poverty due to COVID. And we also know, unfortunately, that women and girls have been very hard hit. They have the jobs that have been most exposed. But also, we have seen the increased unemployment in many countries have really hit women very hard. We know that financial inclusion plays a major role in this. And Anne Richards, you're the CEO of Fidelity International. Very good to see you in the studio. And it would be very good to hear from you. How do you think financial inclusion could play a constructive role in making sure that women are again included in the economy? So it's a great question. And by the way, it is fantastic to be physically in a room with people talking about such important things again, because we've all missed this. So it's terrific to be here. So look, I think you touched on a couple of very important threads. If you look back over the last few recessions, most of the most recent recessions going back over the last 50 years have either been pretty equally balanced between men and women in terms of where the impact has been felt. In 2008-9 was a MAM session. It was felt disproportionately on men. And the most recent recession caused by the pandemic has been what they call a she-session. It has disproportionately affected women, but actually to a far greater extent than even 2009 hit male workers. So it has been a very short, sharp shock to female workforce. And you touched again on two of the main reasons for it. Firstly, because the sectors that have a higher proportion of women in them, and this is globally, have tended to be professions such as hospitality, such as retail, which of course just shut down for most of the last year and a half in many places. Plus, because people were sent home, many of the caring responsibilities, whether for children, whether for elders, fell disproportionately on women. And even if they had a job, they sometimes had to exit from it in order to be able to do that. So you can see as a framing, it's been a very difficult period for women. And we know that post a deep recession like this, if you lose your job in a recession, it's far harder to regain your earnings power again. So if you manage to tough it through, you will accelerate again if you've lost your job very, very hard to regain that momentum on the earnings front. So the tail effect of this pandemic is going to affect women for many years into the future. And I think that's where we need to think really carefully about what it is that we need to do to try and mitigate some of the effects of that. And again, it's true in every country around the world, some more than others. And I think financial inclusion has to start from that mindset, thinking about how we're going to mitigate what will otherwise be something that actually goes down the generations. Alan Schupp, you're the CEO of Unilever. And we know that as the CEO of such a large international company, you can also influence this gender gap in a positive way. We are now really struggling. The gender report of the World Economic Forum that came out for 2021 shows that it was supposed to take 100 years to reach gender parity before COVID. The latest report says that it know will take 135 years with the steps that we're currently taking to meet gender parity. So I guess you have a plan on at least how Unilever can contribute positively in such a difficult situation that the world is facing, but also on the gender side. Well, there's various reports, Artler, that estimate 100 years, 200 years, no matter what, it's completely unacceptable. The comments I offer, I do so with humility. I want to avoid hubris in this space. I'm sure almost everybody who's listening into the show will have a well-developed equity, diversity and inclusion programme. And everyone has that because we know it makes economic sense. Diverse businesses perform better. The business case is made. We have some additional reasons why we care. Two and a half billion people use a Unilever brand every day. And about 75% of those purchases are made by women. And our founder back in the 1880s, William Lever, described the mission of the firm as to make cleanliness commonplace and lessen the load for women. Now, I'm not sure if he was an early stereotyper or an early advocate for women. But anyway, it's in our DNA. We have a model of change, which we use for most of the programmes that we run, where we're trying to have impact at scale. And it starts with getting our own house in order, then thinking about our value chain, then thinking about what we can do with our brands, and then thinking about advocacy. And that affects tens of thousands of people in our own business, hundreds of thousands of people in our value chain, millions of people through our brands and hopefully billions through our advocacy. And I'm sure we'll get into some more specifics on the types of actions that can be taken at least each layer of change. Well, Adrian, I think this are very important input and also quite concrete on this agenda. Absolutely. And I just want to bring in to Busey from Johannesburg. You know, you've been seeing in Joberg the impact of COVID-19 in a place where the vaccination programme is really in its infancy. How have you found the businesses that you support, the women-led businesses really being impacted by this pandemic? Adrian, it's been absolutely devastating. Thank you so much for this opportunity to join you. South Africa has just reported its quarterly labour force survey numbers for the quarter ending end of June 2021 today. And the numbers are absolutely devastating. South Africa, South African unemployment is now standing at 34.4% on the narrow definition. That means the discouraged part of the labour force is not counted in that. If you look at the expanded definition, and if you look at the impact on women, then the number reaches as much as 48.7% that is absolutely unacceptable and absolutely unsustainable. Women have borne the brunt of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country has been cushioned somewhat, not so much in that the developing world is fortunately recovering ahead of us. And that has at least cushioned us from any further burdens such as tax rate increases. Women have, however, lost out disproportionately because most women own small and medium sized enterprises. Most women are exposed exactly as Anne has said to the hospitality industries, the care industries, textiles and garments retail. And we have seen there that women who are entrepreneurs have had to take a step back. They're now shy to get back into the market because they don't know if they'll be able to afford the funding that is available in the market. We have now as a development finance institution started seeing if there are any packages that can be supportive to these women enterprises that we can put together. Of course, I can't miss out that South Africa has more recently had the double whammy of the unrest. So we having to address the impact of the pandemic, as well as the impact of the unrest, and no effort is being spent in making sure that we are inclusive as we try to address these. And I hope I'll have opportunity to speak a little more about our initiatives in that regard. Absolutely. I think understanding what works is really vital in this space. I just want to ask our two studio guests. What are the things that you've seen in this kind of onward struggle that have worked? And what are the things that you expected to see work, which actually have been disappointing? Are there things measures that you or companies or businesses have taken which haven't seen results? And ones that have perhaps surprised you and given you something more to kind of to think about? The things that we look at in a business context are probably quite different to some of the really deep endemic challenges that Boosie is talking about there. So I think I have to frame my answer in terms of the business context. I think that the power of persuasion for evidential based approaches. So you know, we know that if you do exercises like taking a team and crash landing them on a desert, you can demonstrate really clearly that mixed teams perform far better at getting good solutions than homogeneous teams. So I think there is a place for showing evidentially what can work, which is, which is a great leveler and it opens people's eyes. And I think that's quite powerful in a business context. I think more broadly, also thinking about things within a business context about what is it that creates more opportunities for men to be different to their stereotypes. So one of the things that we introduced last year was enhanced parental leave. So men and women now have equal right to parental leave wherever they are in the world primary and secondary carers. And that's fantastic. And we've seen through the pandemic, a lot of men take six months leave, or whatever is is the norm in their country, just as as mothers typically would. And it's changed their whole mindset towards what it means to be a couple. So I think there are things like that in a business context, which can really work. But I think more generally to going back to some of the big challenges that Lucy talked about, you know, Alan, you mentioned just the scale of the purchasing power of women, you know, $43 trillion in 2020, that is the purchasing power of women. And I think if we can do more to link that purchasing power to some of the challenges that Lucy talked about, I think that is that is something that could could be really powerful and helping claw back that move from 100 years to parity to 135 years, you know, and get back get us back on track. Now, have there been things that you've seen that have really accelerated Unilever's drive to get to gender equity, and perhaps things that you hoped would do that that maybe haven't delivered quite as well? Yeah. So let me talk about four things that have worked for sure. The first is leadership from the top. We make this a strategic priority. It's called out in the first line of the company strategy, our diversity board, I chair is staffed by very senior people. It is clearly a strategic priority in the company. Secondly, a little controversially targeting. We set targets for the representation of women by parts of the business that reflects where they are and how much progress they need to make. And we hold leaders accountable for those targets. Third is progressive policies. And this is one place where I think perhaps COVID has helped. And that we've all begun to realize that there are many different ways of working. And we don't have to adhere to 100 year old stereotype on how work gets done. And the last area is really shining a spotlight on unconscious bias. We worked with Harvard Business School and developed a way of tracking individuals appointments, not the appointments in their in their team, but over a 10 year period, how many men and women had they appointed. And it really threw up some striking reflections that people had to make on their own behavior. What does not work are grand declarations from the top just kind of vague encouragement, nor sitting around admiring the problem. We know that women have been devastated by COVID more than men. And we need to stop admiring the problem and get to policy changes and managerial changes that address that issue. Thanks for that. And speaking of addressing the issue through policy, I'm delighted that we've got on the line with us, UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Muhammad. Welcome to the call. Borga, hand back to you. Well, thank you, Adrian. Welcome. And congratulations on your reappointments. I mean, I'm honored as the Deputy Secretary General of the UN. And thank you for your leadership throughout so many years. And we know that you're the mother of the sustainable development goals. And you really, really care about it. And welcome back from Haiti. I know you were there. Following the earthquake. Of course, we also been looking all of us been extremely concerned about what has been unfolding in Afghanistan the last weeks. And we are all worried about the four million girls that are no attending school. And also all the women that take part in the workforce and also are part of the university. So I would like at the beginning, I mean, if you could share just very shortly some of your reflections after your visit to Haiti, but also the role of women know in the recovery and how do you see the situation in Afghanistan? You think Taliban is going to go back to 2001 policies? Or do you think girls hopefully will then be able to continue to be going to school? Welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much, Borge. And for the the load of questions in a very short time. And for having me very quickly on my return from Haiti, I think very timely visit. There's a lot of lessons that have been learned from the 2010 earthquake. It is different. It was not a concentrated urban impact, very very dispersed. And so therefore, even more difficult to reach everyone. But the partnerships there and the leadership of women in this has been instrumental in getting that recovery on the road. So that that trip from, you know, Port-au-Prince, all the way to La Caisse where the brunt of it hit. I think the important thing for Haiti, of course, is to get behind the government. There's got a couple of challenges ahead of it. First, this emergency response and to getting everyone building back differently, not just better, but differently from the past. And the second, of course, is the election process and how that goes and how inclusive it is. I met some amazing women in civil society who have their ideas on how they can get Haiti back on track. And I think that this is the kind of support that we need to give. There are women in leadership, but we need to get behind them. And we need to do that, accompanying them on that journey. It's not a quick fix. In the case of Haiti, it is generational. Coming very quickly, of course, to Afghanistan, I can say that, you know, we've all seen the tragic scenes form of Afghanistan. We continue on a minute by our basis to support, particularly our human rights defenders and women. But the parallel actions that we take there as the UN is also to engage with the Taliban and to certainly a hope that we're not going back to the dark days that are so vivid in many memories of Afghanis. There are, of course, lots of efforts being made on the evacuation. There are deadlines, and that makes us even more concerned. But the UN is there, continues to stay to deliver and to address what happens the day after. There's not clarity right now on how this will evolve. But certainly there is engagement to make sure that we try to condition that new era for Afghanis and to make sure that human rights, women's rights, what we have gained over the years is not lost. And that, I think, let's really reinforce both the Afghanis that have no other place to go and will be in Afghanistan and keep the spotlight on doing the right thing and protecting them and the gains that we've had. But on the other side, there are many Afghanis who have gained capacities, leadership, particularly women, who are going to be outside of Afghanistan. And I think that they also need equal support to make sure that they are engaging with what happens in the weeks and months to come in Afghanistan. No, thank you so much. I mean, I guess one of the things that keep you up at night is worries around reaching the sustainable development goals in 2030. Of course, COVID has been a setback and also a huge setback for the women and the girls of the world. And how do you see women playing a role in their recovery? And what should we do in the coming years to get us back on track to also reaching the goals when it comes to women and girls' rights? Well, very much hopeful as we are in Afghanistan to get a better response from the Taliban to reach the nine year that we have left of the SDGs important. Look, leadership is going to come from the global stage and is coming and from local levels. Let me first say that women already have taken leadership in the COVID response. Kristalina Georgieva has done that and shown the way forward in that historic SDR allocation. We have Vera Shongwei at ECA who has mobilized and accompanied ministers of finance from Africa to make sure that it is clear that the social economic impact on Africa cannot be left behind. But we're also seeing ministers of finance at the local level who are galvanizing around a broad range of issues to try to see the silver lining in the COVID response. Clearly, we still have a long way to go to get the global response on things like the vaccines where women and the vulnerable are those easily missed there on the front lines of health and otherwise. But there are lots of fiscal measures, lots of work that is going on around the financial sector to try to get more space in there for the transitions that need to happen. In this case, you know that climate is up front on our agenda. Lots of resources that we are trying to mobilize for adaptation the transitions, energy, connectivity. All of this matters to women. There is women's leadership in all of this. And I think what we want to see is if those flows can get to those countries, women who are occupying the spaces in finance and health in education, whether it is public service in civil society, particularly the private sector, we're seeing young entrepreneurs coming up. We need to make these connections and get to the scale of the response that is needed. Look, as I said, you know, women can rule the world. They are already in these places occupying them and we don't intend to leave them to anyone else. We have a much, I think, broader perspective of what needs to happen beyond just the spend on the economy. It is about human rights. It is about services and systems that need to perform for people. It's certainly about inclusion and better equality all around. No, and you're so right. We have seen a lot of very important leadership from the women in position in the world. What we are also faced with, and I know you also visited your own country, Nigeria recently, is that we are seeing big paradoxes now. Like 2 percent of the people of Africa being vaccinated out of the 15 trillion US dollars that is launched in extraordinary stimulus. Only 2 percent of it has been then allocated to developing countries. But all this should not make us too pessimistic. We also have to look at the silver linings. What can we do to get things back on track? And how can we reskill, upskill also girls and women in the world? So how do you look at the prospects now also for the developing world in the years to come? Are we doing enough and what should we do more of and what should we not be doing in the years to come? Well, I think we shouldn't be standing on the sidelines and looking at this as though it can be managed without a better response. All the issues around recovery and recovering better amount to absolutely nothing if we don't get the right response. Now that doesn't mean people at the country level are waiting for the global community to do something about it. 18 months later it's clear that they're not. And the vaccines and the figures that you show are outrageous. However, having said that, I think that there's a lot more that can be done at the local level in domestic budgets to do things differently and together for years the development paradigm has been siloed. Now we need to see the co-benefits of working across the sectors and also with the partners, different partnerships to try to leverage better use of domestic resources but better targeting of it in the area of food systems, connectivity, energy, public systems. And I think that you know if we can develop these pipelines rather than wait for the resources and then start planning, there are plans there. We do have solutions. What we need to do is better bring partners around the table like in the World Economic Forum to see how we can jump start some of this. In some cases we could probably leapfrog. Example, in education, as education began to shut down around the world then we began to put investments into connectivity. I mean even in our businesses in the developed world we were finding that we were failing in that connectivity. We have since learned a lot and have been able to connect back to education, back to businesses in migrating them from the informal sector online. So there's a lot that's happening there but it needs to go to scale and there's a sense of urgency. Borgate just to remind you the context in which we live in many of these countries is one of climate crisis, of conflict that we have never seen or had before. So it's not easy but the job is, the reality the aspirations of the 2030 agenda and if we can get together to try close that gap we've got to keep hope alive and we've got to keep a sense of can do. Especially using you know the energy and the vision that we're seeing with young people, particularly our young women. Thank you so much Deputy Secretary General and you can count on the World Economic Forum and you can count I think on all the CEOs and businesses. I think we have seen also on climate change that the companies have really taken leadership here and many of them coming out and saying we will be climate neutral by 2050 or some of them even by 2030 and as you saw in the studio and also with us from Johannesburg we have really thought leaders and business leaders with us that are willing to roll up their sleeves. You're ready to take on that role Alan? I think you already do. Yeah you bet. We've made our own commitments. We will absolutely deliver our commitments and we're working with governments around the world with a particular focus right now on getting ready for COP26 and I'm now trying to find a way of bridging from COP26 back to opportunities for women but women are more likely to drive action on climate change than the other half of the community. So yes we're very busy thanks Bargo. You're like a professional politician no? No. Thank you for your leadership and I guess we also before you joined I mean Ann was talking about the importance of financial inclusion for women. I think that is as a core of it. Yeah so I think there is a really interesting connection that we can draw across a number of different threads. We conduct an annual survey which we call our women and money survey in a range of different countries around the world. I've actually developed markets I have to say but increasingly thinking about the implications beyond that and we can see that women have seen their savings rates fall markedly more than men through the pandemic. We've seen that they're less likely to think of themselves as investors than men are where I think we can have meaningful financial education programs that start to shift a little the attitudes of women themselves and about empowering women more in terms of leaning into what actually could be there for them to think about investing to think about investing in their business or to think about investing for their pensions and for the savings. I think that's one thing to think about but I think one of the other things which is so important is that you know they do say never let a good crisis go to waste never such a thing as a good crisis. We have money that is cheaper now than it has ever been and there's a lot of it there and we've seen that central bank policies regardless of whether you think that such unconventional monetary policy is a good or a bad thing very long term. In the shorter term what that means is there is a vast pool of money which is looking for projects to invest in and this is where I think the private sector national government local government can potentially come together particularly with organizations like development banks to actually find the projects which will do that infrastructure development whether it's about connectivity whether it's about creating better financial inclusion through that connectivity or education to find ways of bringing that to life and I think that is one of the things that right now we can all be working on together. I think this resonates well with you also and Janice Burke. So in South Africa for example we saw a stark change in the vaccine rollout in the country after business started holding hands with government and making sure that we improve vaccine availability so I agree with the deputy secretary general that as business we can sit in the sidelines may I just add here growing largely from what my colleagues have said already first of all and will be absolutely fascinated by this statistic from South Africa in South Africa because more men are informal and regulated industries and companies and employ men have higher rights than women do so 76% of men have paternity rights in terms of those men that are employed as opposed to 73% of women and that's because a disproportionate number of us are in the less regulated more informal sectors I totally agree with the targets absolutely in South Africa we've seen targets work so well even though they haven't filtered through to the business sector in as much as we had wanted but we've seen improvements because there are targets that are measurable that we can watch and that we can report on every single year one target that excites me quite a bit is a target that the president said last year which is that 40% of government procurement must now go to women owned businesses in a country where the culture of entrepreneurship is still at developmental stages I believe that this is going to galvanize to totally new energy in the markets for opportunity and as a development finance institution we are there to support businesses to take advantage of these opportunities Boosie, thanks for that I just want to bring Alan and Ann because one of the things and perhaps to hop back and make that odd leap between COP26 and the climate battle and this battle to get Jane Verequiti one of the things that seems to have been so successful for business in fighting on climate change is really insisting on change down supply chains and value chains is there the similar kind of move to be made by big businesses like Unilever like Fidelity International to do the same with your supply and value chains on gender Yes, absolutely we can impact tens of thousands of women in our direct employment but we can impact hundreds of thousands or millions of women through our value chain let me give a couple of examples we've said that we will spend two billion of our procurement budget with women-owned businesses very much reflecting the position in South Africa we're working with UN women to break down the pattern of gender-based violence in the agricultural supply chain that we're involved in at the other end on the distribution side we've created what we call 150,000 Shakti entrepreneurs these are women living in small villages in India and Africa who are effectively denied access to financial resources we set them up as micro-distributors for our brands in those villages and it doesn't just give them economic empowerment it gives them social empowerment as well you should see the transformation of these women about 150,000 of them so if we were to restrict our thinking just to our own employees it would be an order of magnitude less impact than when we think down our supply chain and forward in our supply chain and how we can help women there and if I may pick up one thing that the Deputy Secretary General brought up from Afghanistan I want to call out the work of UNHR and the heroic work they're doing for refugees the television coverage is mainly about refugees going to developed markets a lot of those refugees will be women going to nearby countries and I'd just call on the private sector to think about how can we create employment opportunities specifically for refugee Afghani women bring them in as apprentices these are highly motivated skilled educated people who can be a real asset for the private sector as we think about this new wave of employment opportunity from Afghan refugees Thanks Aaron How does that play out in the world of finance that Fidelity International is kind of embedded in? First of all I think the point that Boussi and Alan endorse that on the supply chain and using procurement and the power of procurement so it's something that we have really very very recently introduced as making sure that when we go through a procurement process that there is a diverse procurement supply and it could be diverse across a range of different characteristics it's not just gender it's a bit like when you're hiring if you're making sure that you have a diverse slate you're much more likely over time to end up going back to the example you gave of actually looking over 10 years and realizing that somebody was always recruiting in their own likeness you can actually through the procurement process go through similar things so I think that's really powerful then the other thing though that COP26 and the climate emergency which has now had people increasingly feel and talk about it has taught us is the power of collaboration at a business level that I have never seen and I think the pandemic accelerated that maybe because people weren't on a plane the whole time maybe they had a little bit more time to come together but the power of all of the different task forces who have been focusing in on different parts of the climate agenda trying to get whether it's common taxonomy is common frameworks which the WEF has been very instrumental in wider initiatives asset owners versus asset managers versus banks and lending pooling all of that together collaboratively has shown that actually we can create real change and I feel that is a better way for business to come together I'm always a little nervous when business starts getting too directly involved in politics bluntly we're not elected and we always have to remember that but the power of what we can do collectively within our ecosystem I think shows that maybe as we come out of the pandemic and look at the specific issue of women and the effect on women we can come together more to do that Thank you so much and Boussé if you want one minute reaction and then we go to the deputy secretary general and then we'll close Boussé one minute We shouldn't leave the men behind in our initiatives they need to buy into all of these initiatives and we need to break the stereotypes Thank you so much for that opportunity Thank you A very important reminder but I think expectations to men can also be increased Deputy Secretary General I mean I'm Muhammad and you listened to the discussion I think you also heard that business is ready to roll up their sleeves both on the gender piece but also on the larger SDG piece but in addition for the upcoming COP and I know also you've been very eager lately on preparing for the food summit that will take place in New York in September so over to you you can have the closing remarks Thank you so much there's so much to say but I'm just going to again in Boussé had to say about gender means both men and women and so let's not leave the men behind even though we're trying to catch up with the 50% that are missing I just want to correct really a perception I think it is because it's not backed by what we're seeing in the field in access to financial resources it is incredibly expensive for the developing world to borrow today it's eight and nine percent and in the rest of the developed world we are seeing one percent two percent so it is cheaper in some places but not everywhere and I think we need the help of the financial system to try to make that more equitable so that women can have access to resources this discussion is really important in how we are saying ensuring women's equal leadership and participation we got to get into the decision making because we know that our investments do greater social good in the spending and equal outcomes for everything but we also know that it means inclusion and that's very important because we do know where the shoe is and where it's reaching I think that it's really important that we pick up the figures of what is happening already as I said in the response from COVID you're right Borge we are grabbing the opportunities and the silver lining but we're seeing men's employment going back in the formal sector to pre-pandemic levels and yet we're seeing that women are out of about 3,000 recovery measures only about 280 odd have got to focus on women's job security so we are really streets behind let's work with the figures and let's try to target more what we need to do in the coming months and years for the recovery as we go into the UN General Assembly of course that is likely to be hybrid as we know coming together is still a problem which means that let's not forget we still need a COVID response and we need one that is more equitable and that doesn't put burden on the shoulders of women and their futures so again still the political momentum that is needed around that for UNGA we have a huge bright spot for the food systems and the food systems is about bringing this incredible ecosystem together for which women are a central part of it particularly our small holder farmers our indigenous people and women and I think here the investment opportunities for business are huge and just hearing our colleagues talk about the supply chains and the value chains as we re-install them let's actually look about their fragility in the first place so when we are recovering doing things differently that allow more resilience and allow the shocks to be absorbed better when they come because for sure there's going to be another pandemic I just hope that we are better prepared for it as we go forward but I'm very hopeful, I'm very excited about the number of women we already see in leadership positions and I think we continue to scale up the efforts to come out of this challenge better often and getting to those SDGs by 2030 Thank you so much to Deputy Secretary General I mean I'm Mohamed, thank you for your leadership again congratulations on your very very well-deserved reappointment and Tanki thank you also to incredible business leaders like Busi, Alan and Anne for joining us two of them for the first time in the studio also thank you to my good colleague Adrian here and see you soon Bye