 and thank you so much for joining us. I'm Francine Lacqua from Bloomberg TV, and we're talking about a very important subject. So thank you to our live audience and, of course, those joining us from home or from the workplace. Now, increasing female workforce participation and representation leadership in both business but also government are two key levers for not only improving economic gender parity but also generating greater dynamism and resilience for the economies. Now, it wouldn't be the World Economic Forum that didn't have also data points to actually show you exactly what's been happening. Global Gender Gap Report has found a gradual but steady increase in the share of women in leadership roles. And this is something that we can applaud, but it stood at 36.9% in 2022. And for the first time, there is at least one woman in every parliament in the world. These developments provide important momentum to build on, but frankly, they're just not enough. The current environment calls for a pragmatic approach, which is what we're going to try and do here, pragmatic and focusing on leadership. Key levers that companies can influence beyond representation. So actually, on to decision making is something that we want to focus on. Government policy can be designed to increase labor force participation, productivity, wages. So we'll talk about the economy, financial and technology, access, improved care provisions and representation public sector leadership. So all of that in just 45 minutes. And we're also expecting questions from the audience. It is my great pleasure to have here an expert's panel. Suduk will kick us off to explain some of the things that she's been looking at at LinkedIn, head of global public policy and economic graph team. Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS, global wealth management. And he's also written a brilliant book actually on gender inequality and things that need to change. Lady Mariam Jamais, of course, one of the leading important people that we've been listening to in terms of founder and chief executive officer, I am the code from the UK and then Mahal Ali on Jordan's national gender parity strategy. And she's of course secretary general, Jordanian national commission for women. So thank you all for joining us. So maybe kick us off and see what you're seeing. So you have, first of all, an exciting report on equality in the workplace, but we've gone through so many shifts in the last three to four years. What can you tell us that you've seen that maybe a lot of people here wouldn't have seen? So look, what's very clear is that we have seen labor markets go through enormous disruption over the past number of years, most obviously the pandemic and the economic upheaval that that brought. And what's just as clear is that things are not gonna settle down anytime soon. And what we've learned from these cycles is that when there are these big systemic shocks, health, economic and other shocks, it's women who take the biggest hit. Wef's own global gender gap report showed the pandemic pushing gender parity back a full generation. And we saw the exact same trends on LinkedIn. At the onset of the pandemic, we saw on LinkedIn women taking a disproportionate hit when it came to layoffs and hiring in general, but also when it came to leadership specifically. The proportion of women being hired into leadership roles during that period went backwards. And in some sectors we saw two, three years of progress being undone and we went right back to where we were in 2018. And when we look ahead to the big drivers of change and disruption that are coming our way, those twin transitions of digital and of green, women are already on the back foot and could be set up to lose out on those transitions again. We have long spoken about the digital gender gap. And when we look at what looks to be the biggest digital disruptor that's coming down the tracks AI, there we're not in a good spot again. Women hold less than one third, just 30% of AI roles around the world. And when it comes to green, for every 10 men who are considered green talent on our platform, we only have six women. So even when we get out the other side of this uncertain economic cycle, women are not set up to take advantage of this next wave of disruption that's headed to our labor markets. I can't believe I'm still asking this, but there's a direct link between diversity and economic performance and you can see it in the numbers. And I think what is particularly important is that we're embarking on the fourth industrial revolution, automation, AI and all that good stuff. But what actually matters in the next 20 years is not the technology. I don't care about technology. I'd still be using a BlackBerry if I was allowed. What matters is how we use the technology, which means it's right person, right job, right time. No, right person, we're not being gender specific here. And the risk is that if you don't have an inclusive workforce, you're just throwing away the talent that could otherwise lead to enormous benefits. And if you don't have a diverse workforce, you are not considering every possible aspect of the enormous change that's coming through. And the whole point about this change is it's so disruptive, you need to have a very broad approach to understanding it. If your board is entirely comprised of white Anglo-Saxon middle-aged bald men, not a demographic I am opposed to, quite obviously, but if that's all you've got, you've got a monoculture of thinking and you're basically guaranteed to fail. So we need both the inclusion and the diversity. And gender, of course, is the big one here that we need to get right. And we're still not getting it right. Economics profession, not least of all, which is why I'm the token man on the panel. So we really need to, I think, be breaking down the barriers. I would add perhaps a note of optimism to Sue's comments because I think there is so much social disruption coming that maybe it's sort of like tearing up the rulebook, that fathers are spending more time at home with their kids and maybe that changes childcare. The fact that commuting is not entirely optional but becoming more optional. In 44% of UK people work from home at least part of the time. That perhaps starts to challenge some of these traditional assumptions and within a very stereotyped world, we may actually be able to make some progress. So let's cling to the optimism. Okay, and we'll get back to that. Mahal Ali, can you talk to us a little bit about Jordan's national gender parity strategy and how it started and how it's going? Yes, building on what Sue and Paul explained, it's obvious that it is important to have in place policies, strategies, legislations that would support enhancing the participation of women in the economy as well as in leadership positions. And in order to have this, we need also to have a supporting business environment where we can see gender mainstreaming in institutions, including both the private as well as the public sector. And then we have another factor which is related to the culture and the social norms in the country. And I think this is an issue not only matters to Jordan but matters to all countries that needs to be worked on to have positive social norms and cultural beliefs and principles that would support the empowerment of women. So having all this in mind, in Jordan we have put in place a national strategy for women. This was endorsed by the government back in 2020 and in parallel to this national strategy, we have been, we had lots of dynamics in the country in terms of modernization that covered three important paths, economic, political, as well as public sector modernization led by His Majesty the King. And to focus more on the economic, based on that a strategy was also launched that focuses on six initiatives that aim at increasing women's participation in Jordan. In the economy to actually to double the participation from 14% to 28% in the coming 10 years. This of course requires lots of collaboration and joint work from different stakeholders including the government, the private sector, the social, the civil society also. And we've worked on this to develop an action plan to implement the national women's strategy with a number of initiatives and projects that are connected to around 70 implementing partners. So this gives also or indicates the how comprehensive the national strategy is. And this brings me to a point that in order to address the issue of economic participation of women we need to holistically address this issue. So it needs strategies, it needs legislation, it needs to work on the culture, we need to work on the education, we need to work on the humanitarian rights of women, access to finance, transportation, it's all interconnected. And maybe I will end by a very useful and fruitful collaboration that Jordan had with the World Economic Forum in the form of an initiative to establish or to form an accelerator for closing the gender gap. And this is also an example of collaboration between a successful example of collaboration between the government and the private sector and civil society to develop in place and put in place a plan and a number of actions that also focus on empowering women in the economic field. And ladies and gentlemen, you work basically on these structures to make sure that there's more access to education than access to the labor workforce. What works? I think what works is the, I am the one who has now become a lighthouse here at the World Economic Forum. It's the time we took to fix things. And when you're looking at gender equality at the moment in gender parity, we have forgotten so many young women and girls. I was a young girl growing up in Senegal, I'm now sitting here next to you. So we are forgetting time and that women actually, we need to invest in them, not see them as a charity, but we need to invest in women if we want them to have a position of leadership. That's one thing we don't, I am the code. But also we gave ourselves a very clear goal and mission. And I think data speaks itself. My other heart I wear is I'm a data freak. You know, I love data because data show evidence and accountability where we have one million women and girls who learn how to code by the year 2030. And so these are young women in refugee camps in slums in five levels of Brazil. These are women that we have left behind. And I think to talk about gender equality we need to look after the half and the half not. But also the private sector must see these young women as an investment, not as a charity. And also bring mentorship and sponsorship. You know, we've been very lucky to have Skillsoft who are here, but also UBS. UBS, they've been the first organization to fund our organization. Funding is needed to run the programs we're running. In Kakuma refugee camp alone today, we have 7,000 young women who are refugees in Kenya. Kenya gives a land to refugees, but they're not practitioners. And so young women, they're the first young women in the world who are learning how to code basic fundamentals of coding. So if you want to talk about AI, machine learning, big debt in the next eight years, you have to include these women. And I think finally we need to create women-friendly culture, you know, not just, you know, feeling sorry for women, but actually really empowering women economically. Like in Senegal, my country, the Minister of Finance, is a woman who is empowered through business. So she knows how to empower not a woman. When you empower young women, give her money. And I really believe coding, for all the economists in the room, let's start making coding compulsory in every single country in the world. We're also linking coding in the GDP of your country. Because my young girls in Kakuma, they will ask $30,000 or $40,000 per year in 2030. So if you don't invest in them now, you will not hire them in 2030. Can I have a quick poll, actually, of the panel? Who thinks, and Paul was mentioning this, that if you're working from home because of the pandemic, maybe it makes it easier to do your job as a female and that leads to more diversity. But it's unclear what happens to promotions and also what happens in other parts of the world. Are you optimistic that actually flexible working or coding from abroad makes equals the level playing field? So I am, like Paul, very optimistic, but we should be very clear here that this is not going to happen accidentally. We need to stay very focused and very intentional about this. And we have seen over the past number of years that progress is not always linear. Sometimes we go backwards. We went backwards during the pandemic and we've gone backwards when these shocks have hit them before. But flexibility is one of those areas that Paul touched on that really has the potential to be a game changer. This was the number one lesson out of the pandemic. Women want and need the flexibility to be able to juggle their personal and professional responsibilities. We see that on our platform. We see that women are much more likely to apply to remote roles compared to men. But it is crucially important that flexible working is normalized for all workers, not just women, if we're going to break this double shift of caregiving and of working that women often face. Are you confident, Paul, that this leads to quality jobs? So I think that it can, because it's not just about, oh, well, I'm working flexibly. It's also about how companies have to adapt in a more flexible working environment. It breaks down, literally breaks, the old boy network. Because you're not going out for drinks with your all male buddies after work because you've got more flexible working. It requires you to think more objectively about actually measuring output, not who you get on with at the coffee machine. So the unconscious bias, which is a huge problem for all of us, we sort of erode. And the other thing I think is that it enables portfolios of income, and this is something which did actually come through in the pandemic, where in many, many countries, we get this absolute explosion of business startups. And these are very small scale, one person business startups. A lot of them seem to be retail. And of course, no one's setting up a bricks and mortar retail business in the midst of the pandemic. You're going out and you're selling, whatever it is you're making on Amazon marketplace or whatever. And it does seem that women were also part of that. And that's the entrepreneurship. Now I appreciate the funding of women in business is a huge problem. If you have a female entrepreneur and a male entrepreneur and they seem the same, always back the female entrepreneur because she's had to work three times as hard to get to that stage. But that is starting to be eroded with perhaps less need for capital, better startups. So, long story short, yes, I think that we are making the changes and it is genuine quality jobs but also quality entrepreneurship that can come out of this process. But as Sue said, it's not something passive. We've actually got to work for this. Yeah, and Maha, given the blueprint that you've had for your country, is it quality jobs that come out of it? And actually, you're almost a template of what others could do and replicate. Yeah, of course, flexibility is important. And actually, it's one of the issues that we always hear from a working woman that we need to have this balance between our work as well as the family and family commitments. But at the same time, it is important that this ability would not affect promotion and affect the career path. And I agree with what you said that whatever interventions are put in laws or policies should not favor just women. These interventions, flexibilities, should be given to all because at the end of the day, we don't want also the businesses to be overwhelmed with preferential, let's say, treatment to women and to make them at the end of the day prefer not to employ women, for example. And also, we acknowledge the importance and the role of the woman play in the family and in raising the children, which is important. But at the same time, we need to have a business environment that is supportive where the female feels comfortable in doing the job, in doing the work, in the career path, as well as being able to have this balance between life and family and the work. One issue that I would like also to comment on is technology. Technology, I think, is really crucial in helping in implementing such flexibilities. The pandemic, of course, had its repercussions on all economies. Jordan was affected seriously. But at the same time, we've seen some positive, let's say, results from the pandemic where we were pushed to use technology and to move to home-based, to working from home, to using technology in different applications. We've seen lots of startups by using technology and enabled technology solutions. For a country like Jordan, where transportation, for example, is a challenge that impacts economic participation of women, we see technology as an alternative that helps females to work from home or to work from distant cities or locations. And this, I believe, can help in enhancing the participation of women by using technology. And this is, Lady Gemma, also what you're talking about. It's basically coding as an enabler to get more women in the workforce. Yeah, it's not just coding only. IMDocore has now become an end-to-end solution for women across the world. I'm talking about women who are marginalized, women who are in Europe, for example, we are looking at women who had their children early. For example, right now, they can't go back to the marketplace, they can't go back to work. And I think what technology has done at IMDocore, what we have done, we built a platform to thank the World Economic Forum. We now have over 35,000 courses that are free. I made sure before we signed the partnership, all the strategy partners, I told them it has to be free because education is very expensive. And then young women and girls growing up across the world, in Brazil, in Senegal, in Kenya, in this refugee camps, unless we change and we shift our mind totally and bring empathy, compassion, that's why when I saw the JobSkill report, when I saw resilience and empathy, compassion and kindness, it is our responsibility to really take care of these people. They're not looking for charity, as I said, they're looking for investment, but we can now use the platform for free. They can go and learn how to code for free. They can learn life skills and soft skills, it's not just coding, but also the mental health of women during COVID-19, many, many women have been through challenges, personal challenges, and we have not taken care of that. So many companies have given out their self-esteem content. Now we have the self-esteem content. We also have the content on climate change issues. Women and violence, domestic violence has increased during COVID-19. So who's talking about this? So now we have women in, you know, women in Arab countries who can learn how to code, get skills with their hijab in their own home, in their own privacy and dignity. Also immigrants in Europe, right? Like in Sweden, for example, we now work with the Somali community. They came to this country. Now we need to, you know, really support them. I think the point I'm trying to make as a general, if we look into this the next 23 years, we need to bring empathy, compassion, kindness into the content, but also make things a little bit freer for people who are in need. Because I know that if we invest into young women and girls, the power is so immense because women do grow up. I am here because I'm 50 years old next year. And so really think about it. So if you invest in a woman now, in 10 years you will come and sit here next year. What do you need? So you've built this amazing ecosystem. What do you need from who now? Is it funding? Is it governments or is it private companies that support and then hire? It's a multi-sector approach to the world economy forum. So now we just need people to have access to it. It's amazing content. So we work with government, the private sector, and investors to really go and give it to people. Like, you'll find out that the minister of financing in many countries don't understand coding and digital skills are linked to the GDP. You'll find out that the minister of ICT have digital policies but they don't have content. You'll find out that the minister of education have infrastructure but they don't have content. So what we're doing now, we're really doing this end-to-end solution and working for UNHR. UNHR are a custodian of refugees but they're not practitioners. And I think going practically in helping people, getting strategic partners at WEF to invest, also mentor the girls. And we have 350 mentors in companies. When you mentor our girls, you find purpose and meaning. I mean, you are giving one hour a week, two hours a week to a young, beautiful woman who you never met. There's a reverse mentoring. So at UBS, the CEO in Brazil, she's working with young women and they're teaching her something, she's teaching them something. So I think we need to bring you a bit, I bring humanity in boardrooms. That's what I do. I love that. Paul, when you look at the economy, and this may be a little bit controversial, but there's a very tight labor force and also there's possibly a recession coming, does that push women back into the workforce and could that be a change for good or is it actually just a disaster waiting to happen? So I think we've got a very complicated position. So on some measures, the labor force is very tight and on some measures, it's just not. I mean, if you look at real wage growth, it's been disastrous for two years. So you've got this very mixed position and I think we need to probably recognize that women contribute in a number of ways as do men. So with things like early retirement, people are volunteering, but that's not part of GDP. That's not part of employment in a conventional sense. We're missing out on that sort of stuff. I think that what we want to see is people going into the labor force to have constructive careers not to be going in out of economic necessity because if you go in out of economic necessity, effectively you're taking whatever job is available and that's been one of the things with women and commuting because stereotypically women are the childcare providers, they don't commute as long as men do. That's been an objective fact for a number of years and as a result, women are not taking the job where they can be most productive. They're taking the job that is closest to the school and that's just wrong. So now as we've been talking about with the technology, maybe we start changing that. So again, it's one of these things where if we get a situation where we're getting increased participation rates purely from economic necessity, take whatever job is available because we need the cash, that's not helpful, but I hope that we've actually moved a bit beyond that. Lady Jamil, it has to be a skilled based recruitment. We need to, women are so skilled and in the UK, for example, now we talk about 50 plus women. Think about it, if you are 50 years old, you probably have 30 years of experience. So we need to hire the women. They have skilled, they're smart, they're intelligent and they know what to do and so we need to hire them but at the same time companies need to not be fearful of the women because they're smart. We need to recruit them so they can make a difference in their company. So I think for me, amazing women who are now talking to these young women, it's intergenerational skills now, they're transferring the skills between the 50 plus and the young women. So I think we need to also think about the mentorship. Sue, this will be the game changer for women. This move away from how we've always recruited, hired, retained talent, moving away from those traditional signals that we've always relied on. What school did you go to? What degree do you have? What job did you just do? What job did you have four jobs before that? We have to move away from that to asking those questions we've always asked and instead ask what is the most important and most basic of question is, do you have the skills to do this job? And if we do that, if we make that shift, that is going to be transformational for women. So when we look at the impact on talent pools, when we take the skills first approach, not only do we bring way more women into the talent pool in absolute terms but crucially and especially, we get women into those jobs where they are most under-representative. In those jobs where women are currently under-represented, we'd see a 26% relative uplift in female representation versus male. And in addition to that, what we see is it really breaks down those barriers that women face in terms of the well-documented, high self-qualification bar that women put in. So on LinkedIn, if you put in front of job seekers the list of skills, if you break down a job description by the list of skills that are required to do that job, you will see 1.8% in 1.8 times more women applying for that job than men do. Sometimes it's a skills gap but sometimes it's a confidence gap and sometimes it's an information gap. And if we can move to the skills-based hiring, we really can make things much, much easier and get women into those roles where they should be and where we can benefit most in their participation. So does the LinkedIn algorithm sometimes change that? Because it does, you know, you get offered jobs that maybe you didn't even think to match up. So do you think it helps in actually getting more women in the workforce in jobs also that they would not have thought about? There is no question that that happens. And what's extremely powerful is that when you take the skills-first approach, when you break down individual jobs into the specific skills that are required to do that job, actually what you realise is this is often an enormous overlap between jobs that are in completely different sectors and if we can demystify that and make that much more transparent, it's women who are poised to benefit most from it. Paul, on the mark. I think there's a really telling anecdote about what happens when you get skills-based recruiting right and what happens when you get it wrong and it's the same story. So in the war, in the UK, we have the Code Breaking Centre at Bletchley. This is entirely skills-based. It doesn't matter who you are, as long as you can crack a code, you're here. So you have ethnic diversity, you have different nationalities, Alan Turing, the lead code breaker is gay, you have women, women actually working breaking codes. And in 1945, the UK led the world in computer technology by at least a decade. Bletchley had been an overwhelming success. UK is years ahead of anybody else in computer technology. By the late 1950s, it's gone entirely and it's gone because of a lack of manpower. Manpower being the operative word because nearly all of the computer programmers were women. 1945, thank you very much for your service. Please go back to the home and start washing up. And that lack of recognition of skills going from entirely skills-based recruiting because we need to win the war to let's go back to social convention, devastated the industry, which has never recovered. So it's really, really telling how badly wrong you can get this, but how successful you can be when you get it right. Mahal, I agree, skills is the issue now for job seeking. For example, in Jordan, when it comes to education, we have around 58% of our university graduates are females. But when it comes to the economic participation, they don't really get the same opportunities in terms of jobs. So skills is important because you need to do this kind of upskilling and to make sure that our educational system is providing output that matches the demands and the requirements of the business, especially with the changes and the developments we're seeing when it comes to technology, AI, et cetera, and the importance of data and all these aspects. But another important issue that maybe not everybody is looking at is women also have a special case when compared to men in the workforce where they may need to withdraw at a certain time because of family, having kids, et cetera. When they come back to the workforce, they need also to be equipped with the needed skills to be able to be accepted in the workforce. And the other challenge is the skills that are needed not only to enter the job or to enter the workforce, but also to be able to have a career path and to be promoted and to be able also to reach decision-making positions. Putting aside, of course, I'm not talking about the other challenges and obstacles, the glass ceiling and other aspects that put also an obstacle in front of women when it comes to the career path. I mean, I agree what Paul said. If you look into even black women, even look into the women of color, not just black women, but women of color. In America, for example, we have so many women who are talented coders. So now they are editing chat GPT. Our girls in Kakoma Refugee Camp are editing chat GPT because women have more empathy when it comes to technology and all of that. So they can understand the feelings. And so I think we also need to get women to work and build the solutions. They need to build the apps and the websites. So that's what we're trying to do. Get them to learn these skills, right? For me, as I always said, technology has no gender, no age, no race, and we're the one that made it discriminatory. But at the same time, I'm very concerned for many women in Europe and also in Africa who are right now in the middle of their careers, extremely talented, but we are not even having these conversations. That's why the IMDocoll platform has so many users now. Everyone wants to go and learn program management. They want to learn Excel. We have some women who don't know how to use Excel. But at the same time, if we allow these people in their own dignity, in their own homes, after the children are in bed, whatever, and really skill themselves, and you get certifications, you can code, see the lab, we added a lab inside. You can now code and see the result. And then you can get certifications in many countries, especially in Arabic countries. Certification is dignity. When you have your certification and you go and tell your mom, our girls in Islamabad, when they receive the certifications, they actually frame it, right? And but also investing in certification, government really need to radically, I think what COVID-19 has showed us is that we have let people down, we have the have and the have not, but with coding and technology, we can bring this equilibrium now back and put empathy and compassion. It is so imperative. And if you're looking for funding, maybe use the company as your ESG. Right now, many companies are talking about ESGs. But maybe the S of the ESG should be the stump of humanity, the metrics of humanity, where you can say, I'm investing in this company in 10 years, this woman will be this. In five years, this woman will be this. And I think until I call the ESGs not to be just a jargon anymore, but to use the S as a stump of humanity. Thank you. We need to go questions to the floor, but actually indulge me with one final question, Sue and Paul, so Lady Jami is very positive about, I guess, technology in general, but one way is also if there's AI, and they've fed them, we have 90% programmers than men, then AI would filter that. The algorithm says, oh, engineers are better suited if they're men. Is AI a force for good, or actually can it be counterintuitive to women in the workforce? I mean, I think what's crucially important is that we seize this opportunity for women as well. And not only to your point, is it really, really important that we are creating opportunities for women to access what will be the jobs of tomorrow. That is fundamentally important for all the reasons that we've just discussed. But frankly, it is just as important that women are involved at the most foundational formative stages of this technology, as you say. We need female voices and female perspectives deciding what technology is developed, how it's deployed, what impact it has, et cetera. And so for the economic reasons, but also because we know how transformative for society and economies, these technologies are gonna be, women have to be there, and they have to be there from the get-go. Yeah, Paul, female and all diversity, I guess. Yes, exactly, and exactly the intersectionality. I mean, that's also important, because things like the gender pay gap are quite easy to monitor, but as soon as you move away from that, it becomes a lot more difficult to monitor. So we need to make sure that no one's left behind, obviously. But gender is an important place to start. All right, questions from the floor, and I think there are microphones. Yes, or if you have a very booming voice, you can try and project. No, there's a microphone coming. Hi there, I'm Sonya Shory with Invest.o. I have the privilege of leading our Women Founders and Owners Strategy in Canada's capital with partners across the country. One of the areas we're very focused on is women at the C-suite, particularly all intersections of identity, how we create greater opportunity for wealth for decision making. Only 5% of CEOs on TSX listed companies are women, only 7% are chairs, and something like 18% are on board seats. They're dismal numbers that we're working hard to change. I'd value any insight and lessons learned, data-driven opportunities that we could be pursuing. Yeah, so you're absolutely right. It is not an encouraging picture when it comes to leadership, and as we were discussing, we've seen some of the progress that we have been making go backwards. So today on LinkedIn, less than a third of women are in leadership roles, just 32% of women are in leadership positions, and that number has barely budged in the past seven years. It's gone up a measly 1% since 2016, so we have a ton of work to do if we're gonna move the numbers that you cited and the numbers that we see day in, day out on our platform. And there are a couple of key areas where we need to focus. The data points is very clearly to where these interventions need to happen. The first is getting into that first manager role, and the second is getting promoted internally. So when it comes to getting that first manager role, you can almost think of that as the first wrong on the leadership level. There we already have a gap. There we already have a problem where we've seen a 9% drop-off for women versus men, first problem. Then when it comes to internal promotion, globally, men are 33% more likely to get an internal promotion versus women. And you can see so clearly how, from those early stages of a woman's career, those problems compound and that gap grows. So when you zoom right back, when we look at LinkedIn, you go on LinkedIn today, at entry level, we've about 50% women. At manager level, we're down to about a third, and by the time you get into the boardroom, you're down to 25%. So we're going from a half to a third to a quarter by the time we are at that C-suite level that you mentioned, and we have got to start targeting the interventions way before the boardroom, right back at that pre-manager level, and then right throughout the life cycle of women's careers as well. Yes, we have a question here on the right in the middle, and then on the second row. Hi, I'm Magdalena Skipper, Editor-in-Chief of Nature. And the last question actually sets up my question very well, and ties in with something that you discussed, namely the flexibility for working from home. There was a very tantalizing article in New York Times recently based on a white paper, based on some research, saying that the very demographic that wants the most flexibility in terms of working, so women and other underrepresented groups, is exactly the demographic that would most benefit from being in the office to create the networks that are then required for promotion and advancement. How do we square this circle to offer the flexibility that those groups want, and yet create an opportunity for them to progress, which of course they and we also want? Paul, you touched on this, which is also almost you suggested mandatory staying from home for everyone, right? So I think you need flexible working across the board. You can't because if you say, well, you work flexible and that's a special privilege, then you're almost automatically starting to exclude those people. I have to say I'm quite skeptical about the face-to-face networking being important all the time. I think it is important, but not necessarily all the time. I mean, I work in a global organization. You know, there are members of my team I still haven't seen since the pandemic in person, just because they're on the other side of the world and I've got other things to do. So I think that as we get more global companies and so on, teams that are global, aren't necessarily coming together all the time and that doesn't necessarily damage careers. I mean, it didn't damage my career, that half the time my boss is in a different country or a different continent. And I think the other thing that we need to be thinking about is this idea that the younger generation are suffering because they're not getting this sort of flexibility. But if you look at the UK data, where the Office of National Statistics is quite good in providing the breakdown, younger people are just as keen to have flexible working as their role appears. It's not those of us in our fifties who are wanting to spend more time at home because we know everybody and we don't care. The younger generation also want that flexibility, but it doesn't mean 100% of the time. It means just more flexibility coming through. And again, when we come back to intersectionality, I think it's important to recognize that whilst an extrovert person may build a network in the office, an introverted person does not. If you're a naturally shy and retiring person like myself, you tend not to go out and build the network in person, but actually remotely you may be a lot better at doing that. So I think we need to be a little bit careful. I think there's some selection bias in how we view this. I just wanted to add on that, and I think what LinkedIn does very well is that when you are a woman in different places of the world, you may not have access to LinkedIn, but LinkedIn actually now is giving women to get visibility, right? So they're training them, there are so many videos out there to help you to get a flexible job. People need to actually see you as well, right? So you need to also apply where companies are giving you flexibility. So they are really good at giving you this training to make your profile beautiful and to learn so many things on LinkedIn. Our girls are using LinkedIn right now to update their profiles, right? Because I know in the next two years, someone will go and find them within LinkedIn. It's not very huge, their profiles, but they now have access to LinkedIn. So I think we also need to come forward and improve our visibility and work with companies that can actually give us flexibility. Yeah, I mean, I haven't read the article, but I did hear and I have a lot of sympathy for a lot of people, especially female chief executives that worry if all the men go back to the office five times a week and the women stay back, then in three, four years they may get less promotions. So maybe it's something that longer term you need to think about. And if I add that flexibility is important, but if it is to be made compulsory, it should be made compulsory for all, not only for women, so regardless of gender. But what we have in Jordan, for example, it's an option. So it's not compulsory for the employees to work from home in certain days. It's an option. Whoever requires or needs to work from home with the consent of the supervisor, then this is allowed. I believe this provides, it has pros and cons, but it may have more pros than cons because usually when it's an option, whoever requires to take it, whether it's a woman or a man, it's available. It shouldn't affect also their career path and being present in office and having this networking option. Great, we have a question on the second row, and can I see a quick show of hands because we only have a couple of minutes. My name is Sanaa Khasawneh. I'm from Jordan Business and Women Association, CEO, and we are the implementing national coordinator for the accelerator, the gender parity accelerator in Jordan. My question is more about kind of a disruptive, I would say, innovation. I feel that for the past 20 years, we've been too slow in being innovative in our approach to tackle the leadership. And how can we ensure gender parity across? We've been going into the same pace and not being disruptive enough. I'm a VUCA, I like Voltality Uncertainty Module, which really tackles how can we really be innovative in the way that we're anticipating the future and looking into from a different angle. For example, as you mentioned about AI and how we are recruiting and how are we educating or actually looking into the AI to be gender sensitive. If we look into the flexible working hours and thank you, your excellency, for mentioning flexibility should not be only for women. It has to be across, it's a gender mainstreaming. So how can we first change the narrative of our approach from asking for it rather than it's an earned right that we need to bring to the table? Secondly, the future of work is no longer the same, especially after Corona or COVID-19. So there has to be a change in the workplace as modality, as policies, as approach, even as strategies. And I don't think we're moving enough to that direction. Thirdly is around the digital transformation. It's a huge expense at all levels, especially for the private sector. How can we, and we are in a place where it can be actually supported in a different direction? Sorry, too many maybe thoughts, but I wanted just to bring it from a different angle. Yeah, very interesting. I'm gonna just take two other questions because we're talking for time and then we'll kind of try and answer everything at once. All right, thank you so much. My name is Mwanda Piri. I wanted to start by saying some of the happiest countries in the world, right? I live by women, so that says a lot. And the distribution of dynamics being greater when women are empowered cannot be overemphasized, so that's really fantastic. What I wanted to ask is, especially the program that you are running, does it focus on sort of inculcating that desire to want to lead? There was a study, which for the life of me, I cannot remember, but it was done in the US where when you ask boys and girls, you find that fewer girls, if any, will actually say they would like to lead at some point. So women lack this conviction to sort of put themselves forward. So it's not something you look into. And then just to provoke the debate a little bit, for women who want to stay at home, where are we on compensating them for their work at home? Unpaid leave, but it still goes on. So how do we sort of meet both fronts? Thank you. Great, thank you. And then a final question, I think here. Yeah. And then so we have questions on visionary all in like three minutes. There's a lot to get through. Yeah, I'll keep it short. I'm the CEO of the US Center for Advanced Manufacturing. So male dominant area across all industries. And we have an all female led executive team. And often we get the comment, how does that work? And it's an interesting comment. And normally my CEO says, because we've made the environment for it to happen. So my question is, we talk a lot about what women need to do to get there and break all these walls, but what about the accountability of the environment in which we're supposed to thrive in? Big questions. Who wants to start? So do you want to? I mean, I can definitely start. I think you are like I said earlier, we need to make the environmental friendly for women, 100%, you know. And to answer your question, our girls are so powerful. They are so powerful young women. And so they're not looking for permission at all. So they want to lead. So remember, these girls are refugees. Mainly our girls are from the men, they're not part of the mainstream. First of all, they are resilient. They have a determination and motivation to succeed their hustlers. And that's why when they are coding, they know they're gonna lead. They want to go and lead their countries. Our girls in Kakuma, the South Sudanese, the Burundi, the DRC, they want to go back home and lead. I mean, I was saying to a lady journalist the other day, if you want to really design a female curriculum, female leadership curriculum, I invite you to come to Kakuma if you should come, to meet Betty. She is a curriculum of female leadership. And Su, do you want to mention on, where you can take either a crowd, visionaries or leadership? I would say the scenario that you said out is very much the exception, right? Usually we see the adverse, which is even where we have female dominated industries, right, where education is a good example. At entry level, we have 60% women. By the time we get to our leadership, we're at 35%, right? So the normal circumstance that we see is that women that tapering off that we see very dramatically is happening throughout industries. And where it isn't happening, where we see successes, again, is where there's that real intentionality on hiring practices, on how workplaces are set up, and again, how we are helping both men and women shoulder those caregiving responsibilities. We're going to have to be very intentional about each of those three areas if we're going to move the needles in the other direction. We only have one minute left. Paul, do you want 30 seconds? Then Mah, how you can... So one mode of optimism, I think, on how do we get to a better environment, a better way forward? And that is by providing role models in an unusual way, or a slightly unusual way. The cultural value of role models. So who we see in television programs, who we follow on media. And there, I think we are seeing some changes, particularly with the younger generation, over social media, things like Netflix, YouTube videos, and so on. There are young leaders in a way that my generation doesn't understand, but Gen Z changes the world one TikTok dance at a time. Yes, did I follow that? I will try. I think we need to focus on the private sector. When we compare with the government, the public sector, the political participation of women, we see, I think, more success when compared to the business community. And this has much to do with the culture in the business. And in order to change this culture, we need to have, not only to change the culture and to role models is very important, and to see these successful examples, as the lady who just mentioned in the manufacturing sector, in non-traditional sector for females to lead in. We need also to focus on gender mainstreaming in an institutional level in the business, in businesses. Thank you all so much for a wonderful panel, and thank you for the questions. That's it? Yeah.