 think that's enough from me. I think everybody's got the idea of what we're here to talk about. So we'll get started. Welcome everyone to this UPU webinar sustainable means equal women in postal leadership. I'm your host Ian Kerr. Some of you would know me as the host of the UPU voice mail podcast and various other things that I do around the traps in the postal and delivery sector. We have four fantastic guests today bringing as I said very well not just expertise but different perspectives different perspectives geographically professionally on this topic that we're going to explore today. So just to give you a quick idea we've got Susan Alexander joining us from the UPU. We've got Christine Bergoma from Aposten Norge. I think I've pronounced that just about right. I'm getting a nod. There you go. Jennifer Beiro Rebea from the US Postal Service and Pietrangelo Sieta who is the co-founder and CEO of TPD. Now as I said four very different voices talking about this this interesting topic that we've got today. So I might just allow them to introduce themselves rather than me reading through the biographies. Susan we might begin with you. Just please give us a bit of information about the role you're doing now and a bit about how you got there and sort of your observations on twin topics today. Hello everyone. Thank you Ian. It's good to be here and to see so many people from all over the world. I am Susan Alexander and I am the Sustainable Development Program Manager at the UPU. I've been doing this for the past four years and before that most of the time of most of the 25 years that I've been at the UPU has been in regulatory affairs and also with assisting the Secretary for the Congresses and for the Council of Administration. Before that for a very few years I was an attorney in the United States. Obviously you can tell from my accent I'm an American but as I say I've lived here in Switzerland for 25 years and I call Bern Holm. And Susan just a quick comment then from you about why gender equality is important in this idea of sustainable development. Well sustainable development is a cross cutting issue. It's got its own UN sustainable development goal but it cuts across all of the other issues. On average women are more likely to be excluded from access to decent work, education, health services. They are overrepresented in the global poor and older people. So women are potentially more vulnerable to shocks such as pandemics and environmental disasters. The United Nations Development Goals and the UPU Sustainable Development Program is aimed at all of these issues and more education, clean environments, all of these things and because there are groups like women and other vulnerable people who are not usually the decision makers during a sustainable development project discussion they need to be brought to the table. They need to be represented so that these sustainable development projects will work. From your perspective at the UPU and having as you said 25 years experience at the UPU what do you have any observations you can share on trends in things like women's involvement in the postal sector. You may just mention the importance of it. So what have you seen in terms of the actual representation of women in the postal sector? Well we don't have specific statistics. This is something that we want to take care of. I'd like to briefly mention that in our congress in 2021 the all 192 member countries unanimously approved a resolution for us to develop a gender sustainability policy. So we will be rolling that out starting this year which is why we plan to take as the first step a survey to find out where the post sits in terms of women's representation. We do know that in general the logistics area is very male dominated and so the post is also and particularly at the management level. With this research that you'll be doing is that the kind of thing that hosts will be able to benchmark themselves against to be able to measure their progress? Absolutely. We'll be doing a full study. We often take an issue and we'll look at it geographically in terms of regions. We'll look at it in terms of level of development and there will be benchmarking factors so that so that members will be able to have a look and see where they stand and we'll be doing a lot more in terms of raising awareness and assisting our members to reach to support the goal of gender equality. And just one quick final comment before we go to our next speaker. You've mentioned about the research and the measurement and the benchmarking. Is there anything outside of that that comes to mind that the postal sector could do to try and foster greater involvement of women at every level of the organization? Absolutely. In terms of what the post can do for in general to help with the sustainable development goals, governments, international agencies, civil society and businesses should be able to realize that the global postal network can help them by many projects that they're already undertaking such as promoting the education of women and girls, ensure participation of women in democratic processes, delivering information campaigns to end discrimination, exploitation and violence, and using the universal postal service to ensure all women have access to social welfare and reproductive health resources. The post has a very wide network, has a large number of employees and we can reach a lot of people through the postal network. Things are already being done by individual posts and I have some examples that I'd like to give later when we when we come back to other questions. But the post is already very active in providing services in terms of assistance to women. Another topic we might come to later is how the UPU itself can interface with other UN organizations. Absolutely. Which there's so much we can talk about. I should quickly mention those of you who are French speakers, you can access a French feed of this by clicking on the globe icon down the bottom and you'll be able to click on the French option. Susan I'm sure you probably speak. Well, if French is our official language and English is a working language, so guess after 25 years I've learned some. I officially don't speak French. Our next panelist we want to I'd like to introduce is Christine Baragoum from Boston, Norie. Christine, welcome. I understand you've got a quick slide. Do you want to start off with the quick slide that you wanted to share with us just to give a snapshot of where Boston is with its engagement with well inclusive. What's it called? You call it an inclusivity or an underrepresented group. Is that how it's termed in Boston? Yes, yes, inclusion. So it's broader than gender. It's part of our inclusion work. Yes, I did have a slide. But should I start introducing myself a little bit? Oh yeah, well, sorry. Where are my manners? Would you like to start like introducing your kind of role, what you do at Boston and a bit about what Boston's doing place? Yes, I'm happy to. So I am Christine Baragoum from Boston, Norie. I will say Norway post that's easier in English. I'm in charge of international and regulatory affairs at Boston. I've been there for many years. So the international is both the business, commercial responsibility and the regulatory responsibility for all the international male segment. And regulatory is both domestic and international regulation. You've been with Norway post for a few years now. Have you always been involved in the international mile, international regulatory sector? Yes, I've always been involved in regulation, actually, and mainly pushed a lot for major domestic changes in regulation. But for the last six years or so, I have also been in charge of the commercial aspects of the international male segment. Yes. If I can put to you the same question I put to Susan before, why is gender equality important to achieve sustainable development in your opinion? Because sustainable development or the, I mean, the green issues, the emission cutting and so forth is a matter of existence for us. So we need to work with that extremely proactively. And I mean, we really do need, we need to be excellent in that field. And in order to work that well, we need to recruit the best talents. And that's why we need to recruit from the 100% of the talent base. We can't just 40 recruit from 50% of it. So we need to recruit the most talented men and women to work in that field. And we need to have an attractive working environment so that people want to work with us. So it is in a kind, in a way, a circle. We need to attract the best people to achieve the best results. And we need to achieve very good results in the environmental aspect in emission reductions and so forth in order to attract the best people. So it's really fundamental and it's an integrated part of our business. And at Boston, what sort of, what sort of trends are you observing when it comes to inclusivity? Where are you coming from? Where are you trying to get to? Yes, so we are, there you actually, if somebody could show the slide, it would be helpful actually because we are trying to achieve a good mix of men and women on all levels. That is extremely important to us. So we have a lot of targets on that. So if you look at the right side of this slide first, where we have females in management, for instance, we have actually achieved the goal as far as the top executive or the top levels are concerned. So on our top board and in the top positions, the top executive positions, we are within the targeted 40 to 60% range of each gender. That is where we need to be. And we have a woman CEO, for instance, like most other Nordic posts for the time being actually. And on the top executives, there are, we are around the 50 to 50 targets we need to be within the 46% range. That is where we are. But when it comes to all leaders, we are only around 30%. And there too, we need to go above 40% women leaders all over the business. That is our target. And we are all followed up on that and working actually to have at least 40% women leaders. Of course, there is some kind of excuse that we are a transport and logistics business, which is traditionally a more male kind of business. And it is sometimes harder to recruit women in closer to the operations, closer to the transport, that kind of leader positions. But we need to get there. So we are going to get there, but it does take some time still. And it is vital to kind of create an attractive working place, where the talented people want to come and they want to stay and what to contribute. We need to achieve these kind of good mixes between different groups of people, including women and men. And then I wanted to present, because I think always when we talk, I mean, at least for myself, speaking for myself, I always like to have some facts. I like figures and I want to have some facts before discussing more generally. And that's why I wanted to present this extremely unfancy slide with only some figures and facts on it and no nice endurance or anything. But as far as the CO2 emission reductions, we have worked systematically on that since 2010. We started of course earlier, but we were able to have a system, a very systematic system for measuring and reporting and so forth in place from then. So we have measured this systematically from 2012 and we have cut the absolute CO2 emissions with 45% between 2012 and 2020. And that is quite a lot actually. Relatively speaking, it's more than 45% since our business has grown, but absolute emissions have been cut 45%. So we are working extremely actively on that. And in the current period from 2020 towards 2030, we need to cut another 42% of the absolute emissions from our own transports, which actually means another 77% relative to our current business. And that is extremely ambitious. We will only have emissions from bigger trucks after 2030 if we reach that goal. So it is very ambitious. And now working with subcontractors is more complicated in many ways. There are a lot of aspects connected with that. So there we have a kind of more relative target, but whatever we buy should have 32% less carbon emissions than they have today. And this is extremely difficult to achieve. This is very ambitious. But for us, it is a kind of a matter of survival. It's a kind of license to operate as we call it. Because we start to see that our customers will not buy delivery with emissions anymore. The customers do not want to work with you if you are not ambitious or less. And employees will not want to work with you if you do not reach these kind of very ambitious targets in our country, in our culture. So it is a kind of license to operate. And that is why we are so ambitious on these targets. One quick question before we move on was how, you have talked about how we might go into the detail of how Poston is achieving some of these environmental goals as well. Because you mentioned their subcontractors and line hall and things like that. But with regards to advancing women's leadership, you have identified this is something that Poston wants to do better. Can you share with us any quick comments on how Poston is trying to do that, trying to meet those goals? Yes. Yes, it's worked systematically on that as well. It is, for instance, whenever you are announcing that you are recruiting somebody, you want to recruit somebody that there is a vacant position, the text needs to be neutral so that it is equally attractive for women as for men, for instance. If it is a leadership position, you should always have at least one person of each gender in the kind of last round where you choose. There are a lot of these things and you need to work around these kind of more, these kind of gender norms and patterns that could be intrinsically exclusive of either men or women. So you need to be very conscious on these things and sometimes actively encouraging women because apparently women sometimes need more active encouragement than men do in order to take on at least the higher positions. So that is part of our recruitment system to actively try and encourage women to also go for all sorts of positions, also more technical and more manual kind of position which are traditionally more men in order to get this mixture. So we work on that, yes. Thank you very much for that, Christine. I'm sure that's stimulated lots of ideas in people's own minds and I will see more questions coming through. If you want to ask questions, just pop it in the Q&A section. It's down at the bottom of your screen on Zoom. If you click on Q&A, you can tap your question in there and I'll be able to see it and put it to the panel as we go along. Our next speaker is from the US Postal Service, Jennifer Bayro-Ravea and Jennifer is Senior Director Environmental Affairs and Corporate Sustainability. Jennifer, welcome. Would you like to just share with the audience a little bit about what you do at the US Postal Service and indeed just some comments about why gender equality is important when it comes to achieving sustainability goals? Certainly. Thank you so much. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to everybody and thank you for joining this very important conversation. I am an architect by training and after I've currently been with the Postal Service for over 25 years prior to that, I was in the private sector and my primary role for the Postal Service as Chief Sustainability Officer and another role of Chief Environmental Officer is to ensure that we are continuing in our environmental leadership and stewardship. You cannot have a geographic footprint like the United States Postal Service and not be a good steward of the environment. So with that, I think I would like to share a screen if I may. Are you seeing this? Yes, thank you. All right, so obviously this slide has a lot of words on it but I want to speak to the depth of the Postal Service and that means the depth of our challenges with our Universal Service obligation which is to ensure that we deliver to all addresses. We have quite a bit of challenges and I think after the many decades, albeit centuries of doing this, we've done a good job of being the best steward of the environment while ensuring equality within our ranks and diversity and inclusion being a priority. As you can see in the center of this screen, 49% of our senior management, so almost half our minorities and again of that senior management, 46% are women and we are very proud of our continuing efforts and progress in diversity and inclusion and equity within a very diverse population. Our focus is to ensure that we represent the communities that we serve, otherwise we don't become relevant. I think Susan and Christine did an excellent job of speaking to the importance of diversity and inclusion and gender equality and Christine said it very eloquently that this is not just important for the environment but it's important so that we attract the proper employee base and we are that organization that people want to work for and that these different populations look to becoming a part of it. I think it's also more than just attracting them. These days, as a good thing, it's all about being relevant. As was mentioned earlier, this is an expectation of our customers. We cannot continue to think that we can continue with the burning of fossil fuels and other challenges and that's why this discussion today is so relevant. As mentioned earlier, I think that Susan, these discussions are so important because we need to work together towards general equal solutions that mean that women have equal access to these key resources, whether those resources are clean water or financial sustenance because the negative outcomes of climate change, they typically do percolate more width and have a negative impact on women and that includes older women as much as the very young. These discussions, international discussions are critically important. Thanks, Ian. Sorry I've muted myself there. You've actually already answered, I think, my next question, which was about the trends when it comes to women's involvement in the post, and I think we can see there from the overall trends or the current statistics regarding involvement of minorities and women and even veterans. Let's return to this idea also about women's leadership. What have you observed or what do you think can be done to advance women's leadership in the postal sector? I think we have a very successful history in that from the area levels very much. We went through a restructure, so I shouldn't say area, but what I mean to say is that we have a large population of women that start as letter carriers, women and other relevant groups of the conversations exactly of the population and they start with, as letter carriers, they work to get the required training. We have very aggressive training programs. We have executive leadership programs and even management leadership programs that work to propel that talent into those positions of leadership. We have a wonderful group here, separate from my group, which is diversity, equity and inclusion, and their focus is just that and separate from that group is a very large leadership organization that is focused on ensuring that we do ensure that our management is representative of the communities that we serve. As you can see from the numbers here, we're doing a pretty good job of that, Ian. I love this idea of reflecting the communities that you serve. I think it's baked into law in some countries. Maybe people can pop in the comments where it's required by law in your country to say have the relevant local languages represented in the postal sector in your post office or in your postal delivery people. Please do get involved in the comments there. Now I'll introduce our fourth panelist, Pierre Angela Sierra. She's the co-founder and CEO of Tipty. I'm going to please ask you to explain a little bit about what Tipty is and you're involved with, and I never know if this is, excuse me, an acronym you pronounce or what, the U-N-C-T-A-D. So you please just share a bit with us about some Tipty and your involvement there, please. Okay. Thank you very much. Good morning to everybody. Good morning. Good afternoon. I don't know. We have a lot of people around the world here. My name is Pierre Angela Sierra. I came from the corporate world. I have been working 24 years for Colgate and Coca-Cola Company and then three years ago I decided to begin my startup with my husband. I am the CEO of Tipty. Tipty is the fastest growing e-groceries in Latin America and we have a huge team right now, 500 people who is all the days buying and shopping the groceries for our consumers and then they go to the supermarket by the shopping and then go to the houses. Maybe in your country they're similar service and right now after the pandemic they're very, very popular. And I am the advocate. You asked me about the ANTAD, right? I am the E-Trade for Women Advocate for the ANTAD. So our mission is to drive a community, a woman community, for all of the e-commerce, digital, for Latin America and all other countries and all other continents. I represent Latin America and the Caribbean and we are working very hard to try to drive more women in the esteem area because we are so few. Well that leads into again the first question which is why is gender equality important and you just mentioned the under-representation of women in STEM? So why is gender equality important to achieve this goal of sustainable development? Well I think equality is not a gender issue. It's a business one. Gender equality in Latin America and in other parts of the world seems far behind of what we really need in our business and these matters because gender equality increase economic growth, enhance fairness, strength, peace and security, reduce corruption and raise social and environmental sustainability. I want to share three benefits of gender equality in the workplace. First of all, better economy. We have a lot of surveys statistic by the Cardintuna-Kenzie. If more women be able to fully participate in paid work and earn equal pay that could add 28 region to global gross domestic propaganda. It's a huge amount of money and that will be a 26% increase by 2025. The second one, improved productivity and according to the University of Greenwich one of the major benefits of the proof gender equality in the workplace is more cohesive productive workforce. Innovation and inclusiveness has a lot of benefits in terms of emotional, physical, professional and personal for all the workforce. And third and third increase of growth and innovation and empowering bias free and supportive gender equal workplace leads to an innovation creativity productivity mindset. And according to a Shen tour, it has a potential to add eight billion dollars. If we really incorporate in our companies, in our business, a lot of different gender equality. Summarizing as my own experience with TPD, which is the fastest growing online delivery platform in Latin America, when I gave women the access to opportunities for every road, they make huge impact on the company. Also the functional areas that are led by women has the highest productivity with the lowest ton of ratings. So it's very important for me to have a lot of women in the company. But most important, while some new works happen in a public policy level, we in the private section, we could take specific actions to make real change in our company, in our system and being a real agent of change to have much more women in our ecosystem in our workplace. You've been talking about the business and the strategic importance of inclusivity. Is this almost a development of what Jennifer was saying about making sure that your own workforce represents the people that Jennifer thinks that the communities that you serve, or is in this case your customer base, is that a similar sort of concept to play here? Yeah, because if we can drive a community, a women community that could help each other, we are going to serve and have a more, we could have a better customer experience. So we could have a better ecosystem, a better business. We could serve better to our consumers. And since we're also talking about sustainability, I might throw in a quick question that I didn't ask you to be prepared for, but we talk so much in the delivery sector and the postal world about reducing emissions. Has this been part of the conversation in the e-commerce world about reducing emissions and does that somehow intersect with the discussion about inclusivity within your own business? Well, I think that as we are doing shopping for other people, we are in fact reducing emissions right now, because there's a lot of people that are in the houses or in the office and they are not driving to the supermarket. So in fact, we are now reducing. However, we need to work including another innovations like electric cars so far for Latin America, but maybe it will happen anytime. And for sure that will help us to drive much more women's involvement because the young people is very interested in drive sustainability in a highway. Now that we've all heard from each of our speakers, please do continue to pop your questions in the Q&A section on Zoom. Kate Muth from IMAC has made a quick comment here about, she said that the statistics in leadership for US Postal Service and Postimer are impressive and something to be proud of, but the representation of women on the governing body of the Postal Service in the US Postal Service is the Board of Governors isn't quite at that same level. She says the only one woman in the nine presidentially appointed governors, I've got that wrong, there's only one woman in the nine presidentially appointed governors and that's the first female governor since 2006. Now don't worry, I'm not going to put anybody in the spot here, but perhaps in the comments section of people from other posts would like to comment on how many or the makeup of the of their governing board, male versus female, what it's like, please do jump in the comments and share with us there if you've got any any insights that you can share about the involvement of women at that, what would you call it, the board level or the Board of Governors level for your post. So thanks Kate for that question and please everybody do keep popping your questions in the Q&A section, we'll try to get through them as we go along. Christine, we might just come back to you because you mentioned sort of a couple of things in passing there which would be great to get in a bit more detail. Just focusing on the sustainability element for a moment, you are talking about how a post and has been seeking to meet its or reduce its emissions and its set specific goals. Can you share a few examples of how post and is doing that? I can. We are working of course, very much on the vehicles. The first thing that was possible to attack because I mean, this is dependent on the technological development. I mean, we need to have vehicles available was on the smaller vehicles to deliver mail, for instance, and we were buying electric vehicles, a lot of them, but we didn't find them satisfactory for all purposes. So we actually developed together with a car manufacturer. We do not have car manufacturing in Norway. So this is now the one and only car manufacturer in Norway manufacturing cars which are specialized for post delivery actually. So we use these cars a lot and it has now also become an export article to other posts. So we have now, I mean, electrical, smaller cars, I mean, ordinary cars for delivery all over the country to the extent at all possible. There are some challenges still because Norway is quite long countries. So the longer routes are quite long and it's long and cold winter. So there are some some issues with charging still for the smaller cars. But all in all, we are getting there. We are getting to only electrical smaller cars. Then the hot topic right now is vans. We are transforming into having only emission free vans for all the delivery in urban areas. We will stop buying anything but electrical vans from this year on. And all our vans for both urban and non-urban delivery should be emission free from 2026 on. So that is the biggest you know is actually vans. They need to be emission free very fast. And then there are large challenges, the tracks, the bigger tracks because there are no satisfactory solutions and you have goals. I mean, you need the infrastructure to recharge and so forth. And the development isn't there yet. So I think regulation is very welcome actually and all efforts to increase demand for vans and trucks that are electrical and stimulating countries to have the infrastructure for charging and for non-fossile fuels in place so that you can actually operate those vans. As for charging, we have made our own charging networks actually on our terminals and so forth because even though the charging capacity in Norway is relatively good, it's not good enough. So we haven't worked on that as well. So this is very much about pushing the technological evolution actually, technology and availability of smaller, bigger and very big cars and trucks so that they become financially competitive almost at least and start using them. And you've hit upon a very interesting point there about the fast distances that are sometimes involved when you're outside of metropolitan areas. How you can decarbonise transport in those areas. If you want to look online, there are a few articles online about what Poston's been doing with heavy vehicles and trucks and trials and doing in collaboration with the local university as well if I recall correctly. Yes, yes, yes. So thank you Christine for that insight. A quick comment from the comments. A comment from the comments. You all know what I mean from Uzween Ram who says in post-Fiji the overrepresentation of women is 39% and then at board level 33%. So there you go. That's interesting from post-Fiji. Thank you for that. And if anybody else wants to comment on representation in your own organisation, please do just chuck it in the comments and we'll try and work into a conversation. Now we've got a poll which we're about to launch. So Katja from the UPU is going to hit a button in the background and launch the poll. Here it is. Gender equality. So at the moment in terms of gender equality, the postal sector is, oh it has been French as well for those of you who are French speakers. So please choose your option. Is it unequal and not progressing fast? Is it still rather unequal but advancing well? Rather equal but some progress is still being made or presenting fully equal opportunities for women and men. Please vote, cast your vote and then after a few minutes we'll share the results with everyone. Susan if I might come back to you now. Just this discussion about representation at the board level. It's an interesting discussion because it's often unseen because it's outside of the control of the postal hierarchy. Do you have any comments on this? What do you mean outside of the control? Well what I mean is the CEO of a post doesn't appoint the board. It's the other way around and who appoints the board. So whilst a post might say well we're going to sign up and say we're going to have targets of whatever percent of representation of women in various levels of management. Should my message go through to the regulators or the ministerial shareholders or whoever it might be who makes the decisions about board representation? It will depend on the country of course. The regulator may or may not have a role. The regulator may have a more limited role. It could very well be the ministry that is supervising the post. But yeah to have some sort of message sent to the ministry in charge would really help a lot. I guess depending on the country there are also some countries that will have set targets either binding or non-binding for female representation on boards as well which will then flow through to the postal organisations. We might leave that topic where it is because I know it's a topic that we can only have limited input on and it can sometimes be political and we're not going to try and be political to that. Well not in this particular matter. Katja perhaps we can close the poll. I'm sure everybody's had an opportunity to vote and then Katja if you could share the results of the poll on the screen so that we can see it all in a moment it'll pop up magically. There we go. So the results of the poll at the moment in terms of gender equality in the postal sector is and the winner is at 57% still rather unequal but advancing well followed by rather equal but some progress is still being made and in equal last place or equal third place let's call it third place unequal and not progressing past a fast along with presenting fully equal opportunities for women and men. That really does come down to that one of our questions today. What should be done to advance women's leadership in the post? Do any of our panellists have any further comments now that you've heard everybody's answer on it? Do you have anything else you'd like to share on this concept of how we can advance women's leadership in the post and this is indeed I ask a very naive question here so please don't leap down my throat. Is it something that is up to men to advance or is it a message that has to be spread across equally? So just does anybody want to jump in without jumping down the throat? Oh dear. Yeah sure. Thanks Susan. I'll jump in and rescue you here. You know I think a lot of it has to do with gender mainstreaming. Something struck me very recently when the International Labor Organization and the World Trade Association were hosting a joint seminar on gender trade and jobs. Angela Ellert who is the deputy director general of the WTO explained that in the last six years the WTO has progressed from being a gender blind organization to being gender aware. She went on to say that the WTO is on a path to become a gender responsive organization and the World Health Organization has a gender mainstreaming manual where it actually takes a five level approach from gender unequal all the way up to the scale of gender transformative which is very similar to the poll that you just asked everyone to respond to. But I think that this is something that everyone needs to be more aware of. It's not just enough to seek for quotas. We really need to examine every aspect of the employment field and in the postal sector and try and improve it so that it is it is far reaching for everyone. And I'd like to follow up on that Susan and Ian if I may. It's a great question Ian nobody's going to jump down your throat. I think women with respect to ensuring that the population of women in management continues to increase women need to take some ownership of that like we we take really healthy ownership of a lot of things. And what we do at the Postal Service and what I do in my personal and professional life is I believe fully in a mentor program and a mentoring relationship. I know many of the characteristics that have led to my success are due to me having a woman in leadership as my mentor and just having those those conversations kind of stripping away all the noise and it could be a business discussion. It could be about perhaps you know non-business related concerns and how you're dealing with them. And once you you have that rapport and you replicate to those behaviors and you kind of what you're getting is you're somebody's reaching out a hand and they're they're reaching out to you to pull you up into those ranks. And I feel that while while I personally benefited from that I see it a lot in the Postal Service. I see a lot of camaraderie among the women in leadership reaching out to those others because we know they have a lot to offer and sometimes they can't do it alone. So we need to take ownership of that. Well let me then raise another another issue and that's the gender pay gap. I know some some postal operators report on the gender pay gap. Would anybody like to comment on this on how on how posts or your own organization is making sure that men and women who do the same work are number one remunerated the same way and perhaps even given the same opportunities to sort of tap into what Jennifer and Susan have just been saying can can that be achieved? So not the gender pay gap is not only about ensuring that there is no pay gap that the payers are saying but there's also the opportunities that flow on from that. But anybody like to comment on that? Or have I asked a difficult question again? I can just say if I may just that I checked the facts on that before before this session because I didn't know before and it seems that women are on average a little bit better paid in all groups than men in in Norway post. I suppose that is because of differences in positions because I believe that they are quite strict that the same position is paid the same way. But I wasn't aware of it. I just had to check the facts before this. But of course I mean unequal pay is a general issue even in Norway still. It was of course the biggest issue before much less of an issue now but it is a very relevant issue still. Okay a comment from Sophie who says as the La Post Board of Directors has made has 24 members 13 men and 11 women. So that's an interesting comment there from La Post in France. Thank you Sophie for for sharing that. I'm going to read a few more comments while I ask the next question because all of a sudden it's oh look in Ghana Post. Thank you Mary. Ghana Post representation of women management is 35% but at board level 14%. So thank you Mary for sharing that. Pierre Angela if I could ask a question of you because obviously you've got a different perspective on all this coming from the private sector. When it comes to partnering or having a partner with other suppliers or service providers does sustainability and inclusivity play a part in selecting those providers or service partners? Well not in all the cases. Not in all the cases however I think it's a very good policy that we could implement not only in the private sector but also in the public sector because that will help us to really understand if they are sharing the same values and the same direction that we want to to leave behind all the the gender equality. So that would be a very good idea to do that. Would any of our other panelists like to comment on that? I know that Kristen you mentioned about the war for talent how you have to be gosh what did you call it? A license to operate? Is that part of it? You're not just having a license to operate but also it makes post and an attractive service provider to prospective customers? Yes I mean I suppose I use the term license to operate on the carbon emission reduction path because without that we will lose all our customers and our attractiveness as as an employer. So yes. Right and we've had a couple of comments are coming in French so maybe if somebody could help because my French is limited to saying je ne parle pas de français okay so if somebody can help me out there with um just send me a message someone from the upu just help me what the comments are they're in French there. The comments come through from Carol and I'm sorry if I'm quite pronounced that correctly talking about the inequalities in the economy and how it's embedded in society and giving everything from girls having access to schooling through to opportunities whether it's university or whatever it is um what role we still have to explore this at the very beginning now is there a broader role in society for the postal sector when it comes to encouraging participation and encouraging inclusivity but anybody like to comment on that? Talking about dedication right yeah well let's start with education yes well yes I think we have we have to minimize all the different barriers that women have around the world and one of them is dedication because in Latin America for example you have a limited access to education and when you have to to choose in your family in your poor family you always choose for the for the main and the the the last option maybe is going to be a woman and then they begin to to to form their family and they cannot have any access to education so educated women will help us to really drive a new economy a new society a new community that help us to really incorporate them in the in a professional in a professional career in a professional world and so education is key to to really drive this gender equality and if we take a broader view then of the role of the postal sector it's been suggested over the years that the post can be a driver of change so we often talk about this in sustainability as well as the idea of inclusivity so the post being a driver of change um which I always think is interesting when there can sometimes be a public perception of the post as this antiquated legacy body so um Susan I might just start with you from from where you see are you seeing that there's this possibility for posts to transform themselves to go from this being perceived as um this antiquated you know um out of date monolithic organization to being a leader when it comes to inclusion sustainability uh what let's just stick to those two for now sure I um as I mentioned earlier the the post has such a global network and has such a public face and has such in in many countries an element of trust people trust the post they may think it's old and and decrepit as you say but that's not true and also they if you try to shut the posts down listen to the noise when people say no no no we don't want our post office closed people really trust the post they trust the people who deliver the post and when these uh when these organizations are branching out whether with civil society or with other international agencies other than the upu or with their own governments with their own um postal ministry as well as other ministries such as ministries of health ministry of finance and giving other services it needs to be carefully thought out because it needs to be services that are in line with the with the government's sustainability goals but absolutely the post can help in so many ways in delivering different services that many of which I've mentioned um and there's so many more we have uh recently published the upu guide to postal social services and we have a wealth of information in that publication just showing what the post already does and we want to get the word out to member countries to let them know that there are lots of different ways the post can help Jennifer or Christine do you want to comment on this change sure I'll chime in I I I'm appreciating this conversation and what what I wanted to add on to my previous conversation about women in leadership and and mentoring I think especially with respect to climate change and the increasing demand for resiliency we all must be advocating for women's access to technology and the skills building certainly that we mentioned earlier but the technology and then the training on that technology is so important that they have workable achievable options when those climate change challenges do occur so that could be something as basic as really as understanding what and getting access to internet so that you have the handheld technology of whatever technology it is to show you what your options are when you are negatively impacted by climate change whether that is um the fact that you know the the source of food in some of these countries is diminishing because what's happening to the waterways and the lack of rain and what's happening to to other food sources what are their options and getting that information from technology is going to increase their resiliency and that's that's on all of us to ensure that we're increasing just the access to technology the skills building that is required to ensure that they have achievable options as climate change impacts become unbearable and certainly not sustainable any other comments on this i'll say christian would be happy to come as well but from the sustainability perspective i mean posts are transport businesses basically transport and logistics and transport is is a big part of the problem so so i mean we we can do a huge difference actually in in working progressively on this we are a big part of the problem and then potentially a big part of the solution so we can actually form that demand for instance for better vehicles a better technology so forth we can transform our businesses we can push the development of solutions and so forth in in the transport business that that's a big deal it's it's a big part of the of the global climate problem and and so we are really well positioned actually better than many others to do something about it so so definitely we can show leadership in this and we can actually bring forward technologies and we can really make a difference in in climate change well posts certainly can move the needle a lot more than some of the smaller operators out there so i think it's you're quite right it's absolutely is encumbered upon the posts to show leadership in these areas going to the q and a remember everybody you can throw your questions in the q and a and i'll do my best to put them to the panelists as we go along and i think from margarita it's more a comment than a question but she says often the lack of investment in care services and care policies including maternity and paternity leave i think we just call parental leave these days in some countries don't we can contribute to increasing the gender pay gap thank you margarita for for for that's comment now antonio is asking an interesting question are women allowed to do male delivery considering the heavy load of carrying the male or are there some limitations i'm i'm not aware of there being limitations on female involvement in male delivery anywhere not even in you know heavy freight and things like that um does anybody want to make some comments on that um i was uh anybody want to make a quick comment on on that side of things i will i will just say for the postal service there are no limitations that at least that i am aware of and um i have like i said earlier i i know a lot of women that work in my office and and and with us that started office letter carriers and they have this you know this ground up understanding of the importance of it so i'm i'm unaware of any limitations with respect to that question the same for me ian we don't have any limitation in terms of shopping and carrying a lot of shopping carts to the to the houses no limitation at all in australian legislation this definition of a safe lifting weight is decidedly opaque because it all depends on the person what one person can lift safely another person cannot and that is purely down to your own physiology your own capacity isn't it but thank you antonio for the question so i think the the short answer there is anybody more or less can be a posty so please do continue to pop your questions in the q and a and i'll put it to the panel as we go along a couple now someone's been good enough to translate the comments that have been left in french so ah merci there you go that's my other french word everybody um now in benign the regulatory council of the electronic communications and post regulatory authorities composed of 60 women um in the ivory coast there are no women on the board of directors um but the ivory coasts oh that's that there's a seven member board and no women on the board of postal regulation however 45 percent of women in the general management of the post office um and i'll kate you've sent me a long comment here kate i'll read it later and then put it to the to the panel if we can continue this idea of the intersection of um inclusivity and sustainability um we've talked about the the leadership role of the post um if we look at then the post doesn't operate in a vacuum though the post has its own customers and so if you think of a post as the pipeline there might be the e-commerce retailers there might be the major mailers etc who then who generate mail items that we then deliver and they get delivered to consumers um susanna might start with you do you think that the posts do a good enough job of communicating what they're trying to achieve in with the sustainability goals um inclusivity and things like that that's a bit of a difficult question to answer um i don't see we at the up you don't don't see what they're doing so much at national level um i imagine they're doing a lot um at the international level we would like to help them increase that profile um in our cycle for the next four years after the the congress that we had last year we have mandates to work on environment action and on gender action so we are looking to help the posts in terms of national international campaigns um and and other services that that we can provide to them any other comments on my terrible question before we move on to something more sensible no um now um kate me is just made a comment here in the comments i recommend that you all have a look at it talking about title nine of the education amendments um in 1972 in the osa so those of you who are interested in that please just check kate's comment there um and we've had a comment from mary saying in nigeria post more than 65 percent of them in the middle management are women uh while women representation at top management is 35 percent so some interesting comments there um i'd like to now pull the question to each of you which is a bit of a classic question but i think it's super relevant considering the the makeup of our panel today and that your different backgrounds and certainly different roles that you do at each of your organization if you were to give advice to your younger self whether you're just starting out in work or maybe even at a difficult point in your career what would be the kind of advice that you would give to your younger self as i said whether you're either when you're starting out or whether you've hit a difficult point in your career christina might go to you first you've got a wistful smile on your face that's fine um yes what would that be i think a good advice to both me the younger me and me generally and to everyone else actually is to be courageous to have courage to dare to do i mean what you deep down really want to do that is uh that would be my advice i think and it's it's a kind of advice that may seem simple but maybe i mean sometimes it's a tough world up there so sometimes it's it's difficult but have courage do you give us an example of what courage might mean for you or for for someone starting out their career what would you mean by courage yeah sometimes it's oh it's different things but it's it's it may be to to kind of stand up for your values and beliefs sometimes i mean you may meet a group of people who have are going in a direction that are contrary to your more fundamental values and beliefs and and stand up for them i think you feel better that way and and and maybe you gain courage if you kind of dare to stick to what you really believe and sometimes and i personally have have sometimes met a tough resistance but i think that is i think that is the good way forward actually to try and try and be courageous sometimes it's it's my advice you're next on the screen as i'm looking at so jennif would you what's what's your response so i will build on what christine said don't be afraid change is good many of my employees my family members have heard me say change is good embrace the change and i say don't be afraid to christine's be courageous is because i can thinking of one point in my career where i was just you know having issues with the management and despite my efforts i didn't see anything changing so i left that organization and that was kind of scary right but in looking back it was probably a pivotal point in my career because leaving that organization and then come and actually coming back to it made increased my level of awareness and of opportunities and um to use christine's word made me more courageous so don't be afraid change is good embrace the change and and drive change i think and when people see you driving change you know that's a natural leadership quality and people will encourage your continued leadership and pure angela i might come to you next because you've had an interesting career you've you've worked at colgate palm olive and coca-cola and major companies like this what would your advice be to your younger self starting out or if you've there was that moment of of crisis in your career what would your advice be as i think it's almost maybe the same but in other words that if you have an idea if you have a dream you have to believe in that don't think too much about that just do it and follow up even follow up your ideas even they are not perfect it's better to do that and and to drive your your your what what you want to do what you want to get very early and work for that and the only limits it's those limits that you impose yourself but there's no limit it's it's maybe in your mind and you have to have not only courage but also a lot of determination to to make it happen so isn't you know what i'm gonna ask you so they took mine um i i think um i have a a different take perhaps on this um i think that jennifer and christin both were talking about the fact that we need we we can't have a good organization with only 50 percent of of of the people involved we can't have a good organization with just men we need to have women too i think that in the movement for gender equality and empowerment of women we need men to step up to we need not just women but also the men to say this is the right thing and it needs to be done because again we're not going to change the world with just 50 percent of it in in favor of what's going to happen next earlier um i think it might have been you jennifer you mentioned um mentoring and so this question that we've just asked and answered does that is that a key part of mentoring so when you're mentoring um being mentored or mentoring uh someone are these the kind of questions that come up jennifer perhaps if you could just comment on that i think the success you have a successful mentoring relationship if you can ask any question and ask for any guidance so it's it's a healthy discussion and if you can discuss your fears and your concerns openly and be able to generate that dialogue which should be about options and maybe um helping with the leg up that that is the beauty of of a strong mentoring relationship and if i might ask a naive question what should someone look for when they're choosing a mentor that's a good question i i think um i i think you need to be open-minded i think there might be people might be drawn to people like themselves but they they shouldn't limit it to that right i think this um you should look in with a very diverse i in a very diverse viewport to get that perspective that maybe is not in your regular dialogue so i i don't know that there's a clean answer to that yet well it's the answer is almost you know seeking diversity in your own mentoring can also help expand your own comprehension and your viewport yes exactly hmm anybody else like to comment on the concept of mentoring before we move on well hey susan i was going to say i believe i've had several mentors throughout my career and they also have helped me quite a lot um being a woman over so many years they have been men as well they have helped me very much it's not important whether it's man or woman but it's it's got to be someone that you can have an honest relationship with and that that you you feel comfortable talking to them and you you feel that that it's it's it's a safe place but but there are plenty of people out there i think who are willing to to be a mentor for a younger person who's just starting out thank you for those answers please uh we've got another 20 minutes on the clock so if you have any other questions those of you who are watching along i was going to say at home you might be at home you might be at the office please do pop them in the q and a and i'll do my best to to um ask them of our panel a quick comment from octavia um who says instant kits in the caribbean um we have 100 women in middle management so there you go um don't think well so i say i don't think anyone can beat that i know no one can that's uh quite impressive um another question uh is single parenting uh something that can affect productivity now that i guess perhaps we should ask a broader question which is as a management structure how can you make sure that you include people no matter what their home situation is whether it's a single mother single father or whoever it is whatever their their their home life is how can you create a family friendly environment perhaps i won't that's a very broad question perhaps i should ask something more specific can each of you think of something that you've seen that you think helps create a family friendly environment either in your current organization or in an organization you've worked for previously would anybody like to share a sort of something you've seen work that that helps create a family friendly environment in the workplace i will say that um being able to that employees feel comfortable having that open conversation because managers don't typically ask you know what's going on in your personal life if it's pretty it might not even be able to right so if the employee is is comfortable enough to share challenges that they're having um and to to get any assistance or any understanding or maybe a more favorable interpretation of of allowable leave or an understanding that maybe they need to tell a work for whatever reason it could be for a child or for a parent or you know especially as as the population gets older so having that you know creating that atmosphere of being able to have that open dialogue is critically important and um then being responsive to to the concerns of the employee as as much as possible any other comments from our panel i can i can add something i mean in our way we are very lucky to have a very parent friendly legal framework that ensures that it is possible to to be a mother and a father and and and still having a career and that i think i am extremely supportive of that so i think what what helped us a lot which was introduced in the 1990s and which has been developed is that the parent leave needs to be shared between the mother and the father uh and fathers take now almost as long parent leaves as mothers do and for fathers it is more or less considered you know as a right to be together with their children so they kind of claim fathers claim their rights as as as a father and being able to to kind of combine career and and parenthood and for me that has been extremely important because when we employ i mean we we actually want to employ people who are younger than 50 and who can can become a parent for the first time or the second or the third or whatever and and and so we don't know i mean if we are hiring a woman or a man whether that person is likely to have a parent leave or not so it doesn't make any difference for us so if we hire a woman who is i don't know 30 years old or a man who is 30 years old you know that that person can always become a father but it isn't the issue we have a lot of we we have a lot of framework in place to handle that it isn't an issue actually so so but we are very lucky i know that we are in Norway we are very lucky to have it that way in that in many other countries it's it's it's not the same way but my my input or my advice to others to make policies in that respect would be actually to ensure that you kind of divide the the parent leave and the possibility to be you know 100 parent equally as as equally as possible as possible between the mother and the father so that there is no discrimination actually when when and people are recruited thank you but i know that is i know that it's special because we have this kind of legal framework so it's not that easy i understand that it can sound easy but it isn't but it is important it does make a huge difference i'm sure at one point it sounded very difficult before it sounded easy it probably sounded difficult if that makes sense we've had a couple more comments and questions come in uh Jennifer Johnson at Bahamas Post says Bahamas Post has gone from being about 90 percent men 10 years ago to about 90 percent female now postmaster general's female permanent secretary's female the minister is female and managers are about 95 percent female so interesting there Jennifer i i think would all be interested to hear what what drove that change what created such a cultural change within Bahamas Post so feel free to share a comment with everybody there that sounds very interesting um another comment that's come through from Octavia again that's in kits and nevus mentoring is essential in any organization i am where i am in the post because of positive mentorship so that's sort of well there's a personal another personal testimonial about the value of of mentoring within within organizations please everybody please keep putting your questions in the q and a or share your comments in the chat um and in the last few minutes that we have well again i'll do my best to get to the questions through to the panel um the the just if we might return to get to the environmental aspect of things moving away from the the inclusivity part of talk talk a bit about sustainability um and uh susan you mentioned at the outset i can't remember what it was you said and we said well there's also the the upu interacts with other other un bodies and we've obviously we've seen over the last few years many comments about the sustainable development goals what what are you seeing at the upu how the upu is interacting with other un bodies to help achieve these goals is there anything that you can share with all of us um of what's what's happening um at the upu level of course in several areas uh all un bodies have a reporting requirement every year we need to report our carbon footprint there's there's quite a a detailed program and and that's published every year in something called greening the blue and uh united nations environmental program publishes all un agencies that report in on their their progress uh un swap um is the united nations um gender equality and an empowerment of women program where we also need to report in every year and give our our progress in that regard um there are frequent frequent meetings both formal and informal heads of agency as well as representatives and experts from from all areas where we exchange ideas um about uh how to move forward talking of mentoring the un women is a very good resource for for any agency that wants to set a gender policy and we have contacted them as well and we will be contacting them much more to to have advice on our policy there are guidelines for uh sustainability management systems which is something that we will also be working on and someone upu communication has just put in the uh the comments www dot greening the blue dot org um and the the un is a tremendous resource for the other agencies that that want to to move forward and of course we all um have that that um uh we have that mandate to to move forward on all of the sustainable development development goals now we've had a great question from Colleen in the q and a um do you think that men are more open now to accept women in leadership are you all in leadership positions so do you think that men are more open now to accept women in leadership uh who gets to start with this one um i guess christine you're you're right next to me on the screen so i'm gonna start with you what do you have any observations there do you do you think that men are more open now to accepting women in leadership or is it not even a relevant question anymore yeah it's my impression is that of this aspect there are big cultural differences in the world still um in our own own culture i think so very much we have well i don't know 30 years of experience more with women prime ministers and in political life and top public positions with as many women as as men so so we are kind of become generally blind i think in in those positions but in business still uh there is an under representation of women in the top positions but i do not think that is due to men not accepting women leadership i think that is fully accepted actually now so there are probably some various mechanisms in place still in in a country like norway which has worked seriously on this for for a time we haven't achieved it in in business but um so so i would say for for i mean where i come from i do not think it is an issue that men do not accept women leaders at the same level as as they accept men as leaders but it's an issue Jennifer of course the previous postmaster general was a woman so um we know that there's a recent history of leadership at the very top of the usps so speaking generally what what do you have any comments or observations of of this on this matter i think it's it's a good question and i think the good news is that it's almost i'd like to think it's not a relevant question because of you know women in leadership and but given given the great depth of our organization and the geographic expanse it's impossible to say or it's naive to say that people are gender neutral or gender blind in decision-making just as it's impossible to say that they're blind or neutral to hiring people of different colors and different diversity or different disabilities so it's an evolution and it's definitely moving in the right direction and as you mentioned certainly our postmaster general our last postmaster general was a woman and so we we've really kind of set the tone there but it's more than just gender it's it's diversity it's disabilities and the question should be it really be what is their ability for leadership and if we can take away the gender and the colors and um the you know that the noise outside of the actual abilities then we'll be stronger together. Pierre Angelo do you want to add anything to what um Christine and Jennifer have said given your perspective from the private private I'll get it in a second from the private sector because I think I think men are accepting accepting a woman leadership however we need to to work much more in terms of specific tools specific policies that could help us to really have a space in the in a professional work and because sometimes we need to really understand as Jennifer said before if we really are prepared to lead some some sectors some aspects and for sure we are really capable to do that but we need to to work to be prepared to to to really do a good work and those are those kind of tools like mentoring coaching educating other areas have a different experience but men I think they're accepting we have to to really drive and lead that space to make this happen. And Susan do you have any quick comments on this? It's a matter of unconscious bias that is the barrier to inclusion and that's something that that needs to be addressed through gender mainstreaming and and inclusivity and it's it's not something that we can help it's it's natural it's something that that everyone falls back on but we've got to be aware and we've got to change attitudes that we can become more inclusive as a society. May I comment on that because I agree that there is an unconscious bias so so there have been experience with applications where they remove name and there are no photos and that give you know different results that kind of techniques can actually help us go beyond the or kind of yeah deal with those kind of biases that definitely exist but there are techniques that are quite good and give surprising results. Thank you for those answers and please if you're watching along please do pop your questions in the Q&A I know it's been a very diverting discussion and we've gone down very gone off and lots of tangents but I can't help it I find these things interesting. A question from Shibu who says what are your expectations from the male colleagues from your from the male colleagues in your respective organisations? I feel like that almost ties in with the previous question so expectations from male colleagues. Does anybody want to comment on this you know how well I'll ask the question. Does anybody have any any quick comments on this? For me it's respect respect really really look at us like we are equal person human being. For me it's respect. I'm going to agree with Piangela I think respect is key. Respect is key from male colleagues towards their male and female colleagues. Respect is also key from from women managers to to understand and appreciate the many differences and I think respect comes with being open-minded. Almost more broadly though they are the key characteristics of a good manager respect understanding others would you say? Yes it's almost raising the bar for anybody who's already in management or wants to be in a managing position you need to be able to have a broader understanding of your of your direct reports of your colleagues or even those above you anyway. We're almost out of time and it has been a really wide-ranging conversation everything from electric vehicles through to you know mentoring programs it's such a wide-ranging conversation so please with the two minutes we have left perhaps I might just go around quickly and ask each of you have any final comments that you'd like to share with our audience today whether it's on the topic of sustainability the topic of inclusion what you think's next or whatever you'd like to comment on is related to these topics please. Well I'll tell you at this time we're going to go in the reverse order instead of starting with Christine we're going to start with Susan. So Susan your opportunity to be first off the line please. I'd just like to quickly highlight some of the things that the UPU is doing in this next four years we have a resolution on climate action which mandates the setting of targets for greenhouse gas reduction as well as standards for a carbon neutral postal product and this is going to be carried out strictly by extra budgetary funds from donors right near right now we are at about 40 percent of the amount that we need to be able to carry this forward and then we have a group this year or this cycle in the Postal Operations Council which is called the Sustainable Postal Services Group and we would love it if the post be willing to join this group either as a member or as an observer. Thank you very much. Susan, Pietrangela any final comments from you before we wrap up? Yes I want to only share that we really think we really need to think about women equality because when women use their power they're reinvest families, communities, countries and we really need this kind of change in the economy in the world. Thank you Pietrangela and Jennifer at the USPS any final comments from you? I would just add and underscore that gender equality, climate change, environmental justice are all necessarily intertwined and we can't achieve success in our work life in our climate vision if we don't see the need for you know giving that helping hand, providing the leadership and providing the skills and abilities necessary for as we spoke earlier necessary for the women and the other diverse groups to have a voice and to ensure that their voice is heard. And Christine finally some thoughts from you? Oh there has been said so many wise words now I agree with it all so I would just like to say thank you for kind of lifting up these two so extremely important subjects and binding them together a little bit so that we can see the connection because there is a connection and they are fundamental so thanks for that. Well thank you everybody for taking part today thank you to Katja and the tech team at the UPU thank you to the interpreters who have been trying to decipher my Australian accent good luck and thank you and as always thank you to our panelists so thank you to Christine Baragum from Poston Norie, thank you Jennifer Rovea from US Postal Service, the US Postal Service left out of my mind there from thank you very much to Pietrangela Sierra as well from Tiptee and of course thank you Susan Alexander from the UPU for being part of it thank you all very much for your comments and your questions today from the audience go to the UPU website to sign up for the UPU email updates so you get an email every time they're doing something like this whether it's a webinar or something interesting there's always lots of interesting content coming out of the UPU and Susan has also mentioned some of the interesting research that the UPU has been doing as well so just that I've know that the team is pointing over here because that's where the comments are on my screen there are a few links there in the comments so thank you everyone again and good night good afternoon good morning and see you later thank you everybody oh and happy international women's day