Happy Monday!
There was a meeting last week at the United Nations as a follow up to the historic 1995 Beijing Conference on Gender Equality. The goal of the conference was to see what progress had been made and where it was still lagging. One of the most sobering things to come out of the conference was a study that shows that “despite the gains women have made in education, health and even political power in the course of a generation, violence against women and girls worldwide “persists at alarmingly high levels.”” And this is not just happening overseas: “about 35 percent of women worldwide — more than one in three — said they had experienced physical violence in their lifetime, the report finds. One in 10 girls under the age of 18 was forced to have sex, it says.” The full article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/world/un-finds-alarmingly-high-levels-of-violence-against-women.html?_r=0
Another worthwhile article came from the Washington Post this week exploring the fact that although women make up 50% of all management roles globally, they only make up 5% of CEOs. The full article can be found here:http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/03/11/why-there-are-so-many-female-managers-but-so-few-ceos/
And kudos to ACIO magazine for asking the question – where are all the women in private equity? Further, ACIO will be devoting the first day of the 2015 CIO Summit to discuss the burning question of why there are so few women in the asset management profession and what can be done about it. The full article can be found here: http://www.ai-cio.com/channel/NEWSMAKERS/Where_Are_All_the_Female_Private_Equity_Managers_.html
And more good news – Catalyst recently put on a 6 month training program attended by both male and female executives aimed at bringing in men as advocates to help increase men’s involvement in advancing women, and the results were very encouraging. The full article can be found here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/men-pitch-in-to-boost-women-at-work-1426029982?KEYWORDS=joann+lublin
And lastly, we have our biggest event of the year coming up April 23rd in Dallas – you will not want to miss this as we have an all-star lineup of investors giving their global market outlook including Mary Erdoes of JP Morgan, Katie Stockton of BTIG, Elena Ranguelova of Investcorp and Lilian Zhou will be joining us from Shanghai. Britt Harris from TRS will be moderating and we look forward to his questions. The event supports the Young Women’s College Preparatory network that supports 7 schools in Texas that provide a college preparatory education to underserved young girls across the state. And why is girls’ education so important? Studies show that if you change the outcome for a young girl, you change the outcome for future generations – an investment that pays dividends. And young girls trying to get an education are under siege:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/world/schoolgirls-are-facing-more-threats-united-nations-reports.html?_r=0
Men and women are welcome to attend the April 23rd event, so please help us get the word out – it is a great event with TWO cocktail hours, so plenty of great networking as well as great content!
We have 2 great events for March and a terrific line up of events for April. Come out and meet our new committee members and share your ideas for future events! Register early to avoid disappointment!
Kind regards
Christine
