Empowering Women as Entrepreneurs and Leaders

00:00 Welcome

01:52 Panel discussion: Innovative approaches to women's financial inclusion

- David R. Malpass, President of the World Bank Group
- David Solomon Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Goldman Sachs
- Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Republic of India

38:43 Inspiring stories from South Africa

41:39 Panel discussion: Expanding opportunities for women's leadership

- Makhtar Diop, Managing Director, IFC
- Melinda French Gates, Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Adji Bousso Dieng, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Princeton University

1:19:37 Inspiring stories from Brazil

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Hello, and welcome to the 2023 Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and IMF. I'm Mina Al-Oraibi, Editor in chief of The National, and I'll be guiding you through the next hour and a half as we discuss what the public and private sectors can do to support women's full participation in the global economy and empower women as leaders and entrepreneurs.

Remember, you can share your thoughts on these topics at any time using the hashtag #ReshapingDevelopment. Please, use the QR code you see on the screens to post your questions. Or if you're following us online, please join the chat at liveworldbank.org.

We are joined by two all-star panels today and first is the impressive lineup right here on stage with me, David Malpass, president of the World Bank Group, the Honorable Nirmala Sitharaman, Finance Minister of India, and David Solomon, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs. Welcome to all of you and thank you for being here.

So, women entrepreneurs face numerous hurdles in their efforts to access finance. And although women own small and medium enterprises, and represent about one third of all SMEs in developing countries, they face a financing gap of over a trillion dollars. Let's turn to our panel to look at how we can tackle some of these issues as we begin innovative approaches to women's financial inclusion. So, David, I'm going to start with you. Why is women's entrepreneurship so important for economic development and how do private and public partnerships help to advance them?

[David R. Malpass]
Thanks very much and it's really good to be here. What a great audience and what a great panel. World Bank is deeply engaged in these topics. Let me mention the upside. We can both think of it as the right thing to do, but also from an economic standpoint, it's the really profitable thing for countries to do. We calculate that the upside gain, if women could start and grow businesses at the same rate as men, that would mean five to 6 trillion dollars extra in the world. That's huge. However, the barriers to women's entry are substantial. One of those is the access to capital. As we think about it, capital is very important. As people think about starting businesses, we think that the legal barriers to women exist in over 100 countries out of the 190 that we calculate or that we inspect within the WBL Report, the Women, Business and the Law Report. Also, the technical skills are very much needed. So, we need working capital, we need fewer barriers to entry, better business and legal environment for women, and also technical skills. What we're trying to do is take impactful action, meaning how do we really get a grip to help countries improve? One of those is to lift or to adapt the collateral requirements in countries. One of the problems facing women is if they don't have capital to start with, what do they have to show to the Bank to actually get growth of capital? So, that can be done. For example, in Colombia, IFC, the International Finance Corporation, is working to allow movable capital, such as trucks or such as short-term capital to be used as collateral. The woman may have access to those, but not own property. And so, it's important to have the capital requirements adjusted. Supporting women into male dominated businesses, obviously a fruitful area, and then training. And with that, I want to really commend India and Goldman Sachs and IFC have formed a very powerful partnership. I know David's going to talk about it more, but what IFC wants to brag about it too is that IFC has put in 4.5 billion dollars in loans to 55 countries in order to empower women entrepreneurs in those countries. That's kind of our direction. Thanks.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Thank you, David. We see those partnerships, the importance of government, private sector, but also, of course, international financial corporations to move the needle on the issue of female entrepreneurship. So actually, I'd like to turn to you, Minister Nirmala, to ask you about the importance of women entrepreneurship, but also that public-private sector nexus.

[Nirmala Sitharaman]
I'll begin with what David had mentioned, and it is on those specific areas. India has taken steps in the last few years, credit and women not having enough property or money or anything else to give as guarantee. I'm so happy to say that in 2014, I was a Junior Minister of Finance. And that's when the financial inclusion program was launched in a major way. Prime Minister Modi's first line, and that line continues till today, is that it has to be a women-led development for India rather than just women-centric. And because of that, and because of the fact that women don't have credit access, and also in India, it's customary that women, in case they have to go do a business, would take the gold which they have received as what we call as stridhan. Meaning, at the time of marriage, women are given some gold from their parents’ families if they can. If they can't, of course, they don't give them anything at all. And for such women to go do business, you still had something to give from their own savings, but not sure if it was worth taking the risk. Prime Minister Modi gave a very prominent statement saying, “I am the Prime Minister of the country and I'm the guarantee for these loans. Please give them the loans without a guarantee. The government stands guarantee.”

Therefore, I'll just give you five specific examples. Sorry to take time, but because this is so important and we are talking about women. Financial inclusion, a major scheme was launched by government of India in 2014 when Prime Minister Modi just had got elected. That was to make sure that every Indian has a bank account. Even if it was zero balance, he would still open the account and start the services. In that 390 million… Sorry, first of all, so accounts were opened and once the accounts were opened, this guarantee given by the government, loans for small businesses were extended. It was called MUDRA loans. In the MUDRA loans, 390 million loans to accounts have been given. The total amount of loan given is 22 trillion Indian rupees. Of this, 68% of loans have gone for women. They're small, 50 thousand lakh rupees and so on. But even for that, women were not required to give any guarantee. 68% women got in their accounts, MUDRA loans, and I said, 22 trillion has already been distributed for these loans. Of the 22 million, 45% went to women in terms of value of the loan. Second, for metropolitan cities, women had the access to banks. But in the rural areas and far-flung areas, there was no chance, but there were bank branches present. So, the way in which we thought we should reach these women who are in the far-flung areas was to make it compulsory for the branch, not the bank itself, but the branch which is present in these areas to give at least one woman a loan called Stand Up India. Because we are starting a big startup movement, we wanted India, the rest of India also to benefit. Stand Up loans were given through bank branches. In that, 80% of the bank loans have gone to women. These are small loans, up to 10 million only of Indian rupees, but 80% have been women. Then six... The women owned SMEs are, I'm quoting a Bain report. Bain is a company audit company or consultant company. They have given a report saying in India, representing approximately 20% of all the enterprises are the women SMEs. They have received… They've grown in such a number between 2021 and 2022 and 2023. I just want to tell you, in 2021, we had only 495 thousand SMEs which were women-held SMEs. But as of 2023, March 31, which went by just now, we have 1.3 million SMEs which are women-owned SMEs. And the last point, we also have a government e-marketing place, which is an online procurement platform through which government procures everything that it wants. Small stationery, onwards, big items, everything is procured through that, so the process is very transparent. And in that, 144 thousand women entrepreneurs have successfully fulfilled 1.5 million orders which were given to them. They are women entrepreneurs who are benefiting because the platform is now digitized. Government procurements are going for small women for producing things. The government is not searching where the women entrepreneurs are. They are all available on the e-marketing place. These are ways in which directly we are moving towards benefiting women entrepreneurs and give them the power to run their businesses. Credit is being taken care of; guarantee is being taken care of.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
And that point of access to finance… [Applause] That point of access to finance, which of course, David, you also referred to as those barriers, and these are tangible examples of how you can get across those barriers and highlight the importance of giving women a chance. But, David, I want to turn to you because you represent the private sector on this panel. While we understand why governments and financial institutions and international organizations want to make sure they give women those advantages from the private sector, why is women entrepreneurship important?

[David Solomon]
Well, first of all, it's terrific to be here today, and I appreciate being a part of this terrific panel. I think economic growth and economic participation are important to all of us. We live in a society that if we're bringing people along and we're creating economic opportunity, we all benefit. I think one of the places that we've been very focused on for over 15 years is just the role of women in that. It goes back to research the firm had done in different parts of the world, just really trying to highlight that we have men and women in the world, and if we have them both participating economically, you get, and David highlighted this, you get much more economic production on the economy, and we all benefit. We've tried to play our role as a private sector participant in taking the things that we do for big businesses and figuring out how we can apply them to smaller businesses, how we can bring capital to smaller businesses, and in particular with women this has been highlighted. There's been this huge gap in available financing and capital available to small and medium sized enterprises run by women. As we calculated in our research, it's about a trillion and a half dollars. So, we've tried in a variety of ways to use our resources, our people and our intellectual capital, and also in partnership with the IFC, bringing a capital facility together to get capital allocated to women so they can grow their businesses. The most important program we've executed on over the last 15 years, and we just celebrated the 15th anniversary of this program is our 10,000 Women program, where we provide a business education to women that are running small businesses around the world and developing economies. Then, we metric and we look for the progress that that business education married with capital that's been provided by this IFC facility can really do to advance economic progress. When we look at that, over time, we've had over 200 thousand businesses that have been touched by this program. Women that have gone through this program that run businesses, we see that over time, they double their employees and they quadruple their revenues. So that's obviously a tangible metric of progress. Through this facility where we've partnered, public private sector partnership with IFC, we've had 2.8 billion dollars directed into these small businesses to allow them to advance their business model. This is a way that we can bring our resources consistently toward driving this economic growth and this is good for all of us. We continue to do it, and the results are really terrific. That IFC facility, I think we had planned originally in 2014 when we started it, to try by 2024 and ten years, to touch 100 thousand women-run small and medium sized enterprises. And I think we've touched over 175 thousand. So real progress.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
And it shows you that with the momentum, with actually having that partnership and with providing credit, it actually did better than most people expected. It just shows that it makes business sense. Minister Nirmala, I want to come back to you because you've laid out some of those initiatives that India has done and, of course, your perspective as Finance Minister in different government portfolios, but also as India holds the G20 presidency. I wanted to ask you about these initiatives, what specific initiatives you would highlight that enhance economic conditions of women, but also what we can learn from those policies.

[Nirmala Sitharaman]
Well, without taking much of your time, although I have four or five, again, examples to show, I'll specifically take the case of National Rural Livelihood Mission. That's a particular big program which is launched in India and during the pandemic, the way in which women, because they inherently wanted to serve the community, they came out in spite of the risk. We didn't have the vaccines at that time. We didn't know how all of us are going to handle COVID-19. But they came out. There were three concrete ways in which they stood out, because they called themselves women “patrakaar”. Patrakaar Didis. “Patrakaar” is a journalist or somebody who carries information. “Didi” is a sister. In a far-flung area in tribal belts, these Patrakaar Didis went around under the National Rural Livelihood Mission, these patrakaar didis went around and built awareness about what is COVID-19 and how to handle it. They were on televisions, they were on everything. But still, when the local lady walked around with information and tells you how to handle it, it actually had a resonance. And people said, “My Didi has said this, I have to obey”. You built better awareness in tribal population about COVID-19 and how to handle COVID-19. If that's one example of awareness building, there's another, which is a floating supermarket in Kerala, where women themselves went around gathering every material that people who are under lockdown would need. And they went around even in the backwaters, and sold us in the sense gave it for minimum price so that they can go back and fetch again. So, these kind of floating supermarkets have helped people in Kerala with adequate necessities that they need: medicines, raw food, cooked food, all of them reach them through these supermarkets, which are floating supermarkets. The third one is Prerna Canteens, again, run by women in Uttar Pradesh, which is one of the biggest states in the country, and made sure people didn't starve for food. These canteens gave them at absolute nominal price food which is required so much for people who are under lockdown. These are particular things which happened during the COVID-19 and subsequently, people have seen a business opportunity in that. Local communities have stood by them. Private partnership has come in. Some local companies have said, “All right, we'll join hands with you.” And they took it all further. Other than this, of course, we have now formed small self-help groups. India has had this culture of self-help groups for women and for more than now 30, 35 years, these self-help groups, if they choose to want to become farmer producer organizations who can make profit out of what they do, have all been brought in. They aggregate products, they add value to it by either processing it minimally and then selling it. These FPOs are now supported by government to become farmer producer organizations rather than remain a self-help group, women with small amounts in their hands. Now they are even supplemented by government of India to build local storing spaces in the villages. Suitable to their own climate, they can build silos, aggregate the grains of fruits or vegetables and keep them and wait for better days so that they'll have a better price for the farmers as well. I'm giving you just two examples. There are a few more I can add. But with all this facility, women have been given also access at a discounted rate, meaning the global gas prices being what they are, government of India gives them for any number of cylinders. As of today, it runs in thousands of rupees per cylinder. But we give people directly into their bank account 200 rupees per cylinder so that they're not bearing the burden of this international price fluctuations. Some examples.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Thank you. And it's great to hear those examples, especially when you speak about the COVID-19 period, because there was such pressure on economic activity to actually think of innovative ways where women can not only earn a living, but also help others. David, I want to come back to you about kind of Goldman Sachs’ goals when it's thinking about empowering women and 15 years track record now. From a company perspective, what are those goals? But also, should investors be looking at a company's gender policies when they're investing in them?

[David Solomon]
Well, I think we talked just a few minutes ago, I talked a little bit about the fact that when you think about Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs as an advisor, as a financier, as a capital allocator, we believe that if you can help people participate in economic activity around the world, the world is better and life is better for everyone. And so clearly in the context of that, when we set out a program like this, we try to rely on metrics and specific targets in what we do. It's interesting when you think about these programs, you think about 10,000 Women. The program got its name because the original goal of the program was to affect 10 thousand women who are entrepreneurs that ran small and medium sized enterprises. Now, we've way far exceeded that, but we started out with a goal to affect a certain number of women. When we look at other initiatives that we have around the world, we launched a year ago a program here in the United States called One Million Black Women where we committed 10 billion dollars of investment to improve the economic outcome of a million black women over a ten-year period in the United States and now have a program that has spun out of that called Black in Business, where we are trying to support solo entrepreneurs that are black. If you look at the creation rate of solo entrepreneur businesses in the United States, a very significant percentage of those businesses are being started by black women. They need the same thing, lending support, capital support, advice. And so, we try to set goals, we try to metric those goals, and we try to hold ourselves accountable to making progress against those things because we believe that drives economic growth and economic participation. I do think, at the end of the day, that when people look at a company like Goldman Sachs, they want to see that we're using the resources that we have to participate in the communities that we're involved in. It's a privilege for us to operate our business in the 50 countries around the world that we have offices in, and it's a privilege to serve our clients in those communities. If we don't take care of people in the communities and play a role in that, we risk losing that privilege to operate.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
David, I want to ask you about the World Bank because of course, the World Bank Group does so much, and this is one, let's say, slice of many things that you do. But how do you see it, big picture, about what the World Bank Group is doing to advance gender equality and women's economic participation.

[David R. Malpass]
In general, embedding it into the whole system, and it was really good to hear the examples that were stated. I want to pick up on David's point. The skills to operate businesses are a giant barrier and also an opportunity for women. One of the opportunities for the World Bank is in private sector and public sector partnerships that help with skilling. If we think about how to get a lot of women trained, who does it better than the private sector? So, how can we harness that and bring it in? The World Bank Group does direct training, for example, in certain sectors, such as training of women to sit on boards because as you think of where this needs to go, women need to be decision makers in bigger businesses as well. That's an area that we work on. I've got a list, and I guess I'll take Nirmala's lead to list some of them. In IDA, which is our program for the poorest, for a dozen years, gender has been a special theme within IDA. There are now eight metrics within our IDA20, the most recent one that we completed, that are based on women empowerment and gender issues, which is very powerful. One thing I'll mention is the importance of digitalization. The World Bank has major programs to expand digitalization, and there's nothing more empowering for women than digital access because it breaks through a lot of the barriers that they have been facing. We work extensively, and it's very important on violence against women and girls. This is a painful theme in some parts of the world, and the Bank has huge effort to address that directly, for example, by educating boys and men, that violence against women is wrong. It's illegal and wrong. And having that education experience is important. I'll mention one trust fund that we have, and Goldman Sachs has an executive that was an original chair of the We-Fi, the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, We-Fi. It's significant because of the amounts of money that it's put out, 2 billion dollars in the first five years for small and medium sized businesses. Part of this is financing huge volumes and expenses across the world, and in India. But for the World Bank, it's a global effort within developing countries to see more small and medium sized businesses. IFC has done some 730 thousand loans to women owned SMEs. Now, that's small compared to Minister Nirmala's Sitharaman 's initiatives, but also 20 million microfinance loans. With IFC we're trying to be as innovative as possible. There was a landmark transaction in Turkey where IFC, working with Turkey, was able to have a private sector company offer a bond that would support gender related lending within Turkey. So, as you think of the range of activities, it's broad, each of which is massively important. We try to do it inside the Bank. Over half of our employees are women, and nearly half of our management is women. That's empowering for the World Bank as well.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
And that's really important, that institutions actually practice what they preach, because then you get buy-in and you get that commitment from those you work with. Your point about digitization skills in addition to, of course, access to capital takes me to the point I wanted to ask you, David, about, which is, as we look forward. In the next five to ten years, as we look at this issue of female participation in the workforce, but also in the economy, what should leading banks be doing to get us further to the goal of actually getting better at gender parity?

[David Solomon]
Well, I think we have to continue on the journey that we are, and I think we've got to find ways to increase the capital availability, the advice and the training. David just talked about it, training. 10,000 Women is deeply rooted in the context of the fact that many people start businesses, but they don't have… There's not an educational process of thinking about some of the things that make you better at running a small business. Budgeting, planning, negotiation skills. These are all things that private sector businesses can bring to the table to help people, to help people train and develop that capital access that we talked about. I think we can also use our platforms to try. Someone on the panel made this point. We've got to bring women into bigger businesses, onto boards. We announced an initiative four years ago before the pandemic, where we basically said we would not take a business in the United States or Western Europe public unless there was at least one diverse board member —now two, we've progressed— to try to really encourage. It wasn't so much that there were a lot of public companies that weren't bringing diversity and women into their governance structures, but to really look at the whole private equity and venture capital world, which was really slow to move forward in these private companies and really allow women to participate more broadly. we all have platforms, we all have resources, we all have things that we can do to try to advance economic participation. I think we all have an obligation to try to find ways to encourage that investment in growth.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
We also now have more and more case studies and best practices that we can learn from. I think data is one of those things. To all of your points, being able to measure, to give specifics and I think that's why it is important that we hear about specific initiatives, because we can then learn from it. We have data that proves it, and then you can get more and more buy-in, but also create that momentum. Minister Nirmala, I want to turn to you also as we look to the future. India has done an incredible job in that kind of poverty, elevation and looking at opportunities for women. How do you see the future and what should we be focusing on?

[Nirmala Sitharaman]
David here was right in saying that we should continue all that we are doing now for women. I'd give you the example of skilling programs which are happening in India, wherein —I don't know what I can make out of this—. If 100 people are trained, and they are trained in such skills which are useful for employment, immediate recruitment potential, 68% of all those who have been recruited are women. It just says a lot more about how women are ready once they have the skills in their hands to get going. We have to invest in skilling women. And legislate for support is something which is very important for countries like India. For instance, we had given twelve weeks of paid maternity leave for women, but now we have enhanced it to 26 weeks. For 26 weeks, you're completely paid, you can take care of maternity duties. And then of course, we also have this thing. Now paternity leaves are also being provided, so women are given that latitude. More than that, even the acceptance in the minds of the society that women can be working three shifts, provided the safety and security of women are insured. Many of the companies which are now in the private sector which want to benefit from this skilled set of women who are willing to come out there and do it. Particularly in STEM now, I find a lot of women coming in and qualifying, but there the employability is not so good a news for me because if there are equal number of boys and girls in universities doing sciences or technology, engineering and medicine, nearly 60% of them women do not apply for jobs after that. I wonder what happens after that, and it is important to have them come back to jobs. But the recruitment patterns are now saying that with the right legislative support, having got skills, women going into jobs are far more productive, are far more part of the team and therefore companies stand to benefit. We should do this even more.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
It's great to hear you address the whole ecosystem because it is about society, it's about legislation, it's about the point that you raise about maternity leave hugely important. And that's really incredible to hear.

[Nirmala Sitharaman]
[Crosstalk] Under Prime Minister Modi.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Yeah, that’s incredible, I mean, 26 weeks is unheard of in many, many countries around the world, but also paternity leave. I remember once I was speaking to a Chilean official who said that they did introduce paternity leave but then society didn't expect the fathers to take paternity leave. Actually, it was left on the table. Even though legislation was there, companies were there. And that brings us to the point of societies. And also, I think, the theme that's come across our discussion today is that we all have a stake in it and it's great to hear a Minister of Finance talk about it, or a CEO of a leading bank, but of course also the President of the World Bank. David, that brings me back to you, because when you look at the next five to ten years for the World Bank Group to think about accelerating the progress, so we're saying, let's do more of what we're doing. How do we accelerate that progress? In developing countries particularly.

[David R. Malpass]
Keep doing and growing the same things, but do new things and innovate as quickly as possible. I'll just name three things. I know time is short and the Finance Minister is leading such a giant effort here this week as head of the G20 Finance Ministers. One is education. And education of girls is particularly important and education of girls that become finance ministers is a super high calling for the world. And so, if we could have that going on… We are facing this COVID-19 problem of backsliding on education due to the school closures. Girls in particular were the first to be left at home and the last to be brought back into the schools. And so that, I think, needs to be a high priority over the next decade. Another is this working capital problem. It's the short-term financing that's needed by women so that they can get a start. Then, third I'll mention is women's voice in leadership positions. We're pretty open about it in the World Bank Group that when women are involved in making decisions, you get better decisions that's I think demonstrable from the data, demonstrable from all of our experiences. And so, pushing that up in the levels of governments and also of companies is one of our goals. That means training, but that means also the enabling environment for women to have their voices heard loudly.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
And you said earlier in our discussion that actually, when you think about women's empowerment and women entrepreneurs, but also leadership, you think about the World Bank Group's work across all issues. Because, for example, now we're all talking about climate finance, how important it is, but actually you want to make sure that women are equally involved in that. We're not changing tracks and thinking only in that. I guess to that point, how do you ensure that the issue of women's empowerment is across all these diverse sectors?

[David R. Malpass]
In the World Bank Group, it's mainstream. So that means it's not a special department, it's a part of every department. And then I would just say the partnerships that we have, whether in India where we have a massive World Bank program that is discussed with women leaders in India, with Prime Minister Modi, who's deeply interested and concerned and pushing on this issue. And so having that dialogue… And then, with the private sector Goldman Sachs has been a great partner. As David was mentioning, 10 thousand women entrepreneurs became 100 thousand as a goal and then 100, I hear 75 thousand as an achievement, which is a huge impetus. We need to do that, scale all of those efforts across the world.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Okay, so I'm going to give you one very quick question for all three of you. I have not prepped you for this, but for those who are watching us online and those many people who are here with us joining the session. If you wanted them to go away with one thought from this session, what would it be? David, I'm going to start with you. One thought that you want them to hold on to. When we think about women entrepreneurs.

[David Solomon]
Hugely important to economic growth in the world. Half the population of the world is women. The more we can create entrepreneurial spirit around the world and have everyone participate, the more the world grows economically, the more people participate. Period.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Minister Nirmala.

[Nirmala Sitharaman]
Well, I think a lot of things are happening in different parts of the world and positively for women. So, I think all of us should go back to say, “Let me be part of this huge change, huge activity, which is going on to empower women.” Each of us should be a part of it.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Thank you. And David?

[David R. Malpass]
They each took ones I wanted to say. [Laughs] So I'll give another. It's not nearly as thoughtful as those, but digitalization. As we think of it, the world is leapfrogging in empowerment. And so, for women to be able to communicate, to have digital transactions without having to go to the bank where there might be a male clerk that doesn't really receive them well, is hugely empowering and also just the source of information that women can get on how other women are operating in other parts of the world. That's huge. And so, I think we should push that along as fast as we can.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Thank you. When I try to wrap up this particular part of our discussion and wrap up these great insights from the panel, we think first about access. So, access to credit, access to education, access to technology and those barriers, and how all the different parts of society play a part in that are hugely important. We talked about society, talked about companies, employers thinking about that, legislation and politicians. It's really not just a whole of government effort, but a whole of society effort. Some other points that were raised here is that we have best practices that we've learned from, be it the 10,000 Women, be it the vast majority of Indian legislation that's helping with that point, and financial inclusion, but also skills. Sometimes not only the skills for women, but also the skills for those who can enable women. How we make sure that that education is ongoing. Those were great insights on how we can advance women's financial inclusion. Everyone, please remain seated.

Ahead of the second panel, we will watch a video of an amazing woman entrepreneur from South Africa who received funding from business partners. Thara Singh started at her company in the 1980s as an administrative assistant. Today, thanks to her leadership skills and access to finance, she is the owner and managing director of a company in a historically male dominant sector.

[Thara Singh]
My name is Thara Singh. It has been a long road for 40 years, and I thought it's an opportune time for me now to grasp at this opportunity and take control of the business. Seven or eight years later, I am here as the Managing Director of Shenton Valve Services.

What inspired me to take the challenges was this was our life, this was our livelihood, this is all we knew. So, we thought we'd grow our passion and take it to the next level. And when the opportunity arose, we didn't think twice about it. It's a tick box with the banks. Yes. Because they don't even come and tell you, “These are the areas that you didn't fare well in.” I would love to find out what their criteria is in offering somebody a loan. What did they look for? Because in my case, I couldn't understand why it was rejected. I must admit, I was very, very disappointed. So then, I pursued a different avenue, and that's when business partners featured.

I think being a woman in a male-dominated industry can be very daunting for some. I don't think there were very many women in the engineering field because of my being exposed to the industry. I had to, as I said, I had to either swim or sink. I had to upgrade myself to such an extent where I had to be part and parcel of the business. We grew up in a family where women were not supposed to be educated, you were supposed to be married off at the age of 15 and 20. Anything after that, you got a shelf-life. But I was given the opportunity of furthering my education because I had two brothers that really empowered me, and my dad was very much into education as well. I loved empowering myself, which is what I've always done, and I still do it to date.

And we thought to empower the younger generation, we’d partner with a training agency that can help empower them, and we take on a lot of students for ourselves as well, give them hands-on training. So, when there's a job opportunity out there, they can say they have experience at Shenton Valve Services. That's just something to empower them. I think that every company should do that to empower people.

[Applauses]

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
That was a fascinating story about a woman rising from the ranks to a leadership position. There's increasing recognition of the business case for having more women at the leadership level in corporations. They're critical for innovation and growth. For example, an IFC study indicates that when private equity companies have gender balanced leadership teams, their returns can be up to 20% higher.

Still, women face numerous challenges in ascending to leadership positions, and this is precisely what the second panel will explore, who have come and joined us on stage, the business case for inclusion and expanding opportunities for women's leadership. Welcome.

[Makhtar Diop]
Thank you so much.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
We are joined by Makhtar Diop, Managing Director of the IFC, Melinda French Gates, philanthropist and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Adji Bousso Dieng, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University and founder of the nonprofit educational organization The Africa I Know. Professor Dieng is the first black computer science faculty in Princeton's history, the first tenure-track black woman faculty in Princeton's School of Engineering, and the second tenure-track black woman faculty in computer science across the Ivy League. Thank you all for joining us on this important topic.

[Melinda French Gates]
Thank you.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Melinda, I want to start with you. You and your foundation have done incredible work in advancing gender equality, and you think about leadership quite a lot, and particularly women leadership. Now, we're facing overlapping crises, and sometimes it's hard to get people to focus on women's inclusion, especially at a time when we have heightened economic woes, concerns about our planet and climate change and so forth. So, how can we better harness women's leadership power to solve the most pressing issues of the day?

[Melinda French Gates]
Well, we have 15 years of data now that don't suggest to us, the data tells us that when you invest in a woman, she invests in everyone around her. Women are economic engines and agents of change. When I think about, from the foundation's perspective, investing a dollar somewhere, if I put a dollar into a woman, making sure a woman has a leadership position, or that she has her full power, or she has digital financial inclusion, I put a dollar in. That's a scale investment. We have to have women in leadership positions at seats, at all tables. I don't care whether that's parliament, I don't care whether that's policy-making positions. Sitting at the World Bank, sitting at the International Monetary Fund. We've only had one. One of the multilateral banks have a woman as president. Less than 10% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women. And yet, when you have women at the helm, they make different decisions, they make different policy decisions, different investment decisions. Countries are looking at this, India leading the G20. They see the difference that digital financial inclusion makes. They made sure they took a gendered approach. And so, you have an equal number of men and women with digital bank accounts now. It is fueling their economy. If we care about fueling our economies, we invest in women. What does that look like? It looks like the entire life cycle. A woman's health, her education, family planning, so she can space and decide how many children she wants to have, and then her job. The two biggest barriers to women entering the workforce are harassment in the workplace. That's got to come down with good workplace policies. Childcare. Women say, “Unless I have affordable quality childcare, I can't enter the labor force.” And then we have to boost them. We have to make sure they have digital financial tools, that their businesses are capitalized, and that when they enter the workplace, they have equal pay. If we do those things with good policy, we will change the world. We got to collect the data to prove that we are making progress. But it is completely possible. If I was any institution investing a dollar… I am a part of an institution. I'm ahead of an institution. We spend money on gender because it's well spent money that makes a difference.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
The points you raise are that we've got these different levels. So, you've got the entry level, but then you've got the maintaining, which is, again, we talk about be it, childcare, be it, making sure that there are possibilities of countering any harassment in the workforce, but then getting to that leadership level and maintaining women in the workforce and getting them to the leadership level. That's all going to change in some way or the other, with all the technological advances we're having, and so, Adji, I want to come to you because one of the conversations that have been taking place this week, but also in the last few months, is how AI is really transforming our world. And there's concerns that actually AI will have certain biases that will not benefit women. But on the other hand, it could help close the gender gap. I want to ask you, how do you think AI will impact the issue of gender, but also how do we ensure that women have more access, access to STEM studies and also be in leadership positions, just like Melinda was explaining now?

[Adji Bousso Dieng]
I think AI has many issues right now, but I'm optimistic. I think the benefits outweigh the possible issues that have been outlined in the field. I think one big benefit AI can bring in terms of closing the gender gap is in making online STEM education accessible to those who don't speak English. The reason why I'm saying that is because the reality is that we find women… Some women in certain areas we’ll mostly find them at home due to certain traditions or due to lack of resources. I think one way we can bring education to them is in funding online some education. The reality is that many online education platforms right now are mainly in English or in the dominant languages like French, German, Chinese. And so, if we wanted to bring AI and STEM in general to women, we'll need to make sure that online education is accessible to this woman. I think that's already an area where AI can make a big difference, because we've made a lot of advances in translation technologies, from text-to-text or from speech-to-text or from speech-to-speech. I think that's a big opportunity to seize. The World Bank and IFC and these international organizations, I think they have the means to fund those types of endeavors. In terms of empowering women to be leaders. I think about a lot of things in terms of education, because I think it's really key. I think if we empower women, it means giving them STEM education. In my field right now, the ones who are pointing the fingers at the potential pitfalls of AI are women. Like issues pertaining to bias, issues pertaining to labor exploitation in areas such as in Kenya, or issues pertaining to the large carbon footprint of our large models. These are women bringing those issues at the forefront. If they were not in the field of AI, most likely those issues would be overlooked. I'm glad that they entered the field of AI and STEM in general. I think that's a good investment, a long term one, but a good investment.

[Melinda French Gates]
Can I just build on your point? Because I think it is so absolutely critical what Professor Dieng is saying. Look, technology is running our entire society already. Just take our mobile phones, leave AI out of it, which is now here, it's here to stay. But if women don't have a seat at the table and we don't all have a seat at the table, we're not going to create the society that we want. We're not only going to bake in bias. These tools have so much potential. But if you don't have a woman there at the seat, you won't think of all the ways it can be used on children's behalf, on women's behalf. It's absolutely critical we have women like Professor Dang in all universities across the world and hundreds and thousands of you. Otherwise, we won't have a seat at the table in terms of creating what society looks like. That's kind of what happened with the Bretton Woods Institutions. I mean, they're 80-year-old institutions and it takes a long time to make that change. So why not be the agents of change?

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
And Makhtar, that comes to you. I mean, being those agents of change and seeing what those barriers are. So, we've talked about education, we've talked about digitization and also making sure that women have a seat at the table. What are those key barriers and how do we get over them? How is the IFC addressing this specifically?

[Makhtar Diop]
Thank you very much. It's really pretentious of me to talk about women leadership when I have two leaders like this. So, what I’d say about it… I'm totally supportive of it. We need to have more women in the boardroom. When we have more leaders, we have more examples. But I want to… So, let's not forget something that you have been doing and you didn’t talk about it today, is to empower women in the village. Those are leaders and we should not be thinking about leaders as only people who are in the formal sector, in large companies. When you take women and you give them the right technology, you allow them to invest in agriculture, to increase their productivity, to empower them economically, they can change the intra-household allocation, they have a stronger voice in their household. But also, you help them grow their small business to become a medium-sized business and later on, a larger business. You are creating leadership. I think that we should not underestimate that because, fundamentally, those movements, those transformations that you will see in villages, in rural areas, in various sectors, will be the ones that will be shaping the overall social contract that we have in a society. Don't underestimate Melinda. What you are doing in bringing those technologies to those villages, in rural areas, in health. Because, for me, that's also part of creating the leadership into society. We know that a lot of African villages are, for instance, self-help groups. And people don't think about them as leaders. But there are no women more powerful than the women in the self-help groups. They are putting in their money. They have a saving mechanism. They are able to organize productive activities. They want to go to more productive activities. For me, empowering those groups, helping them to move from micro investment to becoming middle-sized companies to larger companies is part of leadership.

What can technology also do? We talked about phones. When you start having more mobile transactions, what does it do? What it does is help a woman who is trading in a fish market to be able to have accounting because she now has all the data to be able to say, “Okay, I know exactly what I spent, how much I bought it,” and so forth. So, these technologies are also very important in helping them moving forward. Why am I a big fan of STEM? Because of these two. Because… By the way, they’re both of STEM. Not only Adji but Melinda also talked about it, but she comes from the STEM world. If you think about it, the gap wage, STEM is still largely male-dominated jobs. If you bring more women in STEM, you start bringing women in the so-called denominated men jobs, and we see that the wage gap is smaller when women are entering the so called “men jobs.” The wage gap still exists but it’s smaller because these are jobs which are higher productivity. Secondly, they set an example and by the very nature of the process to which they get to these jobs, from their training, they have been able to inspire a lot of people to follow their step. I had a roundtable of CEOs last time with women and three quarter of them actually had a STEM background. I didn't know. There is something about it that we need to continue thinking about. That's why I'm a big fan of STEM education, because I think it can help changing. Lastly, it changed the bias that people can have. Part of the bias is to say that the cognitive activities of women in some areas are lower than the men, which is totally wrong. Force has no scientific basis. But that is also important in terms of changing. The representation of women themselves is very important to do. This is part of the leadership part. It's not only money, but it's also processes that leads for women to go to the right positions.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
I love the point you raise about how we think about leadership, that you can be a leader in your family, in your company, even if you're not the top person, but you're leading your team. And also, of course, leadership in society, in villages and in the boardroom. We need across the board. But all of that is also linked to society and culture, role models, our expectations. We've received questions from the audience as we've been promoting this event coming about. I want to address a couple of the questions that received.

Melinda, I'm going to give you this question. A lady by the name of Evelyn Wilbard Munis asks, how can we convince men in Africa… And she raises the point in Africa specifically, but I think this is global. “How can we convince men in Africa to stand with their women and empower them? Cultural expectations of women to be the caregivers, be it for children, be it for parents, an ailing sibling, it’s an issue globally. So how do we revolutionize caregiving? And also think about women and the impact it has on their participation in the workforce?”

[Melinda French Gates]
Okay, well, they're kind of two different questions a bit. So let me just take the first one. The first one about men and women, let's say, locally in their village, and bias. When you get a group to sit down together of men and women, and you get them… I've seen this, I've been in many places where this has happened on the ground in many villages in Africa. You get them together and you start to get them to ideate about what their goals and their dreams are for their children, their family, their community, their village. And then you start to look at who's doing what. As soon as they start to make some changes about who takes on which role. And the men start to see what the women do, and the women start to see what the men do, and they start to make the changes, and they see life getting better, it reinforces everything. I've literally talked to male groups after some of these changes are made and say, “Well, why are you taking on some of the tasks that maybe your wife took before?” And they said, “Because our home is happier, our children are able to go to school. I feel good about how my house looks.” And they're proud of the change. So sometimes we just have to be open to the change. And then, the second question was childcare. Childcare is the number one thing keeping women out of the workforce. COVID-19 showed us. I mean, we saw that these gaps that existed in society, we expect women to take care of the children. Some of its work, they want to do. It's very loving, it's very warm. Some of it is very task-oriented. And women will tell you, I want to also work in the labor force. Unless we really set good policy, which is now happening, for instance, at the World Bank, for every 1 dollar of IDA, you can leverage it with this childcare fund. If there are safe, affordable places for parents to put their children, women enter the workforce. If you ask, a survey was done recently in both Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, of the top three issues men and women listed, childcare was on the top three list in all three countries. Because they know that if their children have safe, affordable child care, the woman can work and they can both enter the workforce and the family is then wealthier, kids get educated and the family starts to lift themselves out of poverty, which ultimately adds to their global GDP.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
The point about also what we learned during COVID-19 is hybrid working, and how it can help because it could be something as simple as being able to pick up your kids from school. And so, having that flexibility is important and that also puts the onus on organizations to appreciate that and see that ultimately, they can benefit from that. Makhtar, Evelyn also asks, “How do we empower women when cultural norms make it difficult?” Melinda spoke about that kind of role playing but also thinking about what can I take on more? She asks, “How do we ensure societies support women holding positions of leadership if that's not what's expected of them culturally?”

[Makhtar Diop]
When you talk about culture, I'm always asking myself which culture? We see things in a very static way and sometimes, unfortunately, it's not evolving in the right direction. People could go back behind even in advanced countries where there were some rights of women which have been threatened, erased, while we thought that it was something of 60s the was addressed. This process is not, I think localized in one part of the world. I think that we are, unfortunately, facing, in a lot of places at the same time in the same country, in the same nation, progress on one side, another side. We are seeing things which are very puzzling actually. But also, we have some preconceived ideas. Which is a country with the highest percentage of women in parliament?

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Well, it depends.

[Makhtar Diop]
No, just say it aloud.

[Melinda French Gates]
Rwanda, I think.

[Makhtar Diop]
Exactly, Rwanda. So, we will think about it and if you compare it to a lot of OECD countries, they are far ahead of them in term of your participation in the thing. I think that what I want to do is that I would just want to bring nuances on this conversation and show the dynamics, and it takes leadership, just take leadership on some of these representation in force. Some countries have started demanding that half of the electoral MPs lists are made up of women. I’ve even seen a country canceling a list because of that. So, this is something that needs to happen, but that is not sufficient. That is not sufficient. I think that economic empowerment is a big part of the story. When you are in the household, all the income is not earned by the man, but it goes through the hand of the man who decides on the allocation of it. He can make the decision which is not in favor of women. He makes a decision in favor of him. The second point you made, which was very important, is the demonstration effect on the collective actions around these issues. When you go in a village and you see people, you see your neighbor start changing his behavior and you see the positive impact it has on the household, there is a modeling effect that needs to be. Lastly, don't underestimate the role that men can play in that. It's very important. I don't think that the issue of gender should be discussed only by women. I like when you see that the discussion has many men as women in the room. There was a study, you might have seen that one in Uganda where they were trying to do vocational training and look at houses. They started realizing that, in fact, the weight gap between women and men in Uganda was narrowing when women were becoming mechanics, and electricians, but not hairdressers. That's right. But the second conversation was even more troubling. In fact, the women teachers were reinforcing the bias and pushing women to go to traditional women jobs. When they had a good man mentor who would encourage them to move to those [other jobs], it was having that effect. what I want to say is that it's a different dynamic that we need to work and there is not one silver bullet that we have but a lot of action and personal commitment [are needed].

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
I love your nuanced take on what we see as cultural norms. I'm based in the UAE and there actually there are more women in STEM education and universities than men. most people would not expect that in an Arab Gulf country. And again, it's creating a whole different dynamic. You're right that we should think about the specifics and how the changes are relevant to that particular society or grouping. Adji, I want to come to you. We have another question from Sabita Kyola Puddya, forgive me for the name. She asks, “How can women entrepreneurs in remote areas grow their businesses?”

[Adji Bousso Dieng]
That question, she’s on a lot of things. I think depending on the business. You may want to put your business online. For example, I see a lot of young girls right now in Senegal coming out of school and not having any other opportunities, start their businesses online. They are on Instagram, selling clothes and things like that. That's a way, they are finding their way. Another aspect is that if you are in a rural area and you are, for example, making clothes, —that's another example because there's a lot of women in that business in Senegal— then the minute the electricity goes down, your business is shut down because you cannot do anything. And so, I think there's a need for funding the basics which we take for granted in the west, for example. But just something as basic as funding electricity access. Funding internet access can go a long way.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
It's a really good point, that sometimes we take things for granted. As we were talking about female education, I was thinking about Afghanistan, where women now have been banned from education. We just take it for granted that there's now a country in this planet that bans women from not only working, but having education or electricity. There are areas of the world. But I want to pick up on your point about young girls going on Instagram, being able to start their own businesses. How can public and private sectors work more to enable this kind of digital technology, enabling women in remote areas? What should they be doing?

[Adji Bousso Dieng]
I think from the public sector, it will be funding. I think money is something that a lot of people lack. There are many economic barriers for different areas, whether it's non-profit business or whether it's schools. I think there's just more economic access would be better.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Economic access being key. Okay, so now I'm going to ask you each the same question, and I want brief answers so we can do a couple of these. I've now closed the audience questions, and these are my own. So, Adji, I want to turn to you. What are you going to focus next, as you try to accelerate progress, to make our world more equal?

[Adji Bousso Dieng]
That's a great question and something that I think about often. When I think about equality, inequality, I first think about the state of Africa compared to the rest of the world. I think it doesn't make sense that we have the largest source of natural resources in the world and we are still underdeveloped. To me, a more equal world is a world where the continent of Africa is a developed continent. So, the question becomes, what would it take for a continent with so much resources to become developed? I think in answering that question, I have a hypothesis. I think we have a lot of natural resources, but we don't have means to transform those natural resources into finished products that we will export at a price that we will determine or for local consumption. I think what's missing, the reason why we cannot transform our own local resources is because we don't have the skills right now for transforming those local resources. And what are those skills? Those skills are skills pertaining to science, engineering, and technology. And so, when we talk about funding for a more equal world, I think about funding STEM education in Africa, especially for girls in Africa, because the STEM gender gap is actually very big. I work on trying to put my contribution to that problem through The Africa I Know. I think that work actually starts with inspiring young Africans, young girls, that they can enter these fields and that they can have successful careers in these fields. A lot of what we do is in showcasing women and Africans who have successful careers in STEM. So, there's that visibility component that's very important because if you don't see yourself in certain positions, if you don't see yourself achieving certain things, somebody who looks like you achieving certain things, you immediately unconsciously think that that's not an option for you. Whereas if you see a person and that person, the more you share, the more you identify yourself in being able to achieve that, in being able to occupy those positions. There's actually a lot of work that should be going on in terms of giving more visibility to underrepresented people. And for me, those people are women in STEM, more specifically African women in STEM. And so that's a lot of the things we do right now at the Africa I know and in participating in making our world more equal. I also believe in research a lot, in the power of scientific research. So. in my lab at Princeton, we work on accelerating engineering and the sciences using AI. I'm hoping for that work to be potentially impactful in several areas, including in resource transformation, which is something that we need a lot in Africa, but also in climate and healthcare, which are issues that touch all of us.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Yeah.

[Applause]

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
I was going to say, Makhtar, I'm really sorry, you're going to have to go after Adji and tell us how you're going to… [Laughs] How you're going to help the program. [Crosstalk] Try to beat that. But what are you going to focus next when we think about accelerating progress for women's leadership?

[Makhtar Diop]
Number one, economic empowerment. And it's my field, what I'm doing right now, I think that is very important. That the way we're looking at large companies. A large number of economic activities for women are in sectors which are not well-structured or not well-informed sector and so forth. Therefore, you should have the same level of risk appetite when you look at this business as you're looking at other businesses, you will never be able to make that difference. So, I've differentiated risk appetite when you look at some type of companies, and particularly women in the lower tier. Secondly, education. Obviously, I will not repeat what everybody said about education, but also education specifically in the business area. When we help women, small-scale women, to be able to access accounting skills, managerial skills and so forth, it makes a huge difference. And there are a lot of work that J-PAL and all these colleagues have been showing. The third one is for me to really break this divide between male-dominated jobs and not male-dominated jobs because the externality is out in the society and is massive. Not only is good economically, but also it changed totally the perception that people are basing their bias on. And I think that is something that we can do in our thing. Obviously, we continue working with the CEOs and the representation is aboard and so forth, but these are the three areas that we are not doing as much as I would like. Now, to make sure that we all work together, I will, after backstage talk to Melinda and Adji on what we can do together to push his agenda.

[Applause]

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
So, Melinda, of course you work on these issues in a variety of ways, but how do you plan to accelerate progress on equality?

[Melinda French Gates]
I think we have to stop talking about empowering women, and helping women just take their power. We are sending women out into society today that wasn't created by them. When you have female leaders at the table, they make different policies, they make different decisions. Once you do that, women can step into their full power. We have to make sure money gets in the hands of women. I mean, money is power, right? It changes everything, just as we said, it changes in their home. [Applauses] Yeah. It changes, women will tell you, it changes how their son sees them, how their mother-in-law sees them, how their husband sees them, because they're then economic agents in the house and in their community and in society. I grew up in a house where my mom always said to me, “Set your own agenda or someone else will.” The agenda now is women's power.

[Applauses]

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
So, I love that. “Set your own agenda.” Because it's true if you can set your agenda and you are not being empowered, but you're actually given the chance to take the power you deserve. Okay, so this is going to be last round of questions. Adji, I want to ask you, what piece of advice would you give to CEOs on enabling more women in leadership positions?

[Adji Bousso Dieng]
One piece of advice that I would give to CEOs in getting more women in leadership positions is for CEOs to get more women in leadership positions… [Laughs] because there are many competent women out there. I don't think it's hard for any given position to find a qualified woman because we are a very talented group of individuals. Thank you.

[Applauses]

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
Thank you. Melinda, your advice to CEOs. Perhaps a CEO believes in the idea of making sure that there are more women leaders in their organization, but they're not sure how to go about it. What would be your advice?

[Melinda French Gates]
Well, a CEO runs a company, and so if you want to get something done, you just decide you're going to do it. You say, “This is our goal. We are going to have women in every level and we're going to have them in the same level as men.” Then you basically get the transparency and you get the data and you put it in every manager's performance review. You will hire an equal number of women as men. And if you say you have a three-year period to do it, and you measure them at the end of the three-year period and you incentivize them in their performance and their bonuses based on it, it will happen. I've seen companies literally do it. And so, the other thing I would say to CEOs is, make sure you have a board that has far more than one woman on it. One woman on a board does not change anything. You've got to have a group of women on the board if you want to make change. And that, to me, is just fundamental for every corporation. And guess what? You're going to get better returns. And the company is a place where you'll be more creative.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
So, do you believe in quotas?

[Melinda French Gates]
I think sometimes you need a quota for a certain amount of time. I mean, the example Makhtar gave about Rwanda, where they have more female parliamentarians than anywhere in any other country in the world, it's because there was a quota set for a time. They not only achieved it, they well now exceeded it. Who's the head of the Kigali Bank now? It's a woman. It's because society is completely changing by women and men seeing women in positions of power. So, yes, I think sometimes you need them for a time. Absolutely.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
It's really interesting because quotas are one of those topics that often divide opinion. But you're right, if you put a time frame to do it. Makhtar, do you believe in quotas? I'm going off script. This is not the last question. I'm going to make you guys answer the quota because I have a personal question. [Crosstalk]

[Makhtar Diop]
You want me to get in trouble. Or should I [Crosstalk]? No, let me come back to that. But I just wanted to say something about leaders. I think to be less blind. To be less blind. It's amazing. Sometimes people can say, “I don't see any woman who can take this role. I cannot see any black who can take this role. I cannot see any Asian who can do this job.” These people are lining up in front of you. And I can tell you from my own experience. At some point, I was leading a department at the Bank and I was not happy with the gender balance. And people say, “We cannot find our women directors.” So that year we promoted four women to directors. All of them are doing extremely well in the Institution. So, these women were sitting there and nobody was seeing them. And that's where bias is, it’s that you are invisible to the people who have this bias. So, the advice, which is not… Because you operationalize the advice or no, is not be blind. And for that, just remove your biases. That's it, number one. Now, quota, you need to have targets. If you don't have targets, you don't have things done. That's what it is. You call it quota, you call it KPI, you could name it whatever you want. Some people want to try to ideologize the discussion by quoting quota and getting certain discussions that none of us here is interested in getting into. But the reality is that you don't have KPIs, you have nothing done because you cannot measure it. So, call it quota, KPIs, target, whatever you want. At the end of the day, you need to have numbers and you need to set it.

[Mina Al-Oraibi]
And that's really important, that theme of being able to measure. So being able to measure the success stories, but also being able to measure how women fare in a particular workplace, but also young people, I mean, sometimes young women have to deal with both ageism and sexism at the same time. Being able to measure how they're faring and the education that they have.

There are so many points to wrap up from our discussion here. But really, inclusion, inclusion for women at the entry level and then making sure that they come to the senior levels, the importance of legislation when it comes to issues of childcare, making sure that people have equal access to education, technology, democratization of access to digital innovation and technology. That's hugely important. And I think we heard about how each in our own different fields, we can have that impact. So, I think that is one of the main takeaways from our panel here, which I want to thank you for.

I hope you've enjoyed hearing from all of our distinguished guests. I want to thank you for joining us. As we wrap up this particular panel on female leadership, I want to say it's great to have leaders who have taken time out from a very busy week here at the World Bank to talk about this particular issue, because that's the other point of having role models. And so, that visibility is really important while being gender-blind, you also need the visibility, which is what you've given us. Thank you very much for joining us. I want to, yes, give opportunities for a round of applause.

[Applauses]

And thank you all for being here and joining us in the atrium. Thank you for those who have tuned in online. I leave you with another inspiring story of a woman entrepreneur from Brazil who started an ecofriendly feminine products company on a shoestring budget. She later received funding from Itaú Bank, a financial institution participating in the Women Entrepreneurs Opportunity Facility launched by Goldman Sachs and IFC dedicated to promoting access to finance for women entrepreneurs globally. So, enjoy the story and thank you again for being with us.

[Applauses]

Júlia Cerqueira Morais
[Speaking in foreign language]

[Music]