Women have the capabilities, attitude, and sensitivity to help the successful transition to the New World and they should be part of the global leadership fairly, Sasha Bezuhanova, founder of MOVE.BG and the Bulgarian Center of Women in Technology (BCWT), has said in a special webinar. Women should play a key role and help humankind in the painful contradiction between the status quo - the established social and business constructs from the past - and the new global paradigm of collaboration, sharing, and co-creation, Ms. Bezuhanova added during the event, which took place on Thursday. The webinar, called “Preparing for an Automated Future: Key Considerations for Attracting and Strengthening the Talent of Women at Work,” was co-organized by WE EMPOWER - G7 program of the UN Women, the European Union, and the International Labour Organization.
Ms. Bezuhanova, who is a Governing Board Member of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and founder of Bulgarian digital economy and startup network EDIT, was one of the three panelists. Ariane Hegewisch, program director “Employment and Earnings” at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and Nicole Isaac, senior director, North America Policy at LinkedIn, also made their interventions in the pannel.
“Women should play a key role in leading the transition to this New World because it is in women’s nature to give birth and to grow for a new life. Moreover, it is in the women’s nature to address the challenges and opportunities with inclusiveness,” Ms. Bezuhanova said.
“There is a need for more feminine attitude in the leadership in this time of transition in order to arrive at a new equilibrium in the world.”
The Current World and the Women
Women’s active involvement in the societal process and women’s human rights have been part of the world’s agenda in recent years, the MOVE.BG’s founder explained. Some of the campaigns like movements against home violence, actions against existing practices such as child marriages and female mutilation, or supporting women voting rights have achieved quite some success already.
“However, we should notice that in all those important initiatives woman is positioned as a victim and in some way, such a motivational perspective continues to feed the division between men and women in the society. The rational should be different. We need an environment where the women and man talent and ideas can be expressed with no limitations and free of prejudices. That is the dialogue and the culture in society that we need to drive,” Ms. Bezuhanova explained during the UN-EU webinar.
The topic of women’s professional participation and women’s rights became one of the leading themes for the world leaders in the digital era and the main reason for this is an economic, the BCWT’s founder noted. Only in Europe today there is a lack of 700 000 digital skillful specialists, she added.
“We are living in a digitally connected world and every business is digitally empowered today. The leadership needs to be digitally conscious for it to be able to drive the corporations as per the standards of tomorrow's world,” Ms. Bezuhanova explained.
“The world needs more digital professionals that are qualified to create solutions for the future.
Stimulating the women’s engagement in this labeled as a man professional field will unlock big potential in a faster way.”
Another economic factor is the need for closing the digital gap and equipping the citizens of tomorrow with the right skills, the MOVE.BG’s founder added. Moreover, it is proven by the practice that the balanced teams and balanced leadership teams are more effective.
The New World and the Women
However, there is another less realized driver and need for active women engagement in leadership in the societal and economic process in this particular moment, Ms. Bezuhanova said.
“The women stand for change via their femininity. We live in a time of a fundamental transition because of the global digital connectivity, democratization of the access to the information, and the lost balance between humans and nature. Noting from the old systems that are ruling the world today seems to work anymore and we are in a transition from a competitive win-lose approach to collaboration, sharing, and co-creation.”
The emerging New World is manifested by different global trends, Ms. Bezuhanova noted:
- Establishment of collaborative platforms for business solutions: competitors make gains because they are together and the customers participate actively in the development of the products via loyalty systems;
- The democratization of access to knowledge: all world leading academic institutions published their curricula to be made available to the public. The EU will open all scientific research made in the final years of the current scientific program Horizon 2020;
- The engagement in climate change actions: more and more people take part in various projects for limiting the negative effects of human activities on nature. Moreover, crowdsourcing platforms aim to help underprivileged people meet the climate crisis effects.
In those processes, a more feminine attitude in leadership is needed, the MOVE.BG’s founder said, because the women can:
- build bridges, which are very important in a time of radical transformation;
- bring inclusiveness in a dynamically changing environment;
- impact orientation in times with limited horizons.
However, women continue to be treated unfairly and to be underrepresented in global leadership positions. They are paid 23% less than men and the female presentation in the management boards across the EU is 23.9%, Ms. Bezuhanova said. Moreover, women lead only 11 of 195 countries worldwide.
The solutions
Ms. Bezuhanova outlined several measures that will increase women involvement in society and business.
- Promoting a culture of balanced teams because man and women talent and approach are complimenting each other;
- Creating an environment for active engagement of women in digitally empowered businesses;
- Put a special focus on the women that are after their 30s: companies and governments should allocate budgets to prepare their women for the challenges of the automated future;
- Implementing quotas for board membership of women as temporary measure: in 2016 Germany introduced a 30 percent minimum quota of women on the boards of big listed companies. Same measures are implemented in Norway, Spain, Austria, France, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands.;
- Stimulating shared family responsibilities culture in society;
- Introducing gender neutral-education for children;
- Promoting positive examples to overcome stereotypes.
The good example
Today, 31% of the professionals in the ICT sector in Bulgaria are women compared to 16% European average, Ms. Bezuhanova said. The computer industry has deep roots in the Bulgarian economy. Moreover, many female role models encourage the next generation of women to choose a career in the ICT industry.
“Bulgaria is leading the European statistics but still there is an effort needed to encourage more women to develop professionally in the digital economy,” the founder of BCWT explained.
The Bulgarian Center of Women in Technology has several major initiatives:
- SHEleader@digital: an international conference that aims to promote the participation of women in leadership and professional roles in the technology industry, to outline the growing role of women in the socio-economic development of the world and show the face and style of the new generation of female entrepreneurs in the digitally-based economy;
- She is me: an evening format, which address the challenges of the time we live in. It aims to create an environment in which, through the example of successful ladies, it encourages those who do not believe they can achieve success;
- Enterpregirl: a competition that backs young female entrepreneurs in the ages between 16 and 25.
SHEleader@digital 2019 was part of the program of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
“We need an environment where the women and man talent and ideas can be expressed with no limitations and free of prejudices. That is the dialogue and the culture in the society that we need to drive,” Ms. Bezuhanova.
In March 2020, BCWT in a partnership with MOVE.BG will organize the second edition of SHEleader@digital. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and stay tuned with the latest news about the upcoming conference.
