PASLA: Fearless Girl campaign continues to grow 07 March 2019Sydney Reporter: Maddie Saghir
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Participants on a ‘Women in Finance’ panel at the PASLA/RMA conference discussed the growth of the Fearless Girl campaign, which has resulted 301 boards add a female director.
The Fearless Girl campaign has ignited a global conversation about the power of women in leadership and inspired companies around the world to add women to their boards, according to State Street.
The panel’s discussions on the campaign follow the recent unveiling of the Fearless Girl campaign, which was recently brought to London with a new statue in Paternoster Square, against the backdrop of St Paul’s Cathedral.
One panellist said that further results of the campaign have found 28 commitments to add female directors as well as 15 trillion total shareholders assets backing board diversity.
It was noted that the campaign aims to improve gender diversity at the senior leadership level and so they focused on working with 1,227 companies without a single woman director on their boards.
The speaker from State Street explained that they called on companies from their portfolio to increase the number of women across the boards.
The panel also discussed flexible working, and one audience member asked the panel: “In regards to flexible working, a large US bank recently announced that they are going to be banning home working, do you feel that is taking a step backwards for male and female?”
In response, one panellist said: “Yahoo did that around five to six years ago but it’s always about metrics.”
“There is a perception that when you work from home that you don’t work and don’t put in the full hours of work. And so Yahoo tracked people’s logging, which made that environment very uncomfortable.”
Another panellist added: “The challenge is that we don’t feel we are getting value for money when employees work from home. In my experience, most people work harder from home and are less distracted but it’s always about metrics and striking a balance.”
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