| |
PRESS RELEASE
Monday Nov 15th 5.30pm, National College of Ireland, IFSC, Dublin 1
Meet the Decision-makers!
Launch of Talent Bank Directory
The chief executive officer of O2, the head of corporate affairs at Dell, Intel Ireland’s strategic development manager, the head of the Forensic Science Laboratory, the technical manager for the ESB networks, the chairperson of the Small Firms Association, UCD’s vice-president of innovation and corporate partnership, the director of innovation at Forfás, and NUI Galway’s head of microbiology .... just some of the people in the new Talent Bank directory who are putting their names forward to be more involved in policy and decision making in Ireland. And, as it happens, they’re all women.
The Talent Bank directory contains profiles of over 150 women, compiled following a nationwide trawl over the past 18 months. The aim is to dramatically increase the number of women appointed to boards in the scientific, technological and industrial arena, and overcome what some see as ‘institutionalised sexism’. The project was funded by the Department of Justice, Equality & Law Reform, under the National Development Plan’s Equality for Women Measure. Many of the women are already well-known high-fliers, keen to continue playing their part in policy making, others are fresh faces, who can bring new talent and ideas to Ireland’s boardroom tables.
Copies of the directory are being sent to government ministers, regional and local authorities, third-level colleges, and organisations such as IBEC, IFA and the trade unions. A CD-ROM version is also being circulated.
The group behind the scheme, WITS (Women in Technology and Science) says that on average only 27% of those appointed to State scientific and industrial boards are women (see table below). Worse, it has been like this since 1997. And that’s despite an official minimum target of 40%, set by the government in 1991. Some State agencies, such as the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and the Dublin Transportation Office, still have no women on their board.
WITS spokesperson, Dr Eucharia Meehan, said: “At this rate we’ll never reach equality. If Brian Kerr were to select the Irish soccer team and only look at half the available talent, there’d be uproar. And if this were Northern Ireland, and we were looking at boards with only 25% nationalists, there’d be an outcry. But somehow, when it comes to women, this situation is tolerated.”
Project manager Elizabeth Creed says that “people now realise that, for democracy and gender equity reasons, more women need to be involved in decision making. The question is how to achieve that.”
Significantly, she believes that the climate may now be changing in favour of women. “When WITS published a first version of this directory in 1998 it was under utilised. But this year already we have had several requests for the new directory, even before it was ready. Hopefully, we are now seeing a change in attitudes, even if that is driven by a fear of quotas.”
WITS would prefer if there were no need for quotas or legislation, but believes there does need to be monitoring of appointments at all levels. “The appointment process must be more transparent, and information about appointments should be readily available”, says Creed.
“The government now needs to follow through on the commitment it made to the UN in 2002, to ensure women’s equal access to and full participation in power structure and decision-making,” she adds.
Or maybe we need to learn from Norway: even privately owned companies in Norway will have to appoint at least 40% women to their boards from next year. Among those speaking at the launch of the Talent Bank was the Norwegian Ambassador to Ireland, His Excellency, Truls Hanevold. (For more on the Norwegian initiative, contact the Royal Norwegian Embassy.)
Involving more women also makes good business sense. A report earlier this year on ‘Women and Corporate Governance in Ireland’, commissioned by the Irish chapter of the International Women’s Forum, found that the top performing companies here and abroad consistently have twice as many women directors as those at the bottom of the league table.
Talent Bank members include Ms Dee Carri, founder and director of Torque Management Ltd and a former vice-president of Elan Corporation, who believes that women should be full participants and recognised as equals with their male counterparts. The current poor representation of women in policy making and executive roles, in both the public and private sectors, is not a good reflection on the organisations that fill these positions, she said. In an international context, this situation is damaging to Ireland's reputation as a country of equal opportunity.
"The new Talent Bank will be the first step to changing things, and what we really need next is to have a process in place so that the women in the Talent Bank are considered. Ideally, the Department of Justice should follow through, and ensure that women are actively promoted for any vacancies that arise in the public sector."
The directory has been welcomed by senior members of the scientific and innovation community.
Speaking at the launch on Monday, Martin Cronin, CEO of Forfás said that Ireland has made good progress in attracting world-class academic researchers, but in striving to earn recognition as a location for academic excellence, Ireland must recognise the role of diversity, particularly gender diversity.
“There is a challenge for Ireland to promote gender diversity in Irish enterprise and to ensure that women are represented at all levels of an organisation. Irish companies should be encouraged to develop gender awareness and advocate gender diversity to underpin their future competitiveness”, he said. Adding, “increased participation of women in SET must be seen as an economic issue, and not solely a gender issue”.
This is echoed by Eoin O’Driscoll, chairperson of the Enterprise Strategy Group, and newly appointed chair of Forfás, who also welcomed the directory. “This is the kind of new thinking that will be critical to Ireland’s continuing economic and technological success. But we have to ensure that this directory is used, and that these women are given a seat at the boardroom table.”
Dr Barry Mc Sweeney, Chief Science Adviser to the Government, said that policy making for Ireland’s science and technology and R&D efforts must be inclusive. “We rightly worry about not attracting more girls into science subjects at school, but part of the problem is that some corners of science are still men-only areas. That has to change, and this directory should help to blow away some of the cobwebs.”
Asked, why are the women not there already, project manager Ms Creed suggests one reason is because most of the nominating bodies are chaired by and dominated by men (see Table below). “They tend to appoint people they know, and those people are usually other men. One simple measure that would really help change things would be to appoint more women chairpersons.”
Time commitment is another recurrent issue, especially for women with other responsibilities such as child care or elder care. “For women to take on 40% of the decision making men have to take on 40% of the juggling! And that means a cultural change in the workplace: it must become acceptable for men to prioritise family responsibilities occasionally. Who avails of the family friendly policies in the public sector? Predominately women. And of course the private sector needs some coaxing in providing these.”
Prof Joyce O’Connor, director of the National College of Ireland, and one of the few women to head up a third-level institution in Ireland, was host to the launch. “This initiative is a marvellous showcase of the talent and expertise of Irish women working in the fields of technology and science. All women listed in this comprehensive directory show both professional achievement and personal excellence", she said, adding "I am delighted that National College of Ireland is associated with the WITS Talent Bank programme.”
For further information, contact:
Lisa Hines, Grayling PR Tel: 01 669 4900
WITS Talent Bank project manager, Elizabeth Creed
WITS spokesperson Dr Eucharia Meehan
The Royal Norwegian Embassy, Dublin, 662 1800, E-mail:emb.dublin@mfa.no
Equality for Women Measure, www.ewm.ie
Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, www.justice.ie
|
|
|
|