Our second keynote for the day is Anita Stemmet, Director/Partner in Assurance at PricewaterhouseCoopers. She is addressing the subject of International Lessons for the Advancement of Women in the Workplace. It is a great pleasure to see her again - she is truly a champion for advancing women in the workplace. This is again just key points from her discussion).

PricewaterhouseCoopers has a number of interesting initiatives around gender development. They have a Global Gender Advisory Council that is providing fabulous insights, also their "Gender Agenda Blog".

Her initial point addresses how we inform ourselves. It is critical that we stay informed. There is a wealth of resources out there related to women in leadership and the workplace.

In 2008, PWC produced a document titled PWC,The leaking pipeline: Where are our female leaders? 79 women share their stories."

The concerns that arise are:

- even with the presence of gender programmes - advancement in leadership ranks slow

- Motherhood is happening later in life (people are putting off motherhood).

- Their is a disturbing lack of maternity "returns"

- Perceptions and assumptions of "what women want"

- Defined attributes for leadership roles have not changed.... (organisational cultural issues)

Some of the possibilities (positives) are:

- More awareness in the market

- Opportunities created

- Little evidence of (overt) discrimination

- Male Champions for women's advancement

- Some improvement in numbers

- Best practices impact wider than gender (I really like this one - because it is a reality of what we experience in our clients - that the practices we are applyin in female leadership development is invaluable across the talent spectrum).

Other questions and findings:

- The problem does not fix itself - you need to be intentional about the advancement of women in the workplace

- Does everybody(-man) get it?

- Even if it is a strategic priority (the recession can negatively impact the programmes designed for the advancement) we have to get past this. We are not building a future for next month.

- "Mini-me" syndrome - a real lesson learnt - is look around you and realise we unconsciously pick up people like us - the challenge needs to be made that we agree to bring people different from us - diversity and strength of teams.

In Summary:

a) Gender advancement has to be a business issue.

b) It is a fabulous ground to establish New Working Practices - across the talent spectrum

c) Networks and Gender Programmes are a best practice (include men as you can)

d) Leadership training and mentorship (we need to differentiate between mentors and sponsors). Not teaching women to be like men (and woman on inside). It is critical to allow the uniqueness of women.

e) Transparency

International Trends

a) Targets are becoming acceptable

b) Focus on talent

c) Mentorship and reverse mentorship

d) Redefining leadership attributes

- authentic leadership vs x/y generation leadership

e) Statistical flow-data modelling and projections

f) Addressing bias/stereotyping and effecting cultural change

g) Measurement

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