BONUS | International Women's Day

International Women's Day: https://www.internationalwomensday.com/

IMA's Website: https://www.imanet.org/

Contact the Speakers:

• Hanadi Khalife - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanady-khalife-78ba5610/
• Doreen Remmen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/doreen-remmen-55173812/
• Alain Mulder - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alainmulder/
• Nina Michels-Kim - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ninamichelskim/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)
Welcome back to Count Me In and Happy International Woman's Day. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and in this special episode, my co-host Rouba Zeidan, sits down with a few of IMA's leaders to discuss what it means to operate, manage, and breed an inclusive culture. Keep listening to hear from Hanadi Khalifa, Senior Director of Middle East and India Operations at IMA, Doreen Remmen, CFO of IMA, Alain Mulder IMA's Europe Regional Director, and Nina Michel's Kim IMA's Director of Partnerships for Japan and Korea, as they all share their perspectives on social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women and the value of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.

Rouba: (00:46)
Good morning, good evening, and good afternoon to all of you. Thank you for joining me and Happy International Women's Day! We're going to kick this off with Nina and Hanadi. So this day was created to celebrate social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, and it encourages women around the world to choose to challenge. I mean, the theme for this year, because as I quote “A challenge world is an alert one.” So this initiative was also created to accelerate women equality around the globe, and when you contrast that with the world economic forums prediction, that it will take some 250 years before we can achieve true equality. What are some of the major problem areas that you believe need to be challenged? Both when we talk about community elements and corporate world elements, and how are you personally contributing towards that on an individual scale and maybe even on a corporate scale.

Nina: (01:52)
So, you know, I believe that in order to achieve true sustainable gender equality, society and companies have to change their mindset. It's not the quantity of hours at work that make an employee productive and also support working parents equally make it normal that men equally share household tasks and childcare. And I think society and the workplace prevent people from exercising their rights for these parental benefits. For example, you know, I kind of represent Asia Pacific and in Japan, new fathers are entitled to a relatively generous paternity leave, but less than 8% of Japanese male employees take it. As opposed to a more egalitarian country like Finland, where over 80% of the men take paternity leave. And, you know, the reluctance of Japanese men that could be for a number of reasons, perhaps it's not encouraged by the company, or they might be judged that they're a slacker and we need to change the stigma associated with that and make it mandatory thatmen also take paternity leave. And in fact, that's a new plan that the Japan's labor ministry is actually thinking of to make it mandatory, for men to take paternity leave, and it it's to counter Japan's declining birth rate, which is a huge problem in Asia, because women don't want to have children anymore since it impacts their career. And, you know, as an individual, all individuals must have the courage to exercise their rights and stand up so others can follow. And, you know, as an individual in my former company, I was sort of a trailblazer and paved the way for other women to woman to, you know, discuss remote working and part-time working. But, you know, granted that was over 15 years ago, but that former company, they did not allow any, remote work or part-time work, and, you know, they were very supportive of promoting women, but only as long as they were single or childless or, you know, dincs, dual income, no children. So I think I was one of the first women managers to say that I was pregnant, and I really felt guilty to do so. To announce my pregnancy, which, you know, should be a joyous occasion, and especially, you know, it was coming after two miscarriages, miscarriages that I kind of, embarrassingly did not say to my employees of my employers, and I found out later that many women in that, that company had miscarriages. we were working long hours and on paper, the company even had, less than, required working hours, but nobody took that. I mean, especially nobody who were a high potential person climbing the corporate ladder. So, you know, when I did announce my pregnancy to the company, I told them things like, Hey, don't worry. You will never even think that I had children. I'll be back full time. I'd be here until the very last minute, and then I will take the bare minimum of maternity leave and I'll will be back to take off where I left off. And, you know, and I actually even did that for my first born. I enrolled him full time in the daycare center. I had babysitters to take him after it was closed and or whenever I was traveling because, you know, I didn't have extended family nearby to help, but, you know, I slowly came to realize how flat I was in my head thinking and it wasn't sustainable. You know, when he was about 18 months, he started acting up at the daycare center, you know, I kind of broke down and I went to my boss and, you know, I finally said, you know, that's it I'm leaving unless the company allows me to work part-time or work remotely and you know, the company finally relented, you know, and that action is so interesting because after that a whole lot of managers became pregnant or they were able to say, I had a miscarriage to Nina, all these kind of things and, you know, and it became okay to work like part-time, at least 80% or work Fridays at home. And, you know, so kind of, I take comfort that I finally became brave and ask for support from the company and it kind of benefited former companies, former colleagues of mine in that company.

Rouba: (06:26)
No, but you're right, by the way, bravery has a big role to play in this one, to dare, to ask for more or for support Hanadi, how's that been for you?

Hanadi: (06:36)
Well, I think Nina touched on, on a very important point, which is the change in mindset. And I think both men and women need, need to change that, and man has to realize that actually gender equality is beneficial and it's, in their interest as much as it is in our, interests. And of course the bravery for women, they have to proactively ask for their right. But I also want to add, three more, even actually four, more challenges, that we are facing saying, maybe these apply most to upward in the Middle East,. For example, education. Although we've done tremendous, effort and improvement in education, there are still 130 million girls who are, who don't have access to schooling, and there are 12 million who are married, that are under the age of 18 every single year. Of course also the gender gap. I don't want to talk extensively about that. I know we're all aware of the gender pay gap. Although we've seen that women now are more qualified, or if I may say, as qualified as men in terms of their post-graduate studies, and of course, women participation in the political arena, where again, in our region, there's a lot of effort that...