It’s
my pleasure to be with all of you in Croatia.
I feel especially honor to be in the presence
of His Excellency Stjepan Mesic, president
of Croatian Republic. On behalf of business
and professional women in 81 member countries
of BPW International, I would like to congratulate
the organizer of BPW Danube Net Forum for
their excellence work to organize this Forum
under the theme “Organizational and
Institutional Support of Women Entrepreneurship”
to promote networking and collaboration
of business and professional women from
BPW member countries along the Danube river,
including Austria, Croatia, Germany, Romania,
Bulgaria, Hungary, Ukraine, Moldova and
Slovakia.
As
an International president of BPW International,
a 77 years old organization with consultative
status to the United Nations and participatory
status in Council of Europe, a part of my
responsibility is to advocate on women issues
and encourage our members to do the same.
Our consultative status at the United Nations
enables us to accredit BPW members to attend
United Nations meeting as observers. When
we attended UN Commission on Status of Women
(CSW) meetings I notice that women NGOs
often try to advocate for everything regarding
women issues. To encourage our members to
set priority, I used to challenge them with
one question “Imagine that you have
one minute to speak with the President of
a country – what would say to lobby
him on women issue?”
Today,
I’m taking this test. What would I
say to Mr. President? Yesterday I found
out that Croatia already put equal work
equal pay into practice in the past 60 years,
so for sure I do not have to lobby for that.
So here is my one minute.
In
the world of globalization, opportunities
for employment abroad with high paying jobs
are available world-wide. Employment mobility
became inevitable. For Croatia to maintain
the talent women to stay and contribute
to Croatia’s economy, I would like
to promote government of Croatia to collect
and analyze gender-sensitive data in regards
to women and men in business in order to
gain insights to their different needs.
Then use such insight to formulate gender-sensitive
policy that better address these different
needs in order to support them to become
entrepreneurs and become successful in growing
their businesses.
Recent
study by McKinsey has shown that top companies
in Europe perform better financially when
percentage of women is closer to be at par
with men in top management position. So
it may be to the interest of Croatia Government
to analyze also the correlation between
companies’ financial performance and
ratio of women and men in top management.
All these understanding can contribute to
the success of the entrepreneurs and economic
success of Croatia. BPW would be more than
willing to collaborate in any way we can
to economically empower women in Croatia.
Thank you.
Chonchanok
Viravan
BPW International President
16 November 2007
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