| To
answer this question, I would like to compare
BPW to a tree. If BPW International is a
tree, our root is in “Advocacy”,
our trunk is in supporting women to “Develop
Professional and Leadership Potential for
Women at all levels,” and we expect
that our work will bear fruit in “Equal
participation for women in power and decision
making.”
OUR
ROOT in Advocacy is evidence through our
work with United Nations. BPW International
should take pride in lobbying for the formation
of Commission on Status of Women, in receiving
Peace Messenger Certificate from UN Secretary-General
Javier Perez de Cuellar in 1987 and having
Esther Hymer, the first Chairperson of NGO
CSW who was named as one of the three women
who had played a significant role in the
work of the UN Commission by Secretary-General
Kofi Annan in 1997.
OUR
TRUNK, or the main body of our work, focuses
on mentoring, leadership training and giving
women responsibilities so that they can
advance in their careers and become leaders
in their fields. Our members contribute
back to society by “helping women
to help themselves”. BPW projects
world-wide include vocational training,
micro credits, career guidance, helping
women in crisis to regain their worth and
economic independence, mentoring and much
more. We recognized that creating enabling
environment for women development, addressing
interrelated key factors of education, work
and health in partnerships with governments
and other NGOs are crucial to our success.
For
our efforts to bear FRUIT in equal participation
of women and men in power and decision making
roles, it’s important that we PRIORITIZE
the known issues and ACT on them. To us,
the lack of gender-disaggregated data takes
highest priority. Without it, discrimination
and obstacle become invisible. Data on RETURN
ON INVESTMENT when more women become executives,
both qualitative and quantitative data,
can be used to persuade companies and organizations
world-wide that it’s financially beneficial
to have more women participating in power
in decision making roles.
I
would like to call BPW Argentina to join
efforts with other BPW world-wide in collecting
case studies for our new web section “RETURN
ON INVESTMENT WHEN WOMEN BECOME TOP EXECUTIVE”
Also, if possible, lobby to make statistics
women participation at top management level
in corporations available – at least
for public listed companies.
Let’s
our ACTION define the answer “What
is BPW?” In so doing, we can make
ourselves stand out among other women organizations
and make our influence well known for decades
to come.
Chonchanok
Viravan
BPW International President |
