Working in Tandem for An Equitable world  

On March 7, DragonCor, in collaboration with its commercial asset, WESTLINK, jointly held CEO Club Women-centered Forum themed “Working in Tandem for An Equitable world” in celebration of 2023 International Women’s Day. Several female role models attended the event and engaged in multidimensional discussions on a variety of topics including, career challenges, work-life balance, flexible working, standing out from the competition and postponed retirement.

The forum aims to enable participants to better understand each other, connect with more female allies and like-minded partners, and working together towards a diverse, equitable, inclusive working environment.

Shine the spotlight on Her and Listen to Her Voices.

Keynote

Mark Cho, Managing Director of Blackstone:

As a champion for diversity, equity and inclusion, Blackstone has hosted a total of 500 female-focused lectures and events to date. In a diverse workplace, everyone should cultivate an inclusive mindset to embrace differences in gender, sector, occupation, experience and perspective.

Blackstone pays attention to, and supports, female entrepreneurs. For example, Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder, and CEO of Bumble, is the youngest entrepreneur to take a company public in America with the support of Blackstone. In addition to women, Blackstone is concerned about social groups in need of more support. This can be seen from the employment opportunities provided to veterans at Blackstone’s headquarters to aid them integrating into society as well as their future development.

Sharing

Carol Liu, co-founder of Lean In Shanghai:

The mission of Lean In is to empower women to achieve their ambitions. Lean In is committed to encouraging women to tap into and cultivate their personal potential and leadership through sharing and learning by virtue of the power of charitable organizations.

I hope in a future of gender equity, “female” will not be singled out as a prefix. People will no longer talk about female leadership, but just leadership. No more attention should be paid on how female executives balance family and work.

In recent years, big names such as Blackstone, SAP and Google have witnessed an increasing proportion of female executives and female senior technicians, but women’s understanding of and confidence in themselves remains to be developed. In China, the proportion of female executives increased from 22.84% to 24% in the past five years. Obviously, women should pursue their career development with more confidence.

As for female growth, firstly women should be lifelong learners, enhance self-confidence, and learn to ask for help and develop clear logic and more mature thoughts by learning from outstanding role models. Secondly, companies should increase and maintain the proportion of female executives, creating more growth space and development opportunities for female employees. In the meantime, flexible working policies should be adopted to help breakdown development barriers brought by fulfilling domestic responsibilities.

Shirley Wang, Partner of Deloitte China:

Diversity and inclusion are dispensable pillars in Deloitte’s value system. During my twenty-plus-years of service at Deloitte, I have always supported female leadership and promotion. We have taken the following two initiatives to promote female development. Firstly, we provide universal benefits for female employees including adopting flexible working policies, either location-based or time-based, for nursing mothers. We also invite female CEOs and Presidents of other companies in China to share their stories. Secondly, we have put in place a sound performance assessment framework, under which indicators have been set for female leaders to assess their performance in helping other female colleagues.

As for building female leadership, I would like to propose two suggestions. Firstly, we should prepare ourselves to face a long and tough battle. A pace-based approach with different prioritizes is necessary for women in securing fruits both in domestic life and career advancement. Secondly, it is important to balance rationality and sensibility and to give full play to the sensible power of women. Sensibility enables better connection with people. If women can strike a balance between rationality and sensibility, they can better unleash their creativity, thus becoming better leaders.

Panel

Q1: As an Asian female executive, what challenges will you face?

Liu Mingming, member of sHero Advisory Committee: As a female born in the 1950s and raised in Asia, I was one of the first students from my country to study abroad in the 1980s. It was a challenging experience, as I had to pay for my studies myself and faced many pressures. At the time, Chinese students were often stereotyped as poor. However, since China has experienced a significant economic boom, attitudes towards Chinese students and families have gradually shifted. Upon returning from Germany, I worked in various positions, including joint ventures and as a chief representative. However, I found that my income was often unfairly low, despite my enthusiasm and dedication to the job. Looking back, I realized that every promotion and salary increase was earned through my hard work and determination. As I moved up the ranks to become President of Asia and Sales Director, I still faced similar experience of inequality. So, inequity exits widely alongside with women’s career development. Especially in industries like mechanical engineering, which is dominant by men, women are often in a disadvantaged position due to marriage and childbearing. After encountering these injustices, I realized that women should be more courageous to make our voices heard.

Shirley Wang, Partner of Deloitte China: Everything has two sides, so it is natural that challenge comes with opportunities. I have a similar experience as Ms. Liu Mingming, experiencing unabashed disdain for women. Prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, I had no issues communicating with executives when approaching companies for business opportunities. However, on one occasion, I was told that a male partner was needed due to “the inconvenience of frequent business trips and social engagements for women”. Despite achievements in women’s education, many women continue to be held back by traditional societal expectations. As Ms. Liu pointed out, the biggest challenge for women is often themselves. We may forget our own power or becomes disconnected from ourselves, which prevents us from fully realizing our potential.

Q2: How do you relax yourselves when dealing with pressures from work, life, and family?

Zuo Ming, Principle of Blackstone: I am very grateful that all of my leaders, colleagues, mentors, family members and friends have been very accommodating to me. When dealing with any task, including balance work, personal life, and career, the most important thing is always to identify priorities at the current stage. As individuals, we all play many roles in our lives, including wives, leaders, underlings, and daughters. However, when it comes to promoting gender equity and eliminating discrimination, it is important to identify clear priorities. At any stage of your life, for whatever you want to tell others, you’d better engage them in experiencing it with you. So, if you want to change others including your husband, parents, or children, you need to make sure that you are changing and advancing forward with them together.

Xu Lili, Partner of MIT u.lab China: By writing daily and weekly reports, I prioritize matters based on their urgency. Over time, you will find how you live your life. When you review and reflect on your real data, you will be pushed to make important changes. Some life-changing decisions are made through reflection and review. As an entrepreneur and a partner of technology startup, I once lived an unhealthy lifestyle, but the situation sees better changes with my reviews. The ultimate goal of life is to “know thyself”. Self-perception will drive you to find the most suitable role in life and the most suitable company at work, where you are irreplaceable.

Q3: The world’s decision-making circles are dominated by men, and there are very few female executives or founders. Most women are likely to experience bottlenecks in their careers due to external factors such as marriage and family. How do you stand out from such competition? Could you share your successful experience in this regard?

Shirley Wang, Partner of Deloitte China: My signature for WeChat “What’s Up”: confidence and patience. When faced with difficulties, it is very important to practice Vipassana. Some of my colleagues, especially some senior partners, meditate, exercise, and do yoga. Personally, I like reading books on philosophy and psychology, and learning different languages to gain different cultural perspectives. Re-examining your inner heart can stabilize your inner self to find other right links to solve problems. Every coin has two sides. If you have seen and accepted that, you will be steadier than others and naturally you will stand out.

Xu Lili, Partner of MIT u.lab China: Success comes down to internal cultivation. It is necessary to open your mind, heart and will. When you expand your mind, you won’t judge blindly. When you open your hearts, you will examine others with a new empathy. When you open your will, you will be ready to accept changes and live with chaos. Someone once said: “There are two kinds of creation in the world: one is outward creation, which is a masculine creation, such as entrepreneurship; the other is inward creation, which is a feminine creation, such as pregnancy and childbirth.” Feminine creation requires more perception of trends, which is the inherent advantage of many women and is indispensable for balance with masculine creation. Just as we need organizational development (inward creation) on the way of starting an undertaking, we only need to find out what we are best at, and we will be successful in many things.

Liu Mingming, member of sHero Advisory Committee: I am particularly honored to have experienced great changes of the times, including going to the countryside, studying abroad, reform and opening up. Without the reform and opening up, this era would be an illusion, and I would not have the possibility to take off again, so I deeply feel and especially cherish this era. A female attendee just mentioned that when she wanted to be promoted, the company said that there were no positions available. I think opportunities have to be created by oneself. Men are often considered good at logical thinking. But as a woman. I believe my strength lies in my ability to identify opportunities through intuition. This allows me to take the lead with greater confidence and decisiveness. Women also excel at cooperating with others and leveraging our complementary strengths to complete tasks perfectly.  

Zuo Ming, Principle of Blackstone: All tasks have value as long as they are duly fulfilled. Don’t be labelled on any job category or level. No one can define the criteria for success or standing out. An executive may be a novice in doing household work, while housewives are management masters. Only if you are productive with excellent efficiency and quality, you deserve to be seen to stand out. No matter what stage of life you are in, find the priorities and do them extraordinarily well, you can stay true to your original aspiration.

Q4: In recent years, especially since the epidemic, flexible working has been adopted by many companies, what’ s your thoughts on this new type of working arrangement? A topic that has been much discussed this year is postponed retirement, what should we do at the corporate level and at the individual level to prepare for the new social issues? Do you have any good ideas?

Xu Lili, Partner of MIT u.lab China: This era is experiencing profound changes and an increasing number of business models are broadening organizational boarders. The creativity and vitality of flexible workers is astonishing. I strongly support flexible working.

Zuo Ming, Principle of Blackstone: For me, flexible working is a real estate topic. With the wide application of flexible working, personnel in traditional real estate roles will face increased pressure and more challenges.

Liu Mingming, member of sHero Advisory Committee: Flexible working is a good thing, but self-disciplined is a prerequisite. Flexible working brings about pressure on large organizations, but makes it more convenient for startups, especially young people, to perform their duties. So does postponed retirement. On one hand, the workplace provides me with opportunities to work hard; on the other hand, choices are available, including starting a business or engaging in whatever interests you. So, the two sides empower each other.

Shirley Wang, Partner of Deloitte China: Idleness is not in my blood, so postponed retirement has little impact on my life. On the contrary, as long as there is value, I think life-long service is a blessed happiness.  Flexible working has advantages and disadvantages. Flexibility is an advantage but the real connection with people should not be ignored.

DragonCor Views

As a man, what motivates you to be an ally of women for gender equity?

Peter Hwang, Chief Executive Officer of DragonCor: When I was young, 100% of my time and energy was devoted to my job until around six years ago, when I started to realize that I needed to do something more meaningful for myself and society. Fortunately, one of my best friends introduced me to the CEO of the Hong Kong Women‘s Foundation, who left a strong impression on me regarding the significance of gender equity. I have been convinced that both men and women are entitled to pursue their dreams and goals. As a father, I hope my daughter can grow up in an equitable world and be treated equitably both in the workplace and at home. That is why I actively take part in various activities held by the foundation and have become a founding member of the Male Allies Program. During public events, I give speeches to encourage other men to support gender equity and take due share of contributing to the building of a fairer, more harmonious, and progressive society.

As a male ally, how do you support women at work?

Peter Hwang, Chief Executive Officer of DragonCor: I believe a male ally isn’t just in the professional setting. It’s also in the home setting. Half of the world’s population are women. Half of the university graduates are women, and in fact, they graduate with better grades than male graduates. However, they face greater challenges when it comes to promotions before and after childbirth. As a husband and father, I try to take on an equal share as my wife and help to ensure my wife can have the best career she can have. Unfortunately, there are still inherent biases in our society. In school, for example, the role of fathers is often ignored, or underestimated. We must do everything we can to eliminate such prejudice and provide women with equal opportunities in both work and family life. At work, I’m fortunate in that I’m in a position to be able to influence and make changes. Achieving gender equality at work not only means having if not 50/50 then close to 50/50 female representation at all levels of the organization, but also that everyone who comes to work is respected and has flexibility to accommodate other aspects of their lives. For example, when you are recruiting for a role, you can mandate the recruitment firm to give you a gender balanced group of candidates. In addition, you can look into your HR policies on things like insurance coverage to ensure maternity coverage is adequate. You can also make sure you have flexibility work arrangement and flexible leave policy, not just for your female employees but also the male employees to attend to family matters. Recently we converted an office into a mummy’s room to allow new mothers who just returned to work. These are all small things we can all do relatively easily but can have big impact on gender equality at work.

Flexible working arrangements have become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly since the outbreak of COVID-19, and many companies have adopted this new working style. What are your thoughts on the role of flexible working in promoting happiness at work and helping employees balance their work and family life?

Flexible working is essential to job satisfaction and work-life balance. It can not only help employees find a balance between work and personal life, but also improve work efficiency and motivation. Hence, it can contribute to a more positive workplace and stable organizational development. In addition, flexible working builds a culture of trust and respect, enhances employee loyalty, and brings greater well-being and productivity to both employees and organizations.

If you have everything in place, what would you like to do most to support women’s growth?

Peter Hwang, Chief Executive Officer of DragonCor:With everything in place, we consider establishing a mentorship program which aims to provide support and guidance for women seeking success at work and happiness at home. In addition to experienced mentors, this program also offers various training and development opportunities that help to remove barriers women face in the workplace and create a more inclusive and equitable social and work environment.