[Check against delivery]
Thank you, Niamh for your kind introduction.
I would like to thank Grant Thornton for the invitation to address such a distinguished audience this evening.
"Behind every successful woman---"
Well, now, hold on, there.
Whoa.
What's a successful woman?
We tend to describe someone as "a successful woman" and move on. As if it was a fixed definition.
It's not a fixed definition.
Which is not to say it's not a fixed ambition.
I'm sure many of you here had a fixed ambition when you were in secondary school. You were going to be a top manager. Or a forensic accountant. Or a newsreader. Or a model.
You knew you would be a successful woman when you hit that objective. As we used to say when we were kids, you were "certain sure."
And then, you know what happened? Life interfered.
Life interferes, sometimes, like the path in Alice through the Looking Glass. You remember, Alice is walking down the path when the path shakes itself like a wet dog and she ends up facing back where she's come from.
It's a safe bet that life has done that to at least some of you here. You've ended up in a completely different role to the one you were aiming at. Doesn't mean you're unsuccessful. Just means you're doubly successful: Not ony have you done well, but you've shown flexibility. Willingness to change. Informed opportunism.
Of course, the biggest possible shake that life's path can give is having children. Talk about change agents!
I believe it's important that none of us views our life as so goal-driven that we miss the moments, the months, the years of a kind of success we didn't necessarily factor in.
You can be a successful woman when you're up to your armpits in toddlers and making damn all impact on the world of business, of banking or of politics.
You can be a successful woman when you abandon a fixed ambition and say "You know what? NO. Don't care if I earn only half as much money, don't care if I'm not a household name, just want to do something I believe in."
You can be a successful woman when you decide to step off the career conveyor belt, go back to university and begin again.
Being a successful woman, in other words, is not something you get,
like a tattoo.
It's a decision you make.
And it takes different shapes at different points in your life.
That's the important thing. Success looks and feels different at different stages in our lives.
And you know something else? Sometimes women need other women (or men - or men!) to remind them of just how successful they are. Mentoring is a gift - especially when it confirms that you've done the right thing!
Women sometimes still consider it normal that they should not be at the decision-making table. That has to change. After all, it undermines the core point of democracy if it is not representative of society. As Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile, says: “For me, a better democracy is a democracy where women do not only have the right to vote and to elect but to be elected.”
It was a deep interest in equality and social progress that led me to study and to practice as a social worker and started me on the road to a career in politics. I took my first steps into the world of advocacy and campaigning as a social worker in London.
The quest for equality is the reason I joined the Women’s Political Association when I returned to Dublin in the 1980s. It is the reason I decided to go for the Chair of the National Women’s Council and seek election to the Dáil. Equality remains core to my vision as a public representative and it is my core vision for Ireland.
Too many of the barriers to women excelling in business, political or voluntary roles are practical ones, such as childcare.
Women need to become leaders if the agenda is to be changed in a way that is durable and meaningful. Or to put it another way, the more women who become leaders, the more we feminise the traits of leadership which have long been defined by men.
If more women become leaders, we will be able to pursue the changes in structures and practice that will facilitate more women to participate and to achieve their potential.
I want women to be enabled to put themselves forward as leaders in their workplaces, in community organisations, arts organisations, agriculture, financial services and the media. I want the Ireland of five years’ time to be a place where decision-making belongs to women as much as it belongs to men and a place that enables and supports women to assume leadership positions.
Government has a strong role in promoting gender equality. I am working on the renewal of Ireland’s National Women’s Strategy. My ambition for the new Strategy is that it should speak to the society of today and target the barriers to women's achievement of their full potential and their enjoyment of equality with men. Work has begun on preparing the Strategy. We will be seeking views from a wide diversity of women, with a wide-ranging consultation process to be launched shortly.
Irish voters now take it for granted that a woman can be President of Ireland. Hillary Clinton could be elected as the 45th President of the United States, joining Prime Minister May in the United Kingdom and Chancellor Merkel in Germany as powerful women in leadership positions. But the problem is they are extraordinary not because they are women, but because they are women who made it.
We all know that women make great leaders. What we haven’t figured out is how to support women to become leaders.
Too often society teaches girls that it is not OK to act like a born leader. Too often, society is blind to a girl’s leadership skills. I share Sheryl Sandberg’s wish that ‘I want every little girl who is told that she is bossy to be told instead that she has leadership skills’.
The justice sector is now developing into a role model for other areas. Quite uniquely among countries, women now occupy the positions of Chief Justice, Attorney General, Garda Commissioner, Director of Public Prosecutions, Chief State Solicitor, State Pathologist and myself, as Minister for Justice and Equality.
However, progress in other areas can be painfully slow. I have made no secret of my support for positive action where it is needed, such as the gender quotas for candidate selection. In 2012 we enacted a provision in the Electoral Act 2012 which made receipt of full State funding under the electoral Acts contingent on a qualified political party fielding at least 30% women candidates and at least 30% men candidates at the general election. 163 women contested the last election, representing 30% of the 551 candidates, and 35 women were elected to Dáil Éireann.
This represents 22% of the total membership, compared with 15% in 2011.
And you know what? It’s still dismal. We pat ourselves on the back when the percentage inches up a percent or two. Anything over 20% kind of takes the bad look off it.
Well it’s a long way from 50% and it’s unacceptable in 2016.
We have a responsibility to keep investigating and understanding why it’s so bad. We also have to acknowledge that sexism hasn’t been banished to the last century. There is a kind of unspoken acknowledgement that we have somehow dealt with that and if women raise the sexism argument, it’s somehow an excuse for weakness. It’s not.
Women in the public eye are sometimes treated differently and held to different standards. Exposure at this level does bring risks. As Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard spoke out against sexism and misogyny in parliament. She has highlighted the gender bias and gendered abuse that many women politicians continue to face. As she says, "vexed questions like the problem that men are more likely to be judged by their actions and women by their appearance still need to be resolved." http://www.politico.eu/article/equal-opportunities-for-women-politicians-still-elusive-hillary-clinton-julia-gillard-op-ed-leaders-gender-equality/
There are also issues for women in business. While much progress has been made, women continue to be under-represented in leadership positions on corporate boards, in senior management and as entrepreneurs.
Confidence is probably where it all starts. We have a lot of social conditioning to overcome. Many women struggle with admitting to being ambitious for career success. How often have you heard a woman dismiss the contribution of her own skill and talent and put her achievements down to luck? Success is so often described by women as an accidental outcome, a distant second to their passion for knowledge, or their passion for a cause. Sometimes, a woman may have to challenge the social conditioning of her own family and friends.
In Ireland, men are still twice as likely to become entrepreneurs as women. The creativity and business acumen of women is abundantly displayed every day across the wide variety of community and voluntary groups operating across Ireland and in many of our family-run businesses and SMEs. Why then are women not establishing their own businesses at the same rate as men?
To me, it is striking that many of these issues bear a remarkable similarity to those identified as barriers to greater female participation in politics. In politics, the inhibitors were succinctly summarised as the 5 Cs – cash, confidence, childcare, culture and candidate selection procedures. The first four are equally applicable in an enterprise context.
There has been a significant increase in female entrepreneurs supported by Enterprise Ireland where the number of High Potential Start Ups supported increased from 7% annually up to 2011 to 22% in 2015. This is a fantastic achievement particularly when we compare it with the global comparisons where only 8% of global technology entrepreneurs are female. In total 61 female entrepreneurs were supported financially in 2015 by Enterprise Ireland. This shows what can be achieved when we focus on a problem.
Many people think of female entrepreneurs as a new concept – but when we look at one of our great role models – Anna May McHugh – often referred to as the “Queen of the National Ploughing Championships” – she has overseen the ploughing Championships growing to become the largest outdoor festival in Europe. Quite and Achievement! It is important to recognise such role models as they play a key role in inspiring those coming behind them.
Gender equality requires sustained effort. A report published last month by McKinsey and the Lean In organisation looked at the corporate pipeline in US companies. It found that women are less likely to receive the first critical promotion to manager, so far fewer end up on the path to leadership, and they are less likely to be hired into more senior positions. Women also get less access to the people, input, and opportunities that accelerate careers. At more senior levels, women shift from line to staff roles and away from the path to becoming CEO.
Could this be because, much like the traits of leadership have been defined by men, the path to leadership has been paved by men also?
Is it the case that women are less likely to be in a position to go to the bars, clubs and golf courses where the final deals are traditionally sealed and the seeds of advancement sowed?
I am sure these questions will resonate with many of you here tonight.
Many of you here bring a wealth of experience of the business world, of management, of leadership. Many of you are already involved in mentoring programmes for women in your organisations or in your sectors. Your support could be invaluable for women who may not have inspirational role models to encourage them towards leadership. I am thinking of women involved in community organisations, women from migrant communities, women who have to struggle against disadvantage. A broader mentoring programme could be of enormous benefit in enabling such women to be empowered as leaders. Sharing your wisdom and expertise could enable other women to flourish.
You, as women leaders, can play a key role to encourage other women to become leaders.
You, we, as women leaders actually have a responsibility to encourage other women to become leaders.
I’ll conclude on this thought. Feminism is being reclaimed by young women who are pushing back against the backlash which made feminism a dirty word for too long. Feminism is more relevant than ever to women, to men, and to the sustainable future of our whole society. Indeed feminism is becoming dangerously fashionable. When Amy Schumer says that “Anyone who is not a feminist is an insane person”, you know that feminism is becoming hot.