The Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business hosted the 2024 Women in Leadership Forum successfully, that brought together leaders across the globe including ambassadors from the United Nations and more than 500 business executives, who found themselves discussing topics such as empowerment of women in family businesses as well as leadership roles within multinational organizations.
The forum hosted a diversified panel of leaders and experts, including Jin Pei, Vice-Chair of the Shanghai Women's Federation Association, who concluded that women play an important role in economic and social development. "We are happy to see how women make their presence felt in all walks of life", Pei said. Siddharth Chatterjee, UN Resident Coordinator in China, virtually addressed the forum: "The disparities, based on gender, persist, especially when it comes to leadership positions". He noted that female share of board seats stands at just 19.7% worldwide, with shares even smaller for board chair (6.7%) and CEO (5%) posts, while the CFO share stands at just 15.7%. "Achieving gender equality is an essential and urgent necessity for economic prosperity and stability", Chatterjee said.
"Investing in gender equality will enable lasting gains for businesses and societies", said Liu Meng, China head at the UN Global Compact, underlining the urge for systemic change toward equality between women and men. "As the keynote speaker indicated, studies have always shown that the presence of women leaders directly increases productivity and cooperation in an organization, and she encouraged companies to concentrate on collapsing some gender barriers".
Noted by Dean and Distinguished Chair Professor of Finance Li Haitao, women, he said, play a crucial role within family businesses to provide vital skills toward creating long-term strategy and communication in guiding family enterprises through challenges. According to Haitao, continuity and altruism associated with the values represented by women leaders are critical to long-term success.
Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at CKGSB Zhang Xiaomeng reflected further on this point, in which his report from 2020-2024 found great increases of place resilience among female and male leaders during the COVID-19 epidemic. In the report, Zhang also touched upon findings indicating that most recent reporting from AI crossing genders reveals great potential for empowering the capacity of making professional arenas a safer and fairer place to cross genders.