Mā mua ka kite a muri, mā muri ka ora a mua — Those who lead give sight to those who follow, those who follow give life to those who lead.
In honour of Global Women’s 15 Year Anniversary, our member Carolyn Kerr has produced a record of the early years of the organisation. Spanning 2008 to 2016, this story aims to capture the hard work and achievements of the leaders whose collective mahi drove the transformation and growth of the organisation.
The germ of an idea for what would become Global Women started as a conversation, as all great movements seem to. In 2008 Jane Cunliffe, former Consul General and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s Investment Director in New York, shared her experience of attending the first retreat of The Belizean Grove, a senior women’s global network she had joined as a member, with her friend and former NZTE colleague Jane Sweeney.
At the time, an influential senior women leaders’ network didn’t exist in Aotearoa New Zealand, yet was clearly needed. The issues of gender inclusion, diversity and equity — concepts only just gaining traction — in the workplace also needed an activist strategy to make an impact across the country.
The 2008 Census of Women’s Participation report determined there were 45 women on the boards of the top 100 companies listed on the stock exchange — only 8.65 per cent of the available directorships.
Something had to be done about it.
The Global Women Trust Deed stated two clear goals:
- That Global Women provided an opportunity for networking and conversations in a safe environment
- To do everything it can to advance women in leadership.
Global Women’s name came from the organisation’s intention to connect Aotearoa New Zealand’s leading women, locally and globally. We firmly believed that “Helping women succeed, here and on a global stage, is both a matter of sound business logic and social enrichment. A senior women’s organisation will give New Zealand’s female leaders access to wider influential networks and mentoring relationships — within New Zealand, and extending to their peers globally.”
Countless hours, days and months of conversations, debates, planning, and strategising informed Global Women’s foundational intent, which was to:
- increase leadership opportunities for women in Aotearoa New Zealand through building a diverse, supportive and well connected network that extends from Aotearoa New Zealand onto a global stage;
- provide opportunities for members to share experiences, wisdom and perspectives with their peers in an informal and collaborative environment; and
- mentor and inspire and create a pipeline of future women leaders.
The bar to become a Global Women member was set high deliberately. Women had to hold a senior level role, or multiple senior roles, and for many this included global experience and networks. They needed to also demonstrate recidivist leadership traits and achievements in diversity and lateral thinking beyond the norm.
The mission was going to require all members to step up, beyond their day jobs, and use their positions of influence to be forces for change and unrelenting advocates for all women. It was going to challenge them to open up to each other and offer mutual support, share experiences and learnings, be generous with their time and wisdom as no women’s network had done before in Aotearoa New Zealand.
By the end of 2016 – eight years since the seed of the idea of Global Women was first planted in the hearts and minds of a few – the organisation had succeeded in creating prominence, urgency and momentum to advance the gender and ethnic diversity, equity and inclusion agenda across Aotearoa New Zealand.
No longer were businesses overlooking women and wāhine toa, or people of other ethnicities for leadership roles or seeing them as anomalies around leadership tables. The value they provided was deemed essential to the commercial performance of their organisations and critical to their growth and success.
The women who had flourished under Breakthrough Leaders and Activate, and other leaders who came to the fore from the focus of Champions for Change and TupuToa, became enablers, supporters and role models. They influenced other wāhine toa and tāne and men in their spheres of activity and networks, often recommending Global Women programmes and membership to others.