Organisation Seeks Women Inclusion in Leadership Roles
Hamid Ayodeji
The Lloyds of London has organised the fifth edition of its Diversity for Inclusion Festival (DiveIn) aimed at advocating for the need to increase female empowerment and development schemes. It also aims at enhancing the capability of women towards attaining leadership positions.
The organisation during a panel discussion themed: “Empowering Women in Leadership in Lagos,” recently, highlighted issues females were challenged with daily, in every aspect of their livelihood. Some of these include gender discrimination, inadequate empowerment and development schemes as well as inclusiveness in leadership roles for females.
The Global Chairman, Aon, Dominic Christian, during the forum expressed the need for societies to effectively implement initiatives such as, regulations, ethics, laws and policies that boosts gender diversity in leadership, and equality in every aspect of the life of both female and male individuals.
According to him, in order to unlock the power of gender diversity, “we need to create an environment whereby people feel comfortable enough to be themselves without the being discriminated on or abused and also practice inclusive leadership.”
Christian added, “The focus on empowering women in leadership is as a result of the fact that women make up half of the world’s global population which means there is a great role for them to play towards developing and sustaining the economy of every nation on the globe.
“There is need to increase the population of women in management roles as well as policies that lead to a great worklife balance for both genders such as, flexible work hours, maternity leave are vital and definitely worth exploring.”
Also speaking during the forum, the Executive Director, Navigate Consulting Africa, Egbe Oyegun-Adeoye, pointed out that there was high demand for initiatives that improve the ability of women to contribute and attain management roles in the work place.
She added: “When we begin to interrogate things like the kind of polices we have, the way we reward, the way we open women up to sponsorship and exposure, the way the work place is structured, then we would be able to answer the question around why women are not progressing at the same pace as men.