International Women’s Day has always been an opportunity to reflect on rights, bias and gender equality. The world has certainly changed a lot in the 110 years since IWD began. However, there is much more to be done to forge an equal world.
One of the things we can do to accelerate change is commit in keeping the attention high on gender equality by organizing meetings, inviting experts, sharing information and discussing throughout the year, reiterating the message that Gender Equality is not an unrealistic topic but rather a necessary one to allow companies to welcome all employees correctly and enable businesses to grow.
Colt Technology Services, a leader in enabling business’ digital transformation through agile and on-demand, high bandwidth solutions globally, is a BCCI Special Sustaining member in Italy since 2018 and has Diversity and Inclusion woven into its DNA.
Colt is paving the way in the telecoms industry on Inclusion & Diversity: in 2020, Keri Gilder, Colt CEO, was made Chair of the TM Forum’s Diversity and Inclusion Council, a global collaboration project focused on making the telecommunications industry the most diverse and inclusive it can be. In fact, out of 31 telecoms companies, five CEOs (Colt is one of them) are female. Sixty out of 230 top executives are female and out of those, 20 are in traditional female positions like HR. Only three companies have more than 30% representation on their top management teams… Colt is one of those with its management team having 50% gender representation.
To create a more inclusive culture where people feel a sense of belonging, Colt Ambassadors, a group that drives initiatives that enhance the working environment and Colt Network 25 Italy, a group that promotes diversity and gender balance, have engaged with British Chamber of Commerce in Italy to organize an interactive session.
Donatella Cungi, Partner of Toffoletto De Luca Tamajo e Soci, and Co-chair of the ‘Diversity Committee’ of the British Chamber of Commerce for Italy, was the guest of honor and talked about “The power of a well-balanced gender work environment” exploring why gender balance is important, the gender pay gap and what employees and companies can do to reduce this gap and drive gender balance.
“Achieving Gender Balance in companies is ethical but also very strategic. Without Gender Equality, it is not possible to attract talent or even retain them, so there is damage to the economy but also a social damage”.
“In Italy, female CEOs, the role that most represents the exercise of power within a company, are only 3%, well below the European average of 7%”. “There is still a lot of work to be done to change corporate culture, that relegates women to positions that are normally very similar to those that for centuries have been entrusted to them at home: solving less strategic and more practical problems.”
The event was a great success and attended by 70% of the employees.
The future depends on us, let’s build a world with more balanced gender participation, free from prejudice and discrimination! Everyone can be part of the journey because inclusion and diversity bring a better world and work environment that we can all benefit from. Together we can all #BreakTheBias