BONUS | International Women's Day

International Women's Day:
https://www.internationalwomensday.com/


IMA's Website: https://www.imanet.org/


Contact the Speakers:


Hanadi Khalife -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanady-khalife-78ba5610/

Doreen Remmen -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/doreen-remmen-55173812/

Alain Mulder - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alainmulder/

Nina Michels-Kim -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ninamichelskim/



FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTAdam: (00:00)
 Welcome back to Count Me In and Happy International Woman's
Day. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and in this special episode, my
co-host Rouba Zeidan, sits down with a few of IMA's leaders to
discuss what it means to operate, manage, and breed an inclusive
culture. Keep listening to hear from Hanadi Khalifa, Senior
Director of Middle East and India Operations at IMA, Doreen
Remmen, CFO of IMA, Alain Mulder IMA's Europe Regional Director,
and Nina Michel's Kim IMA's Director of Partnerships for Japan
and Korea, as they all share their perspectives on social,
economic, cultural, and political achievements of women and the
value of diversity, equity and inclusion in the
workplace. 
 
Rouba: (00:46)
Good morning, good evening, and good afternoon to all of you.
Thank you for joining me and Happy International Women's Day!
We're going to kick this off with Nina and Hanadi. So this day
was created to celebrate social, economic, cultural, and
political achievements of women, and it encourages women around
the world to choose to challenge. I mean, the theme for this
year, because as I quote “A challenge world is an alert one.” So
this initiative was also created to accelerate women equality
around the globe, and when you contrast that with the world
economic forums prediction, that it will take some 250 years
before we can achieve true equality. What are some of the major
problem areas that you believe need to be challenged? Both when
we talk about community elements and corporate world elements,
and how are you personally contributing towards that on an
individual scale and maybe even on a corporate scale. 
 
Nina: (01:52)
So, you know, I believe that in order to achieve true sustainable
gender equality, society and companies have to change their
mindset. It's not the quantity of hours at work that make an
employee productive and also support working parents equally make
it normal that men equally share household tasks and childcare.
And I think society and the workplace prevent people from
exercising their rights for these parental benefits. For example,
you know, I kind of represent Asia Pacific and in Japan, new
fathers are entitled to a relatively generous paternity leave,
but less than 8% of Japanese male employees take it. As opposed
to a more egalitarian country like Finland, where over 80% of the
men take paternity leave. And, you know, the reluctance of
Japanese men that could be for a number of reasons, perhaps it's
not encouraged by the company, or  they might be judged that
they're a slacker and we need to change the stigma associated
with that and make it mandatory thatmen also take paternity
leave. And in fact, that's a new plan that the Japan's labor
ministry is actually thinking of to make it mandatory, for men to
take paternity leave, and it it's to counter Japan's declining
birth rate, which is a huge problem in Asia, because women don't
want to have children anymore since it impacts their career. And,
you know, as an individual, all individuals must have the courage
to exercise their rights and stand up so others can follow. And,
you know, as an individual in my former company, I was sort of a
trailblazer and paved the way for other women to woman to, you
know, discuss remote working and part-time working. But, you
know, granted that was over 15 years ago, but that former
company, they did not allow any, remote work or part-time work,
and, you know, they were very supportive of promoting women, but
only as long as they were single or childless or, you know,
dincs, dual income, no children. So I think I was one of the
first women managers to say that I was pregnant, and I really
felt guilty to do so. To announce my pregnancy, which, you know,
should be a joyous occasion, and especially, you know, it was
coming after two miscarriages, miscarriages that I kind of,
embarrassingly did not say to my employees of my employers, and I
found out later that many women in that, that company had
miscarriages. we were working long hours and on paper, the
company even had, less than, required working hours, but nobody
took that. I mean, especially nobody who were a high potential
person climbing the corporate ladder. So, you know, when I did
announce my pregnancy to the company, I told them things like,
Hey, don't worry. You will never even think that I had children.
I'll be back full time. I'd be here until the very last minute,
and then I will take the bare minimum of maternity leave and I'll
will be back to take off where I left off. And, you know, and I
actually even did that for my first born. I enrolled him full
time in the daycare center. I had babysitters to take him after
it was closed and or whenever I was traveling because, you know,
I didn't have extended family nearby to help, but, you know, I
slowly came to realize how flat I was in my head thinking and it
wasn't sustainable. You know, when he was about 18 months, he
started acting up at the daycare center, you know, I kind of
broke down and I went to my boss and, you know, I finally said,
you know, that's it I'm leaving unless the company allows me to
work part-time or work remotely and you know, the company finally
relented, you know, and that action is so interesting because
after that a whole lot of managers became pregnant or they were
able to say, I had a miscarriage to Nina, all these kind of
things and, you know, and it became okay to work like part-time,
at least 80% or work Fridays at home. And, you know, so kind of,
I take comfort that I finally became brave and ask for support
from the company and it kind of benefited former companies,
former colleagues of mine in that company. 
 
Rouba: (06:26)
No, but you're right, by the way, bravery has a big role to play
in this one, to dare, to ask for more or for support Hanadi,
how's that been for you? 
 
Hanadi: (06:36)
Well, I think Nina touched on, on a very important point, which
is the change in mindset. And I think both men and women need,
need to change that, and man has to realize that actually gender
equality is beneficial and it's, in their interest as much as it
is in our, interests. And of course the bravery for women, they
have to proactively ask for their right. But I also want to add,
three more, even actually four, more challenges, that we are
facing saying, maybe these apply most to upward in the Middle
East,. For example, education. Although we've done tremendous,
effort and improvement in education, there are still 130 million
girls who are, who don't have access to schooling, and there are
12 million who are married, that are under the age of 18 every
single year. Of course also the gender gap. I don't want to talk
extensively about that. I know we're all aware of the gender pay
gap. Although we've seen that women now are more qualified, or if
I may say, as qualified as men in terms of their post-graduate
studies, and of course, women participation in the political
arena, where again, in our region, there's a lot of effort
that...