HOW WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS: A Very Timely Book

Gerald Lema, Corporate Vice President and President, Asia-Pacific, Baxter International Inc

In an increasingly complex world and with the current impact of global economic realignment, the issue of accessing all markets all the time is more critical than ever. We now know that the business case for gender balance is well established. Having a healthy balance of women and men in senior and key positions in the workforce is not just a social issue but one that addresses two core challenges for all organisations: Talent and Markets access. Gender balance allows organisations to access the entire Talent pool and thus brings immediate benefits in terms of decision-making, leadership, and diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. Similarly, in virtually all marketplaces around the world, women make up a significant proportion of the consumers, trend-setters, and users of products and services, and thus gender balance drives a better understanding of marketplaces and how critical decisions are made.

In the context of Asia-Pacific, diversity is widespread in terms of cultures, religions, languages, and economic models, but since 2005 Baxter in Asia-Pacific has focused on gender balance with an initiative called Building TalentEdge. Through this initiative, built around the relentless commitment to the value of diversity and to make it part of the very core management practices, we achieved 50/50 gender balance last year in our leadership teams across 14 countries.

As How Women Mean Business clearly details in numerous examples, the way to success is about a number of solid management practices that are clearly shared and reinforced throughout the organisation. Once these practices become adopted and embedded, they deliver a unique competitive advantage by increasing the capacity of leadership to manage change and by capturing global opportunities. Regardless of the industry or country, solid leadership and management practices always give companies a real and lasting competitive edge.

Extensive research and our own experience demonstrate that organisations that allow the best talent to enter, to develop, to move up, and to contribute do better.

At Baxter, gender balance is closely aligned with achieving our business goals and we do it because it makes sense.

How Women Mean Business is a very timely book that clearly articulates a number of practices to achieve gender balance and to make the journey possible and realistic for all organisations.