GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Fig­ures re­lat­ing to gen­der par­i­ty at the most se­nior lev­els of busi­ness in T&T are not en­cour­ag­ing. Al­though there is gen­der par­i­ty up to mid­dle man­age­ment, at the C-suite lev­el the ra­tio falls to less than 25 per cent fe­male par­tic­i­pa­tion, ac­cord­ing to da­ta re­leased by Am­Cham T&T yes­ter­day.

The busi­ness group said it is tak­ing tan­gi­ble steps to re­duce gen­der in­equal­i­ty and in­crease the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of fe­male lead­er­ship at ex­ec­u­tive and board lev­els, in­clud­ing through its Women in Lead­er­ship Men­tor­ship Pro­gramme held in part­ner­ship with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB).

This ini­tia­tive, now in its sec­ond cy­cle, pairs 21 fe­male mentees with men­tors from Am­Cham T&T and the IDB pro­fes­sion­al net­work lo­cal­ly and in Wash­ing­ton DC.

Am­Cham T&T pres­i­dent Pa­tri­cia Ghany said: “Us­ing the feed­back from the many women who at­tend­ed our an­nu­al Women’s Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence over the years, we re­alised that one area that need­ed to be ad­dressed was the lack of men­tor­ship for women in busi­ness.

“We be­lieve that di­ver­si­ty and gen­der bal­ance are in­te­gral to in­no­va­tion and eco­nom­ic growth. This ini­tia­tive is de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial re­la­tion­ships, en­abling both par­ties to be en­riched pro­fes­sion­al­ly and per­son­al­ly, in­vig­o­rat­ing their com­mit­ment to their re­spec­tive ca­reers and al­low­ing par­tic­i­pants to fur­ther de­vel­op their ca­pac­i­ty as pro­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive lead­ers.”

Ghany said men­tor­ing makes a dif­fer­ence, es­pe­cial­ly for women. She added that the men­tor­ship pro­gramme was con­cep­tu­alised in 2017, and the pi­lot be­gan in 2018 with just six mentees. Af­ter on­ly one year the pro­gramme has grown, with the 21 mentees be­ing paired with men­tors in the ar­eas of Eco­nom­ics, Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty.

This year’s con­fer­ence theme is Bal­ance For Bet­ter and it will fea­ture in­ter­na­tion­al speak­ers Roopa Un­nikr­ish­nan, Head Strat­e­gy at Har­man and in­ter­na­tion­al best­selling au­thor of the Ca­reer Cat­a­pult, as well as Suzy Teele, Head of Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion for Ad­vanced Ro­bot­ics for Man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Lo­cal speak­ers in­clude Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon; Claire Fitz­patrick, Re­gion­al Pres­i­dent BP T&T; Stephen Bag­narol, Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent & Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor

Sco­tia­bank T&T; so­cial in­clu­sion con­sul­tant Sham­la Ma­haraj, founder of Ab­Nor­mal Progress; and fash­ion de­sign­er Anya Ay­oung Chee.