Remarks by President McAleese at the Women’s Executive Network Celebration of Leadership Gala Dinner
The Convention Centre, Dublin, Thursday, 9th June, 2011
Dia dhíbh a cháirde, Conas ata sibh? I take it for granted that the women in this room are a lot better than good – you have had to be to achieve what you have achieved and I am very grateful to Melanie Walker, Vice-President of the Women’s Executive Network for the invitation that brings me into such formidable but also reassuring company.
Here are people who believe passionately in the leadership potential of women, people who explore that potential and reveal it in their everyday lives. It can be a heavy burden to bear, to be a young woman in a world that expects a lot from women. I started off with a different burden – the burden of exceedingly low expectations and high barriers. At fifteen I first said I would like to be a lawyer. The next words I heard, from our parish priest were “You can’t because you are a woman”. Lucky for me, my mother was listening. She had left school at fifteen and had nine live children by the age of thirty eight. She asked the priest to leave and then gave me the only career advice either parent ever gave me. “Ignore him….” I am paraphrasing her for decency’s sake for her actual phrase was slightly more colourful. In any case I am always glad that, at least in that case, I was an obedient child.
But the priest was, it turned out, only telling it like it was for when I did make it to Law School three years later the main introductory text by eminent jurist Glanville Williams stated baldly that the only possible reason for women to enter Law School was to find a good husband. When five years later I was called to the bar where there were then no women in practice, the Lord Chief Justice’s gift to me and my two female colleagues was a hard bound copy of the said Glanville Williams book - as if to reinforce the point.
A legendary senior counsel suggested rather publicly that when, as he expected, I failed at the bar I could at least open a little bordello at the back of the bar library. I assured him I had no intention of failing but if such an unlikely bordello were ever to exist he would never be a client as there would be a sign on the outside saying “gentlemen only”. That was the level of certain of the discourse we women were expected to put up with and yet it was very far from being the whole truth, for there were many senior lawyers, barristers, solicitors, magistrates and judges who went out of their way to be reassuring and encouraging and who in their own gentlemanly, humanly decent way created for us a quiet network of support which saw us through those early uncertain days.
It is only with hindsight I now comprehend how essential that informal network was. On my first day in court, which was my first day at the bar, a solicitor I barely knew entrusted me with my first client, much to the obvious dismay of the said client. We entered the courtroom together and I instantly realised that despite all the qualifications, books, wigs and gown, I had absolutely no idea of where to sit whereas my client had a worrying familiarity with the place. In that terrifying moment, all I wanted was my mother. But a wise old solicitor sitting up front happened to look around, took in the scene, realised my panic, moved up on the bench and signalled me to sit down. “You’ll be fine.” he said quietly. “I’ll keep you right.” My fears quelled. I was not on my own, I had a guide, I was connected to the grid. Most importantly someone believed I could do the job, albeit at the outset with a little bit of help.
That is precisely what the Women’s Executive Network offers though in a much more structured way – a connection to the energy grid of other women’s wisdom, knowledge, experience, generosity, skill, contact lists, perspectives, soothing reassurance and welcome. These things bridge that scary gap of self-doubt and inexperience. The network provides a gathering place for the physical, emotional, psychological and intellectual muscle that is needed to ensure that we do not waste or savagely limit the operating scope of the talents of women as we did in virtually every past generation. Today thanks to so many women like those gathered here, we know that the leadership of women in the civic, business and political space is not simply about paying paternalistic lip-service to equality but about seminally changing essence and outcomes. A 2010 McKinsey survey of business leaders worldwide across all industries showed that companies with more women in top management out-performed companies with no women executives on every organisational and financial indicator. Their research reveals that companies with a higher proportion of women in top management, experience enhanced financial performance – 10% higher return on equity, 36% higher stock price growth and nearly double the overall average growth before interest and taxes. Hard evidence of hard-to-ignore improved outcomes and a challenge to us to continue to fight for the elimination of the ongoing factors which inhibit women from fully accessing employment and promotion opportunities.
Striving for equality is a social and economic imperative, not simply because we have the right to equal treatment and opportunity but because for our society to fully flourish, we have to stop the chronic wastefulness of flying on one wing when we have two.
I thank WXN and similar organisations for encouraging that second wing to take to flight, for encouraging women entrepreneurs and managers to act as mentors to other women, for confronting the need for women to step up to leadership roles in every sphere of life, for strengthening our individual and collective nerve, for being out there laying down the pathways and footprints that others can use as roadmaps and inspirational role models.
Seventy seven years ago today Donald Duck made his debut in an animated film by the name of the Wise Little Hen. She asked his help in planting and harvesting the corn but he faked sickness and ungallantly left her to get on with the heavy work herself. When the harvest was in and the wise little hen had baked up a storm for a harvest feast, needless to say Donald was first up to the table. I have always thought it more than unfair that his is the name that soars over animation history and the hardworking, multi-tasking, high-achieving and wise hen gets overlooked. Time we looked at the world through different eyes.
I thank the WXN for ensuring we do not settle for the status quo, for investing in momentum, for insisting on pushing out the boundaries of women’s contribution. The contemporary American author and poet Diane Ackerman put it well: “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find I have lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” We are entitled to live the length, width and depth of our lives and thanks to you more and more women will do exactly that.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.