What for you are the biggest challenges so far in improving gender parity in the workplace?

I think the biggest challenge is that … according to the latest data from the World Economic Forum, it would take 202 years to create gender parity in the world.

That’s incredible, Does that mean that, despite all the work that you and other organizations have been doing, not enough is being done or is this worst case business as usual scenario?

Well I think it's fair to say that the same number last year was 270 years, so it has actually improved! But I have to say, I think it's almost a joke, that it will take the world so long to create women empowerment, particularly as we know that there's an economic upside in empowering women in the range of 28 trillion US dollars so that would for example enable us to finance the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, so I think there are so many good reasons at many, many levels to really work on empowering women. In the latest survey, among the Global Compact’s more than 10,000 company participants, Goal number 5, on gender equality is the second most popular goal, so we have 45 percent of all these companies stating that they are working on this topic.

And let's talk about the women's empowerment principles. They’ve been around since 2010. Give me an idea of what kind of impact they've made.

Well, the Women Empowerment Principles that UN Global Compact created together with UN women have been extremely helpful in a corporate setting. Because these principles are making it very clear and simple what priorities businesses can set to advance women’s opportunities in the organization. So, at this moment, more than 2,100 companies have signed up to the principles and are integrating them into their business strategy. And we have made a gap analysis tool, that companies can use to measure their performance on the Principles and that have been used by more than 1,100 companies. So, it signals that there's a group of companies that have really understood that women empowerment is an important business imperative. They're doing great work. The problem is that it’s still a small group of companies and we need to scale up and reach a tipping point for gender empowerment very soon.

And can you give me some specific actions that some companies have taken which you can say, yes, that's exactly what we're looking for.

 So there are a couple of things that really excellent companies are doing that are paying off. It is ensuring that gender is considered in all succession plans within the company. Every time a position is posted, the companies make sure there's an equal part of male and female candidates. There are particular mentoring arrangements for women, to help them advance in the companies, so that is paying off. That is really making a difference.  

Another set of actions that are very positive as well, is when women are offered child care and good arrangements around maternity leave, because it can be a limitation to women when they have to pause in their careers to, of course, raise the children and, on that note as well when companies offer maternity leave opportunities both for the women and the dad.

You are discussing resistance and backlash to gender equality. Tell me more about the discussion.

I have been involved in the whole gender debate for close to thirty years now. And I'm not sure that we have really moved forward in the way we had hoped. I thought at some stage that for the next generation of women we could sort of pave the way, but I don't see that happening. So I think we are up against some really fundamental cultural barriers to women being treated in the same way as men in having opportunities in the workplace. I think it has to do with unconscious bias, in many different ways, where unconsciously people feel that men are better suited for doing certain types of jobs. For example, relating to management, and relating to dealing with numbers, and I think those unconscious biases are really unfortunate and we need to become more aware of when we are applying this kind of unconscious bias.

So where is this coming from? Is it coming from certain types of people, certain cultures, certain regions?

It's not limited to certain regions I think it's a quite sort of ingrained part of our culture. I think that makes it even more amazing when the UN Secretary-General makes it his goal to have gender parity. I think it sends such a strong signal but still, in the business community, for example, you still see only the minority of board members, and also CEOs, being women. So there's still a very, very long way to go. And the reason why we haven't solved this already is that it's not only one problem. It's a set of problems there are inter-connected, relating to unconscious bias against women, related to expectations for women being mothers in certain cultures, and also relating to the opportunities that women are traditionally given in a business setting. I mean after all, it's only within the last maybe sixty years that women have actually entered the working market in the way that we see today.

Give me an idea of what you would see it as a successful end to your mandate.

I think it would be great if all the 10,000 companies at the UN Global Compact would all sign up to the women’s empowerment principles, and really anchor the women empowerment theme as part of their business strategy. We know, from many surveys and studies, not least from McKinsey, that companies that have women on their board, on their executive management team, on leadership levels, are performing better financially than companies that don't. So I think there's every reason, from a business perspective, from a global economy perspective, from a human rights perspective, to really drive the agenda of women empowerment.