eSigning Venture Capital Proposal Template Made Easy

Esigning venture capital proposal template

hi i'm guzy good to see you hey hey how are you very well thank you good you can start mamta hello everyone my name is mumta murthy and i'm the vice president for human development here at the world bank i'm delighted to welcome you to this first plenary of our first ever world bank group gender learning week this morning we will hear stories of bold leadership by women and innovative approaches that they have taken throughout their lives and during the covid19 crisis as well as insights that they are going to bring about a future reimagined the large number of colleagues that are connected here today reflect the world bank group's deep commitment to gender equality we know that this is critical for all economies to achieve their potential and meet the challenges of the 21st century now as we know we are currently confronting a challenge of historic proportions the covid19 pandemic is intensifying the adverse effects of pre-existing gender gaps and the havoc if i may call it that um that it has reeked um runs the danger of reversing the gains that have painstakingly been made over the decades whether we're looking at health or education or jobs or entrepreneurship or voice or agency in fact and when i think about it and the effect of the pandemic is forcing us to reconsider how we do business and the women here today i'm very happy to say are leading the way with examples of how we can do things differently and what a smart recovery would look like a recovery that helps to build further the equality between men and women and we will hear from them on some of the priority actions that could be taken to create good jobs and good entrepreneurship opportunities for both men and women and for making government services more inclusive so with that let me say no more because we want to hear from from all these illustrious women i'm very pleased to welcome zane asher from cnn international who will moderate the session zayn needs no introduction so i'm not going to say anything further and hand it over to her to to get us started with our first plenary over to using oh thank you so much manta thank you so much for really um summing up some of the things you want to achieve this week as mata mentioned i'm a i'm an anchor at cnn international really excited to be part of this discussion to kick off gender learning week and this is all about leading through change it's all about prioritizing uh gender equality just given some of the economic and structural changes and challenges more importantly that the world is experiencing right now so uh to kick off i'm really excited to speak to ngozio conjoala former finance minister of nigeria as well as au special envoy to mobilize international financial support in the fight against covid 19. uh ngozi thank you so much for being with us if you could unmute yourself and go z that would be great it's at the bottom of your screen wonderful can you hear me now i can okay zayn thanks thank you so um people initially talked about covert 19 as being the great equalizer you know everyone sort of said this is a virus that can affect black white rich poor uh doesn't matter your background you're equally susceptible and yes while that is true it certainly doesn't impact everybody equally um this virus has not only revealed some of the deep socioeconomic inequalities in our society but it's also worsened and exacerbated them what do you think are the long-term consequences of that well thank you thank you very much durian i think this is a good place a good place to start we've seen indeed just what you said that um even though kovid is a pandemic that has hit the whole world it certainly is not impacting all parts of the population within countries or you know impacting different countries the same um and and this is where we we think about the gender aspects and about women and um there are three things that have worried me uh in my chair as a in my role as the chair of garvey which i just left three weeks ago as au and who envoy i think about three gaps with respect to women the first one is what i call the safeguarding and protecting life's gap and what what is this i worry about women's access to protective equipment to life-saving vaccines we know that among health care workers uh women predominate i'll just give one or two numbers to illustrate according to who statistics women they're 28 million nurses in the world and women that make up 90 of this population globally on the african continent is 76 percent with respect to doctors women make up 40 globally and 28 on on the african continent and so we we know that when it comes to access women often don't have the same kind of level playing field to get access to what they need so i worry so much are they getting access to the ppe's and all the life-saving equipment is anyone tracking this are they going to get access to vaccines uh you know we're in the middle of trying to improve the supply of vaccines now uh to to make sure they reach developing countries and poor and rich alike but what happens when these vaccines actually get to a country do they get it what worries me is that nobody's actually tracking as far as i know what is happening with respect to access it's all very new but i think this is something that needs to be looked at to make sure there's no differential access that's the first gap i think the second gap that i worry about is the is the economic uh inequality uh a gap this is particularly with respect to to developing countries but even here in rich countries you have seen in the united states for example uh how uh women and those at the bottom end of the ladder have been impacted so much by the economic effects of this pandemic the lockdowns and the closures have thrown many people out of work you know that in developing countries most women are in the informal sector particularly in the urban slums and urban areas they work on a daily basis they go to market to sell when you have lockdowns when you have all these barriers to the economy when the economy is down they suffer because they cannot earn on a daily basis and so i really do worry about that gap what is happening to the women and you know that in many of our countries we don't have the fiscal space to put forward good social safety net programs i'll just tell you you know on the african continent you know the fiscal stimulus averages two to three percent of gdp compared to the rich countries where it's eight to ten percent in fact in some countries it's twenty percent of gdp so that worries me what's happening to the women and their children you see people here in the rich countries queuing for food at food banks let alone in in in our countries you know say on the african continent so that issue of limited fiscal space to deal with this problem worries me a lot the third gap that i want to talk about is what i the gender violence gap we all know that um in difficult times there's stress within the the home environment and many of us you know people who are working at home many women you know those who stay at home suffer and we have some statistics um you know just uh some some surveys that have been done some research shows there's a 42 percent increase in gender vibe gender-based violence in africa in europe is 31 percent and and in the us it's 30 percent in nigeria we had a survey done in my own countries actually less 18 increase but 25 in the northeast where there is a lot of fragility so what i'm trying to say is look the statistics show that there's a big issue here that has to be dealt with so between those three gaps i think we really need to be on our toes with respect to the gender aspects of what's happening in this and i challenge the world bank to help us with tracking some of what is happening month i'm talking to you and your colleagues tracking information trying to let us get the statistics on what's happening in those three gaps you know that is just what you said about gender violence is so scary because as you were saying i was thinking you know you talked about nigeria 18 overall over 30 in the northeast those are the numbers that are even reported let alone the ones that aren't even reported because women end up spending more time with their abusers during times of lockdown uh you also touched on the fact that in africa we don't necessarily have the same stimulus same safety nets as they do in the west so my question to you now is really about solutions so for women you know just given the dire straits that a lot of women are in the continent on the continent um how do you go about building more economic resilience from this point forward especially as the vaccine rollouts happened happen so that that women are better protected from this point on well i i think that we we first let me touch on the economic side and maybe then touch on something that i had some experience with which i think we can we can build on uh women will not get particular attention unless you make it so and this was a realization that came to me when i was finance minister we talked a lot about gender mainstreaming and suddenly one day as finance minister uh the second time around by the way the first time i hadn't done as much but the second time i realized i had some power in my hands financial power to make things happen differently for women and i think that's what we need to think about during this pandemic i i created a program with the help of my colleagues uh in which we incentivize other cabinet ministers to try to produce results beyond and above what they would have done for women within their sector in order to have a better impact on women's lives and we started with a small program 25 million dollars and i said to colleagues in cabinet with the total support of the president who was very gender friendly if you if we can look at your program and you can show me how you would produce more results of good impact to women we will transfer additional budget uh to help you scale up the program you know to to help you do more and about six ministries volunteered to do this ministry of works ministry of health ministry of agriculture and and so we put aside just a small amount 25 million and we were able to incentivize actions that were beneficial to girls and women within these ministries to give you a couple of uh things that impacted for women in agriculture we were trying to do uh the the minister of agriculture then akin edition i was doing a program on electronic wallets to allow women farmers access to improved seeds and fertilizer through this electronic wallet where they could purchase right near their homes from local dealers but women were not being included in as much numbers with this incentive we were able to include two million more women farmers who had access and they were able to produce more so we need to to so so that's one on the health side you know have this problem the fistula from young girls who give birth too early you know and then they have this condition that it is really terrible um and we were able to incentivize them to do 3 000 more repairs of these girls that change their lives around completely this is just giving a couple of examples because we don't have time but what i'm trying to say is during this pandemic we need to get out of the box and think really creatively and say what can we do where we are using the tools that means we are to incentivize you know the improvement in the lives of girls and women and and if you're in the finance ministry and you're a female minister you can do more male minister you can do more wherever you are you just need to think a bit out of the box because the pandemic is really hitting uh so so so much uh having so much of a detrimental impact on the lives of those at the bottom end of the ladder many of them are women yeah absolutely i think that anyone who is in any kind of ministry of finance across the continent can learn a lot from that especially what you were saying i mean luckily gender really it is important to definitely incentivize something that you had so i think people can learn a lot from that um going forward though just because um you know you talked about women on the continent being a lot of them being in the informal sector therefore they're suffering disproportionately how governments go forward balancing keeping everyone safe um implementing lockdowns really make sure their populations are protected from dependent but also um making sure that their economies stay afloat it's a very difficult thing to balance i mean gender aside for everybody in the population well you know it is difficult to balance but what we're learning is that at least let me use the continent as an example um you know is that their differential impacts we've talked about differential impacts on different parts of the population but also geographically we have noticed their differential impacts again if you if you take nigeria as an example you you will learn that many of the rural areas the impact of koved and in some states it's not as difficult or as bad as others i'm not saying this meaning that those states should be complacent no they should still respect all the rules to protect people but we see that in the urban areas there's a really serious problem of spikes uh you know and and the impact is heavy so the thing is differentially what some of the recommendations have been is in those states and in those areas where it is not as bad you don't have to have a national kind of verdict you can you can you can change it so that way the impact is not so bad you allow economic activities to continue and that the way they normally would and and then other areas where the impact is very severe you take you know strong measures to make sure that whether it's complete lockdown partial lockdown whatever the case may be be that you take those measures to keep people safe um and so that's one one of the the ways that governments can look at this what's actually happening inside the country what are the differential impacts on different parts of the country that's one too in looking at how you come out of kovid you have to look at um you know your population and make very good choices about who gets to the vaccines first of course frontline workers i think that's a synagogue but after that you know how do you approach your population you know to make sure that this feeds into the ability to come you know sort of revive your economy quickly and and get people back to work so i think that it requires creativity it requires innovation and it requires looking at the facts and the science yeah definitely not a one as you were saying earlier just it's not a one size fits all you have to look at the different parts of your population who is suffering economically more um and and taylor make the response to suit them my final question to you is obviously because we are both nigerian i do want to ask you this um you know nigeria clearly producer of oil has relied on oil for economic has reaped the rewards of um being an oil producing country for sure um but that's a massive problem when oil prices suddenly crash and countries are not prepared for it when oil prices crashed nigerians pivoted or tried to pivot i should say towards a much more um self-sufficient made in nigeria approach i remember going back to lagos and everybody talking about made in nigeria made in nigeria now it's debatable whether or not that was effective whether or not that ended up materializing in the way it should have but at least there was an attempt to say what can we learn from this crisis what can we learn from oil prices crashing and us not being ready for it in this pandemic is there is there a way for us as a continent to really learn from it and to say that the continent of africa is going to reinvent the way it does business going forward after having learned from this massive out of the blue economic shock what are your thoughts on that well well yes i do saying that there are things we can learn on in africa but all over the world i think we i think we must learn them the proper way right the right lessons what we saw during the pandemic is that um people began to see that some of the supply chains or key products they consumed were you know impacted for example for medical products i don't think people had really given it thought before but when countries started to put export prohibitions on on on on masks and gloves and ppe's and then now we see vaccine nationalism in some cases taking place people have begun to think wow you know how do i in future deal with this now we've got trade and and so trade has enabled us eventually to let people see that that's in nationalism or just protecting your own population does not work in this pandemics because you'll never be safe until everyone is safe so you know it makes sense to have trade rules that allow goods to move but at the same time it has shown us that maybe we need to think more smartly about some essential things that we consume um let me just take the pharmaceuticals you know therapeutics uh diagnostics and even vaccines uh at the end of the day uh on the continent the economic commission for africa has put forward statistics that we import more than 90 percent of the pharmaceuticals we consume on the continent 90 that is amazing it's south africa and nigeria produced some and little bits and pieces in other countries but that's an amazing statistics so one thing to learn from from here is what do we now do and i think the country should think about it we need obviously to look at a pharmaceutical industry that takes more roots so we are not so dependent that would also create good manufacturing jobs in pharmaceuticals on the continent now we have the african continental free trade area that gives us a market of 1.3 billion consumers how can we establish an industry that can now with free borders serve that big population so that's a good lesson to learn that we don't have to import everything we can manufacture some of those things on the continent similarly food one of the sectors that has been a bit resilient is agriculture um you know how how do we incentivize people so we can produce more and not have to depend on important we still import we spend billions of dollars on the continent still importing lots of food items and and this has shown us look we can't produce more we should focus on how to incentivize production particularly for women you know most of our food on the continent is produced by women how do we get seeds fertilizers and what is needed into their hands uh so that they can they can you know help us be more self-sufficient uh in some of the vital products yeah and i think that we have definitely learned i think across the world i don't you know not just africa but across the world we've learned um that supply chains are not as dependable or not as resilient as um as you might think especially when there's a massive economic shock like a a pandemic like a virus and so um but with that though uh gazia condreywala thank you so much for giving us your time today i i think that everyone who's listened to this has learned so much from your wisdom and um good luck with the overhead thank you thank you so much zayn thank you everybody bye bye okay um moving forward i would like to introduce our next panel a panel of three incredible women leaders who are going to talk to us just basically sort of continuing the themes of what ngozi talked about uh writing the wrongs of gender inequality in their respective industries and also bold examples of their own leadership as well and after that we're going to open the floor to audience questions so um i'd like to introduce our panel we can see one of them already shivani uh sex sector founder and managing director and ceo of india alternatives private equity fund one of the few women-led firms in the region thank you so much and i can see rana as well um rana is the ceo of affectiva in egypt which is a software company that builds artificial intelligence and i don't know if we can i know we can hear jokate i'm not sure if we can actually see her dracata can you hear me uh yes can you see me now i can't see but i can hear you which is almost as good um if you have perfect okay um so uh jocate maguela is district commissioner for kizeraway in tanzania which is just west of the dar salaam region and she manages a population of 112 000 people so all of these women bring very diverse perspectives to the conversation for gender learning geek i do want to start off with shavani with you because you um you run one of the few women-led private equity firms in the region i just think you have a really good perspective when it comes to uh managerial role for women and also the responsibility that women in these kinds of positions have you heard um benghazi talking about just the fact that she was a female finance minister she had a massive responsibility and also ability to actually affect change for women as do you so my first question to you is how do you incorporate a gender lens when it comes to your investing themes thanks zane shivan if it happens again i think that you should try taking off your video and then doing it again but let's try again you can start again okay um so one of the big myths that need to be busted how is that better yes yeah okay perfect is that women are insignificant as customers okay and in fact we believe that women are the world's largest target market uh and even today this market is so poorly understood in fact uh in one of the ift reports which i'm sure many of us uh you know around this table have read uh they talk about misconceptions in offering and designing products for women so of course when you think about designing a product for a woman and and this example was interesting they said well why can't we just make a pink credit card for example right so so it's a very male lens uh for for this huge huge segment of the population that that demands uh something very different something unique and and want to feel great and what do we do at india alternatives according to our own internal estimates based on reports from rbi world bank and bcg we believe women control 60 to 80 percent of consumption decisions uh making them one of the largest mark with the potential of something like 180 billion dollars so if we're not servicing this market correctly obviously we are doing a very big injustice to to women um you know the way and what what we've seen on the ground here is that the urban middle class indian woman is going through a very dramatic change where she is now prioritizing herself in the consumption hierarchy so let's say if you looked at the way she thought about spending uh a decade ago and and if this woman had discretionary income uh she would she would prioritize spending it on her husband her children her in-laws in fact she came very low in the pecking order of her own spent uh which is interesting and i i think the development and the change that we've seen on the ground zayn over the last decade is that this woman is now ready uh to spend on herself uh so anecdotally uh you know one of one of our investments uh in our first fund uh was in a lingerie company uh and when we invested we found that uh you know it was a very very male lens in terms of connecting with with the woman customer and the brand and message of the company was transform yourself and we said well that that is not exact that's not what we want to tell our urban middle class indian woman who's now beginning to feel empowered right and we actually have we hired a consultant to go interview women in uh in the larger cities in india in tier two and tier three cities and they came back and said a lot of indian women uh urban middle class indian women are feeling better and they want to feel better they want i think that that's the important part right they want to feel better they want to feel more empowered and and this message is not connecting so we we uh reoriented we pivoted the the brand of the company uh to a much more woman-centric and woman-friendly message uh you know so we moved it from transform yourself to fabulous as i am uh so i think uh this is just one example of of incorporating that gender lens uh in the way that we invest yeah that that's actually fascinating um especially when you were talking about women being much more ready to spend on themselves and just this idea that women are not insignificant as customers they are much more significant but i think a lot of male led private equity funds um would think they are so what would you say are the long-term consequences just given your unique perspective as a woman who leads a private equity fund and obviously you've been able to use your sphere of influence to implement change what is the what are the long-term consequences to the other side of that when you have an under-representation of women in leadership roles particularly in private equity what would you say are the consequences of that and if i could just ask you to keep your answers ready to be short so that everyone's sure respond that'd be great absolutely i'll i'll be brief but i think if i say you know if i were to answer that in one word i think the long-term consequences would be tragic in fact we we see that in india today and it was interesting to hear uh nicole talk about doctors and i think she said something like they're 40 of doctors uh you know are women and work in india but on a relative standpoint the the percentage of the representation and fundamental pain is abysmally and if that continues over the over the long run um i think the biggest consequence of that will that will be that women uh will not have adequate uh will not be adequate recipients of capital because there's enough uh studies out there that show a correlation uh between you know allocation and and repeat of capital so if you just have more and more real uh run private equity funds the consequences will range from not understanding the largest target market uh of women not being able to sell or to create products that women demand uh and then also much more severe you know equally severe consequences of of not having adequate capital uh for for women recipients um so i think i think those two sort of go hand in hand so i think those are the those those would be the long-term consequences of not not having more women being represented in fund management all right thank you i want to turn to rana and l so rana you wrote a book called girl decoded and i you know i think i i absolutely love the concept and i think i really want um everyone to sort of hear what it's about because the book documents your journey as you know what is what has been referred to as like your journey as a nice egyptian girl to actually becoming a woman and revolutionizing technology on the way so um a why did you write the book and for women out there who are reading this book or who plan to read this book what do you hope they take away from it thank you zane hi everybody um yeah so i'm an egyptian american scientist turned an entrepreneur um i grew up in the middle east as a nice egyptian girl as he said zayn and then found myself um you know i studied computer science for my phd and found myself in boston where i am right now um challenged with this opportunity to start a company in the tech in the artificial intelligence space and i remember we're 10 years into the company but when we first spun out of mit um i was really you know i did the whole samuel road show to raise money for the company and it hit me that we met zero female investors we were always pitching to older white guys basically there was you know there wasn't a lot of diversity and building onto this point that kind of bias in in the whole tech ecosystem manifests in a number of ways it manifests in the amount of dollars that go into uh funding female founders it goes into the percent of wealthy women who have you know capital to to invest further and and um yeah support female founded businesses um and and also it introduces bias in how we build ai so so anyways i wrote the book called girl decoded it's a memoir it follows my personal journey uh becoming a a ceo of a tech company and also um the the journey of the technology i'm in the business of building emotional intelligence into technology which is again a very i mean it was started by by by a group of female scientists because we acknowledged that the way we think about technology and ai is very uh cognitively based and we don't consider empathy in how we think about tech and and so we've been calling uh for this idea of humanizing technology for the past 20 years or so um yeah so i think we have a lot of work to do around the technology ecosystem um and and the pandemic hasn't really helped no no absolutely not so thank you for that summary for your book um you know when you look at the tech landscape be it in silicon valley or elsewhere naturally i mean we all know that the the gender gaps in technology are pretty severe and and they are far and widespread they need to change so it's one thing for technology companies uh startups in silicon valley to talk about yes this is something that is a priority um better representation of minorities better representation of women and it's another thing to actually implement real concrete change so what do you think the tech firms have done right overall what do you think they need to do better uh in order to make sure that um what they say is a priority i.e better gender representation actually becomes a reality yeah i think we have to be intentional about it um so it's not just going to happen by accident even if the even if the talent is out there and i do believe that the talent is out there i think as a company as an organization you have to really prioritize that and you have to to quantify you have to measure it to advocate for it so for me i'm part of an organization called always it is a non-profit that supports both female founders and female funders and we created an incredible community over the past number of years and there's a lot of programming one of the things that came out of all rays which i'm very proud of you know this idea of a mantle where it's a panel of just men it's very very common in the tech industry unfortunately still and so we're trying to combat the mantle and we've created um visionary voices it's the speaking bureau for women in technology and we we try to support each other i will not get on a panel anymore where i'm the only one i always challenge the organizers to do better um and also try to think about people of color too so so that's really important um so i think we just have to be intentional about it and and it's unfortunately across the entire ecosystem we need more female founders i mean i was just looking at the latest statistics only four percent of venture funding over the last year went to female founded businesses and less than 10 of investors are women right we need to i think these numbers are u.s focused um but but but i'm sure it's similar worldwide um so we need more now founders more female investors we need more female board members right and just more representation across the board yeah i mean i i completely agree and actually what you were saying about um the manuals um had me thinking because i mean obviously as a woman it's great that you can stand up and say i'm not going to participate in an all-male panel and i know other women who say that too however i think that actually there's now been the sea change where i'm hearing of more men saying that they will not participate in all male panels which i think is phenomenal because yeah we have we have we have a situation where yes you know both of you as women in your prospective fields can naturally implement changes in your companies because you're at the top of your companies but also men can too even if you know they might not see it as part of their sphere of influence they can actually make changes to men deciding not to sit on all male panels i think is definitely a step in the right direction i do want to bring your cate um with a few minutes we have left so um jokate you're obviously i know you can't okay we can't see you but we can hear you which i think is almost as good so um it's weird because i can see you all okay great okay um so you know you're obviously extremely young and you're female you're a district commissioner tanzania um where do you think that tanzania has made progress when it comes to gender equality and where do you think that some of the gaps still remain well i think we've definitely made great tremendous progress when it comes to girls access to primary secondary education women's representation in decision making spaces i'll just set an example here when you look between the years 2010 to 2011 throughout 2014 2015 we've seen the proportion of women in senior positions increase from 33 to 41 and we've also seen improved access to employment in sectors such as manufacturing trade hotels food services um and also we've seen just set a tone we've seen we've had the first female vice president um back in 2015 we've had the first speaker of parliament we've had the first female finance minister um we've had a lot of firsts in the country which has set a tone which has also given women a room to show their talent in leadership and it also acts as inspiration for young girls across the country hello i'm i'm trying to unmute myself i'm sorry so those are the those are the sort of strides that tanzania has made but where do you see some of the gaps well the biggest be honest we've done tremendous um we've done tremendous work when it comes to legal and institutional framework but the biggest hurdle that i see is definitely gender norms culture and social and economic inequalities we still live in a society where um culture still doesn't really truly believe a woman can you know can hold certain senior positions they accept it because of the legal frameworks and what is needed to be done but deep down we still have to um break these gender norms and cultures and that's what we're still trying to do but i really see uh there's a greater future for women to do much better uh in the very near future as as we've seen progress throughout the years and might ask you one more before we go back to hopefully have time to to talk to rana and slovani again but one more is you know cultural um cultural shifts are very difficult to change i mean they're deep they go back centuries i mean it's a difficult question i understand that but how do you think we can sort of begin to dismantle some of those um cultural views about what a woman's place is in society in a place like tanzania what what i what i commend what i definitely commend we we've seen um for example political parties uh we've seen institutions really be really sensitive on um making sure there's like like equality like women are employed women women are hurt which is great uh for example um with the role that i've been given i'm not the only female district commissioner in the country i was appointed together with a number of other female leaders to these positions and this just goes to send a message that women are important um we have a space in our communities and once we are given a chance we can truly truly um go showcase what we the power we have and what we can do for our societies and once upon we get this power now it's up to us to reap and enabling fellow women and especially younger women the upcoming generations to see value in in themselves through us because we mirror what we we anticipate these girls to become in the near future so it's great it's really important for us to continue to be role models and to continue to come up show off show up and really enable our communities to say okay wow we have women leaders they can actually do it they can actually get things done and once they see these examples in real time then um a precedence of a different mental and um perspective on what women leadership can actually do for our societies and in turn they become more receptive of women in different positions so it's it's much of a burden because whenever you get a position people expect you to not perform so so we have to we have to work extra hard to to to prove that we can actually uh do a great job and most times we do a great job even than more men in similar positions can i build that yeah absolutely yeah i do think representation really matters once you see somebody you can um kind of resonate with and you can look up to a woman and say oh if she's done it i can do that too i think that's really powerful in the united states of course we've just born in our first ever um indian african-american um vice president kamala harris and you know we can't say anymore that we've never had a woman vice president that that glass ceiling has been broken and i think that's super powerful it's an incredibly powerful message to the world right i'm sorry i'm gonna i'll meet myself absolutely it's representation is really important just for the inspirational element of it as well but also what jakarta said you know just to even have access to the table just to even get a seat on the table you have to be better and that is something that i think hopefully hopefully i pray will will eventually change with time um shivani my final question's gonna go to you but if you could keep it very brief i would sincerely appreciate it is um how do you make sure that female entrepreneurs have equal access to capital because i think that's really important when it comes to um building more female entrepreneurs in society and leveling the economic playing field overall um i think that's a brilliant question green and i'm gonna echo a um i think the biggest issue when i mentioned 10 percent of investors are women in the u.s that number is obvious in india is eight percent in india uh uh which is which is drastically low and so i think getting out there in front management life and technology uh there are very deeply uh that you know women aren't cut out it's very type of a business you know cut through to its whole narrative of barbarians at the gate what have you but the reality is that it's much more uh of a long-term business which is relationship oriented so zayn uh to try to keep it brief here the the point is representation being vocal i think we all have responsibility in our visions so getting out there suffering myths uh being vocal be speaking women um you know but but as this takes a while in interim other things one of the things that we are doing is proactively uh trying to host sessions uh with women and telling them how to equip themselves oftentimes we find that women entrepreneurs uh want a certain level of perfection before they go out and fundraise visa within their male counterparts so so equipping them uh with that uh those are just some of the suggestions but but i'll but i'll keep it grief and and uh i totally resonate with with both the rana and zukate in terms of representation shattering myths and just being vocal being visible um thank you so much shivani thank you ron i thank you georgie i want to turn out the audience questions i'm going to just read what some of them are um i'm going to start with uh this question for uh rana and you may have touched on this a little bit but maybe you can expand it's from joseph lazier joseph thank you so much for your question um what have been the hindrances to women's leadership globally obviously obviously we're talking about um just having our first female female vice president in um in the united states and obviously for a westernized country that's quite surprising you know in the uk we had margaret thatcher back in 1979 to 1990 so what are some of the hindrances you think in this country and beyond for that that sort of thing to take this long i i think it's what you said right culture like some of these things are so deeply ingrained in our cultures that it takes years and you know years and years to change it um i i do think especially in technology right as i think about how technology has become mainstream and artificial intelligence in particular is becoming mainstream i think it's so important to recognize that if we don't include diverse voices as we're designing these technologies it is going to result in very biased you know systems and solutions that are just gonna exasperate um kind of the biases we see in the world today so i i think some of it is perpetual i don't know i i i i feel like it needs a lot of courage so a lot of people who are willing to take a risk on you um yeah that's a that's a that's a hard question i mean i grew up in the middle east where again there's a lot of cultural norms that as a woman i had to abide to but i found something i'm very passionate about which is technology and i i kind of you know i was willing to take a risk and challenge these norms um and it took a while to not feel guilty about that right and feel that i kind of failed my parents i'm a divorced woman it took years for my parents to to kind of share that within their social network so i think there's a lot of these yeah cultural norms that we have to break free of that's so hard to dismantle um i oh i have a great question i think i'm going to ask this to siobhani i wish i knew who asked this so i could thank them i don't think i have let's see i don't think i have the name of who asked this but whoever sent this thank you so much so somebody's asking how can they make a difference in the lives of women in their own job they they're an executive director they don't say where they're an executive director at which is i think quite important but i think overall just as a leader of a company um and they go on to say um international women's day is approaching what can i do differently in my service to the lives of women and young girls i think that's a brilliant question um i'm going to ask siobhani and thank you whoever asked that question it's a great question it's an amazing question zayn do we know if it was a male 1 i don't know and i don't i don't want to guess because i don't want to yeah i don't know but it doesn't it doesn't happen at all if somebody if one of the organizers could message me who asked that question that that would be great but if not that's totally fine siobhan if you could that's fine so i think what you can do whoever's asked that brilliant question what you can do is go out shatter preconceived notions i think women it sounds like from listening to rana from listening to your country uh you know and and this entire is um so if you the first thing you could do is shatter preconceived notions it doesn't matter if you're a man or woman lots of interesting ideas have come out but what are the preconceived norms uh men are not necessarily better at technology but are not necessarily fun management uh and in fact there's council studies that show gender balance across all of these how it has positive results so be a steward of i would say be vocal uh because because we need to shake things up a little bit right now we can't just uh you know look at the status quo and and hope for things to change and while while we're in the midst of exchange we'd have to be much more vocal uh be much more proactive so so what i would say is be vocal yeah and also yeah mentoring as well i think is really important i think that you know it's breaking free of that um there can only be one if there's a woman in a particular role it can only be one and you know i'm not going to this other woman because what if that jeopardizes my role as you've got a sort of very not competitive it's getting rid of that competitive mindset where i think as women if to be perfectly honest with you we can sometimes compete against other women and just sort of um dismantling that notion and knowing that there's more there's room for more than one woman at the table and i think understanding that you will mentor you'll be much more generous with your time and you will use your sphere of influence um to help other women in a much more productive way so that question i'm told came from liberia but we're not sure who that person is i do have another question for jokate um you know jokate um how did you innovate as a district commissioner how did you how did you make it how did you innovate while you were in that role well um i think how i got to this world i've definitely gone to school i've been very vocal and very engaged at a very tender age i've held a number of leadership positions uh i've done quite a number of works with regards to um enabling conducive environments for women let's say young girls with disabilities to get sports facilities so i've been actively actively involved then i got into active politics that's when i got the appointment now upon getting the appointment i think what i've managed to do with uh my role is really approach it with uh aspiration and inspiration but at the same time partner with different people because we have limited resources um because i i i lead a district that is that is really poor in my in my in the region that i'm at so i really need to collaborate and partner with different stakeholders within and outside government but the thing that i'm i would say uh that we managed to actually do is uh build our first girls boarding school which was pretty innovative because it enabled us to um as we as i said it previously representation matters uh most girls from here really don't make it to high school and they don't make it to university so being able to build a first girls boarding school that goes up to high school gives girls um perspective of what they can achieve um once they get into school so that was pretty um pretty innovative because nothing has of that um of that nature has been done by any district commissioner of or any leader um in my space and it has really really um enabled us to change perspective in a in in a district where um it is dominantly muslims um of the coasts who really don't see uh girls as a priority so for us to put girls as um on top of our agenda really enabled uh us to um make give confidence to these young girls who want to excel to want to actually go to school and once in school want to excel in school and want to pursue further education i can't hear you wait i was muted um i'm so sorry thank you so much for classic for that question i want to give a final question before we run out of time to rana um you know what uh albert kikwenga thank you albert is asking what are some of the stereotypes that you had to surmount while trying to lead the way for change thank you zane thank you albert for the question um a few first of all that you know um women do not necessarily have um can be leaders in in technology and can be ceos of of really kind of state of the art companies that are pushing the boundaries of what technology can can look like and be like um definitely coming from the middle east this idea of you know i um i started my phd program while i was a newly married and i had that meant i had to you know kind of leave um my country and and i moved to the united kingdom to do my phd there and that was that was pretty kind of pushing the boundaries um um and and then once again i did that again when i moved to boston with two young kids as a divorced and single mom i remember my dad and almost everybody in my family saying you're gonna fail like you're gonna be miserable you can't do this alone so i i think again back to having faith and having courage and supporting yourself with people who really believe in you that that was really key um and paying it forward saying i liked what you said about mentorship and and and just make you know being grateful for the support we're each getting but knowing that we also have a responsibility to pay it forward and that gives me a lot of ammo actually it's uh i find that it helps me back absolutely um and we have run out of time but um shivani jakarta irani thank you so much for your inspiration imagination um i think that you know the audience will agree with me that we've learned so much especially about the importance of representation not just with women leading but also men can do a lot men do have a lot of power here and they i mean just because it might not necessarily affect them in the same way that doesn't mean they can't um implement changes too and also i think the biggest takeaway here is just how hard it is to dismantle preconceived stereotypes when it comes to what a woman's role is uh particularly in some of the countries that three of you represent but also here in the united states it's taking us a very long time to have a female vice president um so we've learned an enormous amount um the learning does continue with at the world bank group through gender learning week and i hope everyone in the audience can make use of all the exciting sessions that um that is on the roster dell plus build a much more equal world for all thank you so much for participating thank you to our panelists and stay safe and happy 2021. thank you thank you thanks everyone thanks a lot that was brilliantly done thank you thank you