IFC partners with CSE for 5th ‘Ring the Bell for Gender Equality’ event in Sri Lanka

From left: Australian High Commissioner David Holly, MAS Holdings Deputy General Manager Strategic Sustainability and UN Global Compact Sri Lanka Steering Committee member Amanthi Perera, IFC Sri Lanka and Maldives Country Manager Amena Arif, Sri Lanka Institute of Directors Chairman Rasakantha Rasiah, UN Habitat Youth Advisory Board Asia-Pacific Representative Anoka Abeyrathne, UN Women Program Analyst Ramaaya Salgado and Colombo Stock Exchange Director Dumith Fernando – Pic by Lasantha Kumara

For the fifth consecutive year, IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, partnered with the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) yesterday to ring the opening bell for trading in celebration of International Women’s Day 2020. 

An annual global gender initiative, ‘Ring the Bell’ encourages the private sector to expand opportunities for women as leaders, employees, entrepreneurs, and consumers to promote sustainable development.

While progress has been achieved in educational and health outcomes, Sri Lanka lags behind in women’s participation in the workforce with only 34% compared to 76% of men.

At the same time, the latest research by IFC and CSE points to a rise in the number of women board directors. In 2019, 9.6% of listed company board directors were women– a significant rise from 8.5% in 2018 and 8.14% in 2017.

“Women in the workforce remain among the least utilised economic and business resource – closing this gender gap would yield exponential results,” said CSE Director Dumith Fernando. “We at CSE are encouraged to note that more of our listed companies have welcomed the participation of strong, independent women on their boards. This is evident through a steady increase over the years of the number of listed companies with women holding corporate board seats, which stands at 9.6% as at January this year.”

Accelerating the pace of gender parity could generate financial returns in the private sector and lead to important economic gains in emerging markets. Global research indicates that companies with female CEOs and CFOs have produced superior stock price performance, compared to the market average, and companies with more than one woman on the board return 3.7% a year over those that have none. 

“It is very heartening to see that these statistics show that companies in Sri Lanka are walking the talk and we are on the right trajectory. However, this pace of progress is still marginal and needs to be accelerated to match global trends,” said IFC Country Manager for Sri Lanka and the Maldives Amena Arif. “Therefore it is important to continue to take a multipronged approach to have more women in the workforce while building a sustainable pipeline for more women to take on leadership roles.” 

The ‘Women on Boards’ program is part of IFC’s broader efforts to increase women’s private sector participation and leadership by promoting the adoption of corporate governance’s best practices among Sri Lankan companies. IFC’s work in this area is supported by the Australian Government under the IFC-DFAT Women in Work program.

“Achieving gender equality and women’s economic empowerment is important for Sri Lanka in building a sustainable and high performing workforce,” said Australian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and the Maldives David Holly. “Australia believes equality and diversity are crucial for a more inclusive and prosperous economy that leads to success for women and men, families and communities, businesses and the world at large.”

The ‘Ring the Bell for Gender Equality’ event is a partnership of IFC, Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) Initiative, UN Global Compact, UN Women, Women in ETFs, and the World Federation of Exchanges. This year, the event is being held in over 90 stock exchanges around the globe.