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Written by Kate Vandenberg - Head of Women in Leadership at Sky
As a Kiwi working in the UK I’ve always been passionate about inclusivity and equality, and have seen first-hand how diverse teams really do perform better.
I am immensely proud to be from a country that for over half of the last two decades has had female Prime Ministers. Indeed, our latest has recently announced her first pregnancy and is likely to become only the second head of government in modern history to give birth in office! It has always seemed self-evident to me both the inherent fairness of gender equality, but also the clear benefits brought by diversity of perspective and experience in a workforce.
Which is why I was excited to take on the challenge to get more women into senior leadership positions at Sky and continue to build our pipeline of talented women to ensure we're fully balanced right across our company at every level.
As one of Europe’s largest entertainment and communications companies, it’s essential that Sky sets a leading example when it comes to achieving gender parity. A little over two years ago we launched our Women in Leadership initiative, since which time we have increased the mix of women in our leadership layer from 30% to 40%. That’s an increase of one third!
STEM subjects have historically been male dominated areas – and we see the impact of this reflected in the gender makeup of Sky’s technology and home service divisions. To help address the imbalance, we recently launched women only scholarship and training schemes to encourage female talent to work in these areas. This isn’t simply a recruitment exercise – the schemes involve paid retraining, supported by longer term mentoring and sponsorship both during and after training.
These are some of the many reasons why I’m proud not only to be a Kiwi, but also to work for a fantastic company like Sky. Sure, gender parity won’t happen overnight – and it won’t happen from the work of just one business – we know that.
But if you were to do one thing this week, I would encourage you to think about the hopes and ambitions of the women in your lives – wives, mothers, daughters and sisters, and ask yourself how you can help create a world where gender parity is the norm.
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