Slovenian Diplomats Meet Iran’s Women Entrepreneurs

EghtesadOnline: Iran and Slovenia discussed ways of improving bilateral economic and trade cooperation.

News ID: ۷۸۴۵۹۳

10 April 2019

Director General for Economic and Public Diplomacy at the Slovenian Foreign Ministry Alenka Suhadolnik met with President of Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture Masoud Khansari in Tehran on Monday.

The meeting was followed by a forum between Slovenian diplomats and Iranian women entrepreneurs of TCCIM. Presentations by visiting Slovenian officials mainly focused on the impact of women’s presence in top management positions, the TCCIM news website reported.

According to Suhadolnik, the World Economic Forum report in 2018 ranked Slovenia 11th among 149 countries in terms of women’s status, Financial Tribune reported.

“This is while more than 10 years ago, Slovenia was placed 51st among 115 countries surveyed at the time,” she said.

Noting that the share of women in the management board of largest listed companies in Slovenia is increasing, the visiting European official added that a 40% target by 2020 has been set for women in managerial positions.

“Studies show companies with the highest share of women in leading positions have a 35% higher return on equity. Those with an above-average diversity in the management team achieve 19% higher revenues from innovation and companies with over 30% of leading positions occupied by women have a 6% higher net profit margin. Startups founded by men created 31% for each dollar invested and the companies founded by women created as much as 78%,” TCCIM’s news website quoted Suhadolnik as saying.

Iran is ranked 142nd in the latest World Economic Forum annual report on “The Global Gender Gap”—a two-notch drop from last year’s 140th.

The WEF report gave Iran a score of 0.589 in terms of women’s parity with men (0.00 suggesting absolute imparity and 1.00 indicating complete parity).

The 2018 report covers 149 countries and quantifies the magnitude of gender disparities and tracks their progress over time, with a specific focus on gaps between women and men across four key areas: health, education, economy and politics.

Iran ranked 143rd for economic participation and opportunity with a score of 0.376, 103rd for educational attainment with a score of 0.969, 127th for health and survival with a score of 0.966 and 141st for political empowerment with a score of 0.046.

WEF says Iran maintains steady, modest progress on the Economic Participation and Opportunity sub-index—albeit from a low base—due to an increase in the share of women in professional and technical roles.

Iceland, the most gender-equal country to date, completed a full decade in the index’s top spot this year. It has closed over 85% of its overall gender gap. Iceland is followed by Norway (83.5%) and Sweden and Finland (82.2%).

Although dominated by Nordic countries, the top ten also features a Latin American country (Nicaragua, fifth), two Sub-Saharan African countries (Rwanda, sixth, and Namibia, 10th) and a country from East Asia (Philippines, eighth). The top ten is completed by New Zealand (seventh) and Ireland (ninth).

Yemen came in last on WEF’s Global Gender Gap index. The lowest-ranked countries after Yemen are Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Chad.

The United States (51st) moved down two spots compared to last year. Both Japan (110th) and South Korea (115th) climbed several spots this year. Germany (14th) experiences some reversal of recent progress, going down two spots due to a widening gender gap in women in parliament. The United Kingdom (15th) this year records an overall level of gender parity much closer to Germany’s, driven by improvements on the Political Empowerment sub-index.

Turkey (130th) registered progress by closing its gender gap in labor force participation as well as professional and technical roles. Saudi Arabia (141st) marked improvements in wage equality and women’s labor force participation, as well as a smaller gender gap in secondary and tertiary education.