HONG KONG, 11th November, 2015 -   The evidence is clear - communities, businesses, boards, governments and economies thrive when women hold leadership and decision-making roles. Kathleen McCartney, President of Smith College, the largest undergraduate women's college in the United States and the only US women's college with an engineering program, will discuss the role of education - specifically liberal arts education - in preparing the next generation of women global leaders for the 21st century.

She pointed out that women were usually unrepresented in the science and technology field as well as in the business field. Women held 17% of the board seats in the US whilst only 5% were CEO. Their abilities were always being underestimated. Gender stereotyping was one of the factors contributing to this phenomenon. Lack of female role model and maternity leave were the other two factors.

Yet, women were tremendously effective leaders. She pinpointed that having women leaders in the company could achieve 3.3% more profitability. If the gender gap was closed, the growth rate in GDP of the economy would be 13.5%.

In light of the gender inequality problem, Kathleen suggested 5 ways to improve the situation. “Make the invisible visible” was the key to eradicate the implicit biases. Prof quoted one of the interesting psychological experiments, to prove that people had negative stereotype on women. People needed to understand those biases. On the other hand, Kathleen urged everyone to provide support to working parents since people usually were mistakenly that women should have the primary responsibility to raise their children. Changing the attitude matters. Promoting women education was another measure to tackle the problem. Mentoring and offering single sex opportunity would be the last steps to achieve gender equality and women empowerment.

The presentation was a full house event. It was followed by a Q&A session to engage audiences in the discussion.

Video: Watch the complete program (43 min., 52 secs.)