22 Shamistha Selvaratnam: Setting benchmarks for gender equality
The past year has been brutal for women and gender equality - it has severely set back progress made in the last decade. And it is acknowledged that Governments and the private sector will have to work twice as hard to reverse the trend. My guest this week Shamistha Selvaratnam speaks about the need for transformative change to achieve gender equality. She stressed on the need for companies to really shift their approach from avoiding gender-related impacts and disclosing what is necessary to meet legislative requirements to proactively addressing inequalities."
Shamistha is the Gender Lead at the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) an organisation established to measure and rank the 2,000 most influential companies globally on their contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. These keystone companies spread across 74 countries with combined revenues of $43 trillion have a critical role to play in whether the SDGs are accomplished or not.
In this episode she speaks about her background; the work of the WBA; using data for insights and not as an endpoint; why companies need to stop focusing on only preventing harm to women to taking actions that have positive impact on women......
Listen to the full episode here 👇🏾
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-elephant-in-the-room/id1540074396
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Om Podcasten
The Elephant in the Room Podcast is a curated safe space to have uncomfortable conversations about the pervasive inequalities in society and our workplaces.
The idea of the podcast was born from my sense of conflict about identity, self and the concept of privilege and fuelled by my own need to understand how my overlapping identities and experiences had impacted and would continue to impact my life chances.
Two years ago I decided to ‘opt out’ to find my own purpose and focus on passion projects including learning about the systemic biases that are endemic in business and society. The Podcast is my very own listening project, a step towards being more intentional in my learning.
The Elephant in the Room Podcast is for people who want to be a part of the change, for those who want to step up & speak out, for those who want to learn more about biases, barriers and best practice, for business leaders and for individuals, anyone who is interested in a fairer, more inclusive and compassionate society and workplace.
Each week I will interview inspiring speakers from across the world on issues that are taboo and deserve to be mainstream including(but not limited to) systemic and institutionalised racism, discrimination based on further eight protected characteristics, poverty, mental health, climate change. The podcast will also talk about cognitive inclusion, culture, purpose, ethics and the importance of empathy, cultural intelligence and how conversations on identity and disadvantage would be incomplete without considering intersectionality.
With the podcast I hope to share stories of people with lived experiences, stories that may have never been told, stories that galvanise us to take action for change and keep the conversations alive by raising the decibel on issues of inequity, inequality in our search for a fairer and more inclusive world.