Been away

                                          Sipping Singapore Sling at the Rafferty Hotel

I was away from Estonia for quite a spell which caused me to neglect the blog.  Neglect may not be the accurate word for it, because I was traveling and largely preoccupied with personal and family matters.

About a week before Halloween last year, I left for Singapore to visit my daughter’s family.  My son joined us from the US.  It happens that he and I have birthdays one day apart, and my son-in-law’s is five days after mine.  My daughter’s birthday is only some weeks later, and she had organized for us to celebrate them together at a resort in Indonesia.  

I traveled on Finnair to Singapore. A comment on Finnair’s non-stop service between Helsinki and Singapore which was launched in May.  Given that the flight is about 15 hours long, I decided to use Business Class. Leaving the cabin upon arrival, I thanked the stewardess for her service and added that I took Finnair first time 40 years ago and I have never been disappointed by the airline over the years that I have flown.   She replied that this year marks the 40^th year at Finnair for her and I said, “In that case, you probably were the stewardess on board when I took the plane from New York to Helsinki 40 years ago!”

Before my departure from Estonia, I participated in a conference on promotion of women in the business world, and decided that with some re-working the presentation makes a suitable article for a newspaper.  I submitted the article to one of the dailies and, after it was rejected, Delfi (Online news portal) posted it on November 17. 

In the article, I pointed out that in March EU’s Commissioner Vivane Reding had called on businesses listed on the stock exchanges of Europe to increase voluntarily the number of women on their boards of directors to 30 percent by 2015 and to 40 percent by 2020.   In July, the European Parliament approved the Commissioner’s recommendation. 

I suggested that in Estonia it would be sensible to start the implementation of the Commissioner’s recommendation with state owned businesses:  Eesti Energia (energy company), Eesti Raudtee (the railroad), Tallinna Sadam (the ports), and Estonian Air (the airline).  These four major businesses do not have a single woman on their boards. 

There is no doubt that qualified women exist in Estonia to serve on those boards.  More women than men are studying at the Estonian Business School and it is significant that this is true on the Masters and Doctorate degree levels.  Also, sufficient women are studying economics at other institutions of higher learning.  It is the “good ole’ boy” politics that prevents their advancement to decision making positions.   

Empirical evidence shows that businesses with women in decision making positions are more innovative and successful in the market place.  Why is that?  A major reason is the fact that women make the purchasing decisions - including the purchase of computers, automobiles, financial transactions and high-cost services. I said in the article that I am willing to be a candidate to the Board of Directors of Tallinna Sadam.

There is no question that the topic will not go away.  Commissioner Viviane Reding has said that if measures are not taken voluntarily, she will introduce legislation.  While I was away, the American Chamber of Commerce Estonia sponsored a luncheon for business women on February 14 as a ground-breaking event.  As a member of the Chamber’s Board of Directors I praised the move, but when I later saw coverage of it by a daily (including photos), placing the event in the Society rather than the Business section and had received negative feed-back from friends, I became critical.  The article referred to the women as „edukad“ (successful) and to many that term translates in the Estonian political culture into success for taking over another woman’s husband!  In addition, I learned later that men were excluded from this „business luncheon“.  Having been against segregation in the US, this revelation was quite unpalatable.