Promoting female leadership of Italy’s largest multinationals: this is the goal of ValoreD, Italy’s newest business association.
To encourage the rise of ‘pink’ leaders in business, ValoreD recently commissioned international consulting firm McKinsey to conduct a study on women in the highest ranks of Italy’s multination-als. The results suggest that companies with women on their boards of directors perform 21 percent better than do those without any female presence.
ValoreD boasts ‘pink’ members who are in the top ranks of such multinationals with operations in Italy as Ikea, Unicredit, Enel, Fiat, Vodafone, Luxottica, General Electric, Microsoft, John-son&Johnson, AstraZeneca and Coop Adriatica.
‘Pink fever’ seems to have affected the Vatican, too. Head of the Pontifical Swiss Guards announced that the corps is considering recruiting women, although the decision is the pontiff’s. Colonel Daniel Anrig said he is open to the idea of women serving in the 500-year-old papal security force, a stance different from that of his predecessors. ‘Personally, I could imagine it for one job or another, surely,’ Anrig said on TV. ‘One could think about it.’
The recruitment of women is not explicitly prohibited: woman are allowed to hold the halberdiers in processions. However, members of the corps must have been born in Switzerland and must be Roman Catholic, single and stand at least 1 meter 74 centimeters tall.