APD | Elizabeth Gaines: women should be more confident to strive for career development

By APD writer Gong Chen

AustCham China in conjunction with the Australian Embassy celebrated the social, political and economic achievements of women across the globe on Friday, the International Women’s Day.

With more than 300 attendees from the international community, Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) CEO Elizabeth Gaines and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation China office Director Yinuo Li joined the event and shared their insights on female leadership and empowerment.

As a highly experienced business leader across a number of industries and economies, Ms. Gaines brought a broad international perspective and a unique insight into leadership, diversity and business drawing on her expertise across the resources, construction, financial services and travel sectors.

When asked about her idea on the barriers that keeping women from getting top positions in their companies, Ms. Gaines told the Asia Pacific Daily (APD) that women need to be more confident in their abilities because they sometimes step back and do not take the promotion as they might think they are not good enough.

“Confidence is absolutely important. But I do think there is more that we need to do”, Ms. Gaines said.

She also admitted that the glass ceiling does exist in the financial sector, saying she hadn’t seen any women leaders during the 14 meetings in BMO (Bank of Montreal) Annual Mining Conference in Miami last week.

“It’s a bit shame that today it is still unusual to have a female CEO. There has been the progress but might not as much as we thought compared with 30 years ago,” she said. 

“For FMG, we have 18% female representation, 15% of female board of directors, so we certainly lead the way,” Gaines said.

The female leader also encouraged young women to learn STEM subjects, i.e. science, technology, engineering and mathematics, because the education is the key element in getting promotion and these subjects are helpful to improve gender representation in more untraditional sectors.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)