The Namibia National Reinsurance Corporation Limited (NamibRe) in partnership with local, regional, and international finance and banking, and insurance industry for the 2nd year running will host the Namibia Women in Finance and Insurance Summit (NWFIS) on the 04 to the 05th of August 2022, in Windhoek, Namibia.
In 2021, NamibRe commemorated 20 years of successful operations. As part of that celebration together, NamibRe, in partnership with industry launched the Summit on the 9th of June 2021.
The inaugural Summit hosted under the theme, “Seizing the opportunity to grow female leadership in the financial and insurance sector” brought together over 250 participants locally and globally that joined in person and virtually.
The 2022 edition of the summit will be held under the theme; “Diversity, Equality and Inclusion” with the continued aim of creating opportunities and platforms for women to share, learn and foster change for the current and future generation of female leaders and to equip them to contribute towards building a sustainable future for the industry.
According to the UN SDG reports, the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030. This target has been pushed further off track by the COVID-19 pandemic. Women and girls remain disproportionately affected, struggling with loss of jobs and livelihoods, derailed education, increased burdens of unpaid care work and domestic violence.
To illustrate, while working women accounted for 39.4 per cent of total employment before the pandemic in 2019, they made up nearly 45 per cent of global employment losses in 2020. While the share of women in managerial positions worldwide has shown only a slight improvement over the last two decades, rising from 25.3 per cent in 2000 to 28.3 per cent in 2019, it remained unchanged in 2020.
In 2020, over 100 million women aged 25-54 years with small children at home were out of the workforce globally, including the more than 2 million who left the labour force owing to the increased pressures of unpaid care work. On an average day, women spend about 2.5 times as many hours on unpaid domestic work and care work as men, according to the latest data from 90 countries collected between 2001 and 2019.
In the finance and insurance sector, the issue of female representation in decision making positions remains a challenge. Recent studies undertaken reveal that 33% of women and nearly 50% of men across industries believe that 1 in 10 women in a senior leadership team is a good representation. While 57% of employees at entry level are women, this reduces drastically to 28% at the Senior Management level and 18% at the Executive Management level. Hence, summits of this nature, which focus on women in leadership in the industry is important, even more so to the attainment of key SDG goals.
The theme selected for this year’s Summit, which is on gender equality, empowerment and diversity aims to enable the industry to contribute to the attainment of SDG 5- Gender Equality and aims to achieve gender and empower all women and girls.
The statistical evidence reveals that women’s participation in the labour force, particularly in leadership positions require global intervention and creation of initiatives with a focus on women empowerment. This is the reason why the Summit was launched so that women can share experiences and learn from each other to make it to the top.
We extend gratitude to all local and international partners; AfricaRe, Bank of Namibia. MunichRe, Hollard Namibia, WAICA Re, Liberty Life Namibia, Bank Windhoek, Standard Bank Namibia, FMRE Botswana, Santam Insurance Namibia, Letshego Bank Namibia, Sanlam Namibia, MVA Fund of Namibia, Momentum Short-term Insurance Namibia, Momentum Investments Namibia, Alexforbes Namibia, Oman Reinsurance Company SAOG, SwissRe Insurance Institute of Namibia, The Brief and Namibia Broadcasting Corporation as official Media Partners.
For more information visit our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn social media pages for regular updates on the Summit.
Or contact us on- 061 422 800 and or info@namibre.com
