WOMEN CAN BE EFFECTIVE LEADERS IN PUBLIC SECTOR - MALAYSIA'S CENTRAL BANK GOVERNOR

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 22 (Bernama) -- More women must be employed as leaders in
the public sector as they have the qualities to be effective leaders, thereby
contributing significantly towards nation building and improving people's lives.

In making the call, Bank Negara Malaysia (Malaysia's central bank) Governor,
Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, said women who have the capability should be brought into
the civil service so that they too contribute towards national development.

As an important component of the human capital resources, she said women
were increasingly becoming a growing force in the talent pool.

Dr Zeti, Malaysia's first women central banker and one of the very few women
central bankers in the world, said while the opportunities were immense for
women in the public sector, "yet few rise to leadership positions."

"While there is still a glass ceiling, as we advance forward into the
future, the foundations are already in place for women to advance forward into
leadership positions," she said in her address entitled "Advancing Women's
Leadership in Public Life: Power Sharing in the Public Sector" presented at the
"Women in Leadership Forum" Tuesday.

"For a woman who is a mother, wife and daughter, the sacrifice involved is
great. The challenge will be to achieve a balance so that work performance is
not being adhered at all cost," the central bank governor said.

She said successful nations were those that have accorded priority to its
human capital and to organisational review and transformation.

She also said that investment in leadership development was needed for women
to advance forward to leadership positions.

"The challenge is to recognise continuous reinvention that is needed to
acquire new knowledge, new skills, new experience so as to be able to have the
new capabilities to deal with the new challenges," she said.

"To achieve this, there needs to be a conscious need to reinvent ourselves
to be able to rise to the imperatives of duty to the nation.

"This reinvention involves leadership, institutional and organisational
capabilities to respond to the changes in the environment," Dr Zeti said.

She also outlined 10 specific leadership characteristics which were
important to advance women's leadership in the public sector, foremost of which
was for women to have a great clarity of the vision and of the objective that
needs to be achieved by the organisation and the results that needs to be
delivered.

Others include the ability to articulate the vision with others in the
organisation, understanding the business and the key elements driving the
organisation and translating ideas into results, as well as coordination and
integration of skills that would pull together diverse thinking and diverse
information.

Dr Zeti also highlighted that another characteristic was managing
trade-offs, whereby women leaders would have to balance trade-offs and manage
risks to the different interests of the different segments of society.

Women should also be able to effectively manage crisis under intense
pressures, she said, adding that being strategically focussed and having the
ability to stay on course avoids being derailed by such pressures.

Besides this, other traits include courage and bravery to undertake the
responsibilities. "At the extreme, it requires having nerves of steel. This is
to enable sound decisions at the time of high level of distress and ensure that
the organisation remains calm and cohesive during such times," she said.

Women should also have the drive and unwavering perseverance to pursue the
vision of ultimately improving the well-being of its citizens which was a
long-haul business and therefore requiring perseverance, she said.