Melina Morrison: Women in leadership and achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world

15 March 2021

A conversation with Melina Morrison, CEO, Business Council of Cooperatives and Mutuals, Australia

This year’s International Women’s Day theme is Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world. How are co-operatives enabling women to access leadership positions?

Cooperatives are a model that enfranchises people regardless of gender, race, ethnicity and religion. Since they began, co-ops have empowered women around the world. Co-ops gave women the right to vote 100 years before the earliest western democracies. Today, co-ops should aspire to be the most inclusive business model, and that will take innovation and a commitment to change the structures of employment and business workplaces that can accommodate women and others at all stages of life. The COVID-19 pandemic has given businesses unique insight into how we can adapt to different work practices that are more family friendly for example so that women have an incentive and the support to maintain their careers and build their skills and preparation to take up leadership positions. These challenges and opportunities are not unique to cooperatives but apply to all business.

Continue reading: A conversation with Melina Morrison, CEO, Business Council of Cooperatives and Mutuals, Australia
International Co-operative Alliance, March 2021