Transcript
About 30 women were put forward for the programme from the 19 companies listed on the exchange.
It's acting chief executive Krishika Narayan says the 19 have 104 directors but only 13 of them are women.
Ms Narayan says gender diverse leadership adds value to corporations, something Fiji's male dominated businesses are starting to realise.
But she says finding women to fill board positions has been their problem.
"Now with times changing when they're even trying to get more females on the board then they're coming back to us and saying, 'you know, there is not really any database or any information platform where we can actually tap into and seek the women, the appropriate type of women, that we are wanting to appoint on the board.' So while the culture is changing, that they would like to appoint female members they're not getting the information that they want. So from the Stock Exchange perspective that is what we are trying to do is create that database and trying to collate that information for them, so that they don't come up with such an excuse."
The programme's designer, Professor Vijaya Nagarajan, who devised similar workshops in Tonga, says creating female captains of industry requires different interventions in each country.
"So we looked at the approaches that have been adopted in different parts of the world, in Norway and even in India they've developed mandatory sanctions, one percent of directors have to be women. But we felt that wasn't really appropriate for the cultural context of Fiji and the Pacific so we thought it was better to go for the softer option, the nudge, where we align ourselves with corporations, get male champions and proceed further."
Programme co-ordinator Valerie Mosley says as well as developing leadership skills, the women can partner with business mentors.
"Our job in this training programme is to talk to them about the skills they need once they get the big job. So we give presentations on different skill-sets such as communications and networking and finance, what ever areas they need, governance. We also have a mentoring component, so we're helping those people who need it identify whether they need a mentor or a coach or a sponsor."
Programme participant Ana Tuiketei, who is already a company director, says board rooms benefit from having more women.
"In terms of seeing diversity and having inclusiveness and realising it's good to celebrate being different and diverse because that contributes to the environment of decision making and it adds more wisdom, it makes decision making more sharper."
Two more two-day training sessions will be held in Fiji for the the Women in Leadership programme, and organisers say Samoa has expressed an interest in hosting more.
This is Benjamin Robinson Drawbridge.
