Fast Retailing Holds Talk Session with Womenomics Pioneer Kathy Matsui for International Women's Day
Fast Retailing Holds Talk Session with Womenomics Pioneer Kathy Matsui for International Women's Day
The Fast Retailing Group is committed to building workplace environments where everyone has equal access to opportunities to take on new challenges and broaden their potential. From 2021, reflecting this commitment, the Group started a series of talk sessions where women executives share their experiences and discuss the opportunities and challenges female employees face in their careers.
For the third session, held in March to specially mark International Women's Day*1, the speaker was Kathy Matsui, who created the term "womenomics*2" and joined Fast Retailing as its first female external director in November 2021. The talk session was held at the company’s Ariake Headquarters and streamed online, with over 300 employees from 16 markets joining in.
During the session Matsui talked about what she focused on in her career and her advice for when you are confronted with difficulties, and noted how companies with high levels of diversity in their management team (women, LGBTQ+, multiple nationalities, and people with disabilities) generated more innovation. She went on to outline what companies and team leaders needed to concentrate on to foster women in managerial roles, punctuating her speech with examples from her own experiences in juggling work with family life.
Typical comments from participants included "I felt both empathy and encouragement listening to her talk about how women have to have confidence and be willing to make changes based on her own experiences," and "I gained a lot from this session as there were so many questions that deeply concern me right now."
These sessions will be held regularly and not only feature members from Global Headquarters as speakers, but also female executives from markets around the world, reflecting the diversity of the Fast Retailing Group.
*1 International Women's Day is a day to commemorate the roles and achievements of women and praise their courage. Inspired by a demonstration in the U.S. demanding the vote for women over 100 years ago, the date of March 8 was chosen as the international day by the United Nations in 1975.
*2 Womenomics is a term coined by Kathy Matsui in 1999 which is the combination of the words “women” and “economics”. It is based on the idea that taking better advantage of the skills and talents of half its population – in this case, women – will help society to boost economic growth.