Ajay Banga, CEO Of MasterCard: "I hate the idea that women don’t work in tech. It’s bulls***."

Wednesday, May 18 2016, 04:15:08

Lavanya Bahuguna

Blogger-in-Chief

Ajay Banga, CEO Of MasterCard: “I hate the idea that women don’t work in tech. It’s bulls***.”

JWB Post

April 11, 2016

During the seventh annual Women in the World summit on Friday, Ajay Banga, CEO, and president of MasterCard said that every single woman working in his company gets paid the same as a man.

Wow!

MasterCard’s CFO is a woman, and according to him, she is the second highest paid person at MasterCard.

He said, “It’s not about one woman being paid well. It’s about every single woman. Anyone who gets in my way on that can work for my competitor. I hate the idea that women don’t work in tech. It’s bulls***. At MasterCard, 60% of the women work in tech.”

What more!? He commented on how difficult it gets once the employees have children. According to him, a planned parental leave policy can help parents, especially women employees, big time.

He suggested allowing employees to come back for half days at first and to bring their kids to the office as they re-adjust to a work routine. He said, “Having people to help with childcare is only one part of respecting women. Both genders have to take ownership.”

Interestingly, it was seven years ago when Tina Brown launched the Women in the World Summit to create a platform for women where they can come and speak about what makes them happy and powerful.

During the conference, she said, “It is an event that is powered by women who live behind the lines of the news. I’m looking at it as I would a magazine. For instance, we have a panel on women in Turkey, and the free speech issue in Turkey is becoming a crisis, so we have some great women coming from there who are refusing to be pushed down. It’s a new topic for America.”

Talking about the opportunities for women who want to work differently, she said, “Women have been trying to stuff themselves into these old dead structures. We’re very well attuned to the way the world is now, much more attuned than men who’ve been working in traditional structures are. I think we’re going to see more and more of women starting their own companies and getting ahead. Starting something from scratch, you assemble your own team.”

And, what advice would she offer these future women leaders? She remarked, “Don’t send the email right away, think about it till tomorrow. As someone whose life has been rendered chaotic by ‘reply all’, learning to wait has been a big lesson.”

Source: here & here.