Top businesswomen share their experiences at Self-Made Summit

On 14 March in Amsterdam, Wittenborg CEO Maggie Feng had the honour of speaking at the Self-Made Summit. At this event, she was part of a panel where four C-level top businesswomen shared their personal perceptions in a male-dominated business world and how they hold their own behind closed doors in the boardroom. Feng was joined by Stephanie Knoors, Samia Guessabi-Colombijn, Maurine Alma and Ghislaine Prins-Evers. "It is so important not only to share board room experiences with career women who have not yet experienced the board room, but also to provide up-to-date tips and tricks so that they are better prepared for that all-important board room entrance," says Maggie Feng. "We C-level women have a duty to nurture sub-top women if we really want to change this imbalance."

The Self-Made Summit is an event where CEOs, entrepreneurs and top businesswomen come together and deliver workshops, lectures and panel discussions on how women can improve their position in business. The first edition took place in 2019 and is organised by Workmode, a workplace for ambitious women in the Netherlands. The division between men and women in top positions in business is still uneven. In 2022, only 14 per cent of listed companies in the Netherlands had a woman on the board and 33 per cent had a woman on the supervisory board. Looking at the top 250 largest companies in the Netherlands, only about a quarter have a board that is not exclusively male.

"We all recognised similar forms of prejudice and discussed ways to move forward and succeed. We could have gone on much longer, because the topic never gets old," says panellist Ghislaine Prins-Evers. The conversation on the topic was inspiring and exciting. According to Prins-Evers, it left participants "energised and happy to have met new and familiar faces". This inspiring panel discussion can serve as support for any woman in business who has big goals but feels constrained by the glass ceiling. It proves that there is still a long way to go, but also that conservative gender roles in business do not limit what women can achieve and that anyone can make their way to the top.

WUP 01/04/2023
by Niels Otterman
©WUAS Press