Posted at 13:18h in Interviste by BET SHE CAN
Claudia Segre founded Global Thinking Foundation in 2016, in Italy and France, to support, patronise and organise initiatives and projects aimed at financial literacy for women, families, the poor and the weaker sections of society. Claudia is a member of the Board of ASSIOM FOREX and Vice President of AssoFintech, from 2021 to 2023, formerly on the Board of the Forum for Sustainable Finance. She is currently also a member of the Technical Scientific Committee of Terre des Hommes Italia and of the anti-inequality portal LUCE! As well as an external member of the Equal Opportunities Commission of the Accademia dei Lincei. She has been named one of the Top 100 Successful Italian Women by Forbes in 2019 and is among the Top 100 Gobal Women in Leadership by GCPIT India in 2021. She is co-author of the book ‘The Italy of Autonomies. At the test of COVID-19’ and Co-Chair of Women7 Italy 2024, the official civic engagement group of the G7 summit on gender equality.
Claudia, what were you like as a child?
I was always a hyperactive and rebellious child, in kindergarten I refused to take a nap and at home I also forbade my brother to do so. So I went to primary school at 5 years old because I was ‘fed up’ with going to kindergarten: they kept me busy learning to read and write so that I could start early by passing the state exam for primary school, but I was relegated behind the big blackboard with wheels, almost as if I were being punished!
The death of my father and his absence, once ‘metabolised’ over time, led me to make a choice in life: I became even more resolute and resistant, learning to respond to everything I considered injustice, discrimination and oppression. I had the certainty that, with a working mother and a large family, setting goals was the only way to respond to the lessons I had received. I went forward always with my head held high and with a lot of grit, and I traced my own path learning, even from the mistakes my exuberance led me to make.
Did being a girl influence your school choices?
Let’s say that I used the ‘disadvantage’ of being a girl, and therefore underestimated a priori, and having one year less to put my determination at the disposal of the more fragile. I was always a class representative in high school, speaking at the end of debates for internal elections, with a strategy of listening and referring to the demands made by others in order to be more effective. I also remember the headmaster’s reprimands for my strenuous defence of the students’ rights to have relevant judgements in their written assignments, or to protest when the heating broke down and we had to teach with gloves and duvet.
School back then was much more backward on gender issues: in secondary school there were separate activities for boys and girls. While boys were offered technical drawing, physics and applied sciences, we girls were given workshops to learn copperplate embossing, clay and the art of cooking caramel! I went to the teacher to protest and he invited me to continue doing dance, which was for girls, and to leave the ‘boy’ things alone. I, who never liked playing with dolls but shared with my brother the Meccano, the toy soldiers, the little chemist and the cheerful surgeon… precisely games for boys, did not react well. I didn’t accept it and went to the headmistress to ask her to make a single class. Obviously I got an earful and threats of suspension, as well as a nice 8 in conduct that has always accompanied me.
What was your upbringing like in this sense?
I received a strict upbringing: my mother, being a widow, acted as mother and father. We called her ‘General’, but those were also the times when the concept of affective education did not yet exist in Italy as it does now. There was the example and rules between the adult world and the world of children. So I had a strong sense of what I should or should not do, but of course the temptation to break the rules was strong.
It took me years to realise that many of my mother’s ‘no’s’ stemmed from her daily struggle to survive with three small children in a world that saw in feminist battles the dawn of a new course in the recognition of women’s social role, the fruits of which we can now savour, to continue the fight for our rights from a solid base of achievements.
And having had a mother who was a stockbroker and professor of religion, I could define mine as a ‘financial’ feminist upbringing between ethics and the claim of financial education as the best form of protest and affirmation of possible economic self-determination. Hence the model on which I built my Foundation to support Women in being free and stronger and in feeling financially confident and aware in their actions. As I saw my mother do and as I learnt from the Women I met in the emerging countries for which I worked for so many years.
Have you had difficulties during your career as a woman?
Certainly the change of perspective from adolescent fervour, where my interests were in reading, numbers, geography (which later became by extension a passion for geopolitics and womenomics), to professional reality immediately confronted me with a working reality in finance at the time that was very different from my expectations both in Turin, where I started out, and in Milan as a student worker and commuter due to the different cost of living. And it was a challenging test – a bit of a survival course – bearing in mind that I started working in 1986 and that in the early days women in the trading room were not well liked and my aspirations to become a trader considered out of place. So I worked my way up through the ranks, starting in the regulatory office, the back office, and finally arriving at the front office and dealing with emerging markets, managing the first Italian desk on trading the debt of those countries.
Being a woman with a university degree who spoke three languages, determined and always proactive was not enough to avoid the constant salary and career discrimination. Becoming an executive at the age of 41 after 20 years of work was a hard-earned goal, despite the fact that I had always held positions of responsibility in the previous 10 years, but certainly within the average for a woman at that time, even though there was always at least a 20% difference in the pay packet at the same level. The harassment aspect is undoubtedly the one that weighed heaviest, also because at that time we could tell each other about it by women helping each other to avoid major problems. But there was no talk of complaints despite the fact that bullying was widespread.
What would you advise female students who want to pursue a STEM career?
I would advise them to focus on the multiplicity of fronts that are opened up by STEM skills that now permeate most job sectors from healthcare to applied sciences, from start-ups to driver-led driving, from clerical to business. The working environment is much improved because certainly thanks to ILO standards on harassment at work, quality certifications, and the spread of the sustainability principles of Agenda 2030, many things are changing and for the better.
What remains to be overcome is the lack of soft skills on the part of the younger generations, which, above all, when embarking on STEM careers, are fundamental: the ability to manage time through planning, respectful and empathetic relationships with colleagues and co-workers, responsibility and commitment to results, and the ability to be proactive. Unfortunately, the new generations have been penalised by COVID and also by the current environmental and social complexity that can discourage what should instead be a farsighted and enterprising vision on one’s study and life path. And thus on the construction of a solid CV that must always remain open to challenges and to putting oneself on the line for a STEM career that certainly offers great satisfaction and the possibility of a motivating work experience and personal growth.
Which male/female stereotypes do you think still persist in our days?
Stereotypes often begin to manifest themselves, even unconsciously, in the dynamics within families; therefore, in the messages that are transmitted – from the management of pocket money, to school choices, to recommendations in the management of free time or mobile phones, and even sports to be practised – legacies are pandered to that are generally accepted culturally, but which we then find in the school and work path repeated and re-proposed in the form of real discrimination. Obstacles still exist: from the opportunities offered to access certain functions or certain types of project activities to career and salary goals.
Let me give you an example: in a company, you ‘take a risk’ by entrusting a male figure with a task that is outside his career path, you focus on an individual, thinking outside the box. This never happens to women; they tend to be given roles they have already held. Echoing BET SHE CAN; one bets less on them. One must start with language, a crucial element in my opinion. In other European countries this issue has already been addressed and resolved: in France a law has been introduced to give female titles to political and public administration posts, in Belgium there is a strong law against the crime of feminicide, in Spain one on consent and the definition of disability. All this makes it possible to configure social phenomena and areas of work without stereotypes and helps to reflect on a possible change of pace. We are all called upon to engage in dialogue and understand when gender equality is crucial at every level for a truly inclusive coexistence.
How important do you think it is to break down the stereotypes still present in society?
Breaking down stereotypes, therefore, becomes fundamental in order to define a society equal in rights and social participation, to make an effective contribution to the development of a country. I give a practical example by looking at the McKinsey and Gartner studies of the last 5 years, whose research shows that inclusive teams perform 30% better in high diversity environments. This is the result of several key advantages that in companies where active policies on gender equality and more generally on DE&I are in place, they can benefit from better decision-making, more innovation and greater employee satisfaction, and then achieve operational results measured in +20% compared to companies that do not pay attention to these aspects and do not implement measures to curb stereotypes.
A cultural regeneration of our society is possible, and the commitment to disseminating these principles of values will certainly have a positive effect also with respect to situations of domestic violence that stereotypes often find cues and/or justification in, especially in economic and psychological violence, and that see boys and girls as mute spectators of dysfunctional dynamics that will affect their future and their actions. This is why our commitment in schools with the didactic project ‘Libere di…VIVERE’ focuses precisely on these issues addressed in the context of civic education.
What do you think about BET SHE CAN?
I find many similarities with Global Thinking Foundation because I think that BET SHE CAN is a Foundation that aims to contribute to a cultural change, building together with its stakeholders an alliance that allows to spread a new approach to the growth of girls and young women also through a change of language and the demolition of paradigms and stereotypes that hinder their social participation and cultural growth. A project that helps them not to set themselves limits and to testify that society does not turn its back but listens to a generation and to those who will be the Women of our most prosperous future. An approach that sees them more aware of their central role and the importance of their social activism, which is now considered at all levels as never before.
And now three questions from the ‘We are reporters too’ project supported by IREN.
Maya (9 years old) “What do you think of your job?” I am happy and motivated by a job that I am passionate about and above all that allows me to use the skills I have cultivated over time to be useful to others by making a positive impact on society. My work is made up of vision, action and the study of social dynamics so that I am always ready to adapt projects to the needs and requirements that emerge in a social fabric that changes and requires dedication, discontinuity and a lot of patience in listening in order to arrive at a great determination in making choices.
Elisa (8 years old) “What are you afraid of?” I think that maintaining an open dialogue between generations is important, and for an ‘old’ country like ours it is a crucial and non-trivial element to pursue for inclusive progress. There is no doubt that there is a responsibility that new generations place on previous ones for a complex social situation undermined by environmental pollution, social injustice, gender discrimination and conflicts of various kinds, including wars. I am afraid and fight so that the will to come together and find common ground for commitment is not lacking: only a common feeling of intergenerational solidarity will allow a tangible social redemption for all.
Alice (age 10) “What improvements have you generated with your work?” Certainly when we started Global Thinking Foundation, there was no talk in Italy of economic violence, let alone of a model of self-determination aimed at the weaker sections of society based on a spread of financial and digital education aimed at prevention. I have put together the pieces of my international experience, the results observed in emerging countries and in programmes disseminated globally to adapt them to the Italian and European reality to bring to over 10,000 women enrolled in our courses, to the 30,000 students we have met in the last three years, and to the numerous citizens participating physically and digitally in the Libere di…VIVERE tours good practices and effective actions for their personal and family economic well-being. And it is precisely the social impact analyses carried out over the years that have enabled us to measure the economic impact as well.
