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| Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, second from right, joins a Q&A session after the screening of "My Year with Helen," a documentary about Clark's 2016 bid to be U.N. secretary-general, at CGV Yongsan in central Seoul on Feb. 13. / Korea Times photo by Yi Whan-woo |
By Yi Whan-woo
"My Year with Helen," a 2017 documentary film, is more than about former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark's unsuccessful bid to be U.N. secretary-general in 2016.
It reveals the glass ceiling that awaits female leaders as they advance their careers, as award-winning director Gaylene Preston travels alongside Clark during her election campaign.
Serving three consecutive terms from 1999 to 2008, Clark was New Zealand's first elected female prime minister and the first woman to head the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) for two straight terms from 2009 to 2017.
Her life certainly revealed challenges for aspiring female leaders during the screening of "My Year with Helen" at CGV Yongsan in Seoul, Feb. 13.
At a Q&A session after the screening, the audience, many of them female workers and students, raised their hands and asked Clark to give advice.
"At the U.N., I very much hope the 10th secretary-general will be woman," she said, pointing out that all nine U.N. chiefs have been men.
They include incumbent Antonio Guterres, who defeated her in the 2016 election to replace Ban Ki-moon.
She hoped women would one day break any glass ceiling, noting that her country's prime minister had been a woman for more than two decades.
Clark was among New Zealand's three female prime ministers, including Jenny Shipley (1997 to 1999) and incumbent Jacinda Ardern.
"Women should not accept that any door is closed to them," she said. "Women have a right to hold any position, on the same basis as men do. So young women should set their sights high and not accept that their career might be cut off here."
Clark also urged women to have a strategy for building resilience to cope with missing out as they climbed higher up the career ladder.
"Winning is the easy bit. What is difficult is when you have to deal with something that didn't work out," she said.
Among guests at the screening were New Zealand Ambassador Philip Turner and CJ Cheil Jedang Corporation Vice President Min Hee-kyung. CJCheil Jedang and CGV are CJ Group affiliates.
Min asked for advice for female leaders who often turned out be the only female in their group at work and struggled to be heard.
Clark said this made it important for women to serve in higher positions, while improving the environment for women accordingly would be necessary.
She noted that Norway required all listed companies to have at least 40 percent women on their boards to prevent women from being isolated.
Five of the 10 candidates were women in the 2016 U.N. election. The female candidates included then-UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, then-European Commissioner for the Budget and Human Resources Kristalina Georgieva, Moldova's then-Acting Prime Minister Natalia Gherman, and Argentina's then-Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra.
The 2016 election was much more open than previous ones. Women and Eastern Europeans were believed to be favored, because no woman had ever led the U.N. and the Eastern European group was the U.N's only group never to have held the office.
However, the two campaigns offset each other, and Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister, was chosen.
Clark visited Korea last week to join a panel discussion co-hosted by the New Zealand Embassy in Korea and Ewha Woman's University. The discussion was held under the theme, "Towards inclusive society: The value of diversity and leadership in a multicultural society."
