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<\/strong><\/p>\nBritish Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Armenia Katherine Leach is a \u00a0woman who managed to succeed everywhere and in everything : to give birth to a child,\u00a0 be a happy wife and\u00a0 have success in career. She kindly agreed to answer questions of \u00a0WomanNet.am. <\/strong><\/p>\n It should be noted, that the couple Jonathan James Aves and Katherine Jane Leach were appointed Joint Ambassadors to the Republic of Armenia in 2012. They carry out their official duties in 4-month rotation system. <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n – Ms. Ambassador, Appointment of Joint Ambassadors was an unprecedented case in Armenian diplomatic practice, although you had joint working experience in other countries. What positive and negative aspects can occur during such a professional family tandem? <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Of course I feel very positive about having a chance to work as a ‘Team Ambassador’ with my husband.\u00a0 And I’m grateful to both our Foreign Office, and to the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for keeping an open mind about how the job of an Ambassador can be done.\u00a0\u00a0 I think the positives are clear from a personal and an organisational point of view.\u00a0 We both get a chance to take on a fantastic job over the course of three to four years and the Foreign Office ends up with two officers with recent, relevant leadership experience and skills rather than just one.\u00a0 The key issue is whether we can show that this approach can also produce good results for our staff in the Embassy and for our partners in Armenia.\u00a0 It might not work everywhere or for everyone, but our own view is that \u2013 particularly in a small Embassy \u2013 having new energy coming in every four months is incredibly helpful.\u00a0 It adds to the resources and the resilience of the Embassy. The biggest challenge is keeping each other updated on the day-to-day detail.<\/p>\n –\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Do you have professional-level disagreements and are you able to defend your position?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n On most questions we have pretty similar views.\u00a0 Occasionally we initially have different ideas or approaches \u2013 but we know that we need to keep talking until we find a solution we are both happy with.\u00a0 I am not keeping count of who wins more often \u2013 I suspect the most frequent outcome is in fact a compromise.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n –\u00a0 <\/strong>Isn’t it difficult to take three roles of\u00a0 wife, mother and diplomat at the same time.?<\/strong>:\u00a0 <\/strong>Does your husband help you to balance career and family?<\/strong> <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n I would never say it is easy to balance career and home life.\u00a0 It is a constant challenge for every working mother I know.\u00a0 But I also think it is only possible \u2013 at least for me – when you have a supportive and flexible partner.\u00a0 I am very fortunate to have such a partner.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n – \u00a0<\/strong>Have you ever personally faced with manifestations of gender discrimination during your career? <\/strong><\/p>\n I can honestly say that I have not felt discrimination in my career so far. Since joining the Foreign Office I have in fact been struck by the efforts the Office has made to try to allow women to work flexibly and stay in the work force during those crucial years when children are small.\u00a0 I should add \u2013 this flexibility also benefits the men in the Office too.\u00a0 Nowadays many have family responsibilities or wives with careers, and they can find it as helpful as women do to have an opportunity, for example, to take unpaid leave for a period of time or to work part-time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What are the solutions to the problem of gender inequality in the UK? <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n We have come such a long way in my lifetime on this issue.\u00a0 Of course, if you look at statistics \u2013 for example, the number of women in parliament (22%), the number of female CEOs in FTSE 100 companies (7%) \u2013 then you can always argue that we have more left to do.\u00a0 We need to make a breakthrough in getting a better percentage of top jobs.\u00a0 But women are now a vital part of the workforce in the UK, doing all kinds of jobs even my mother’s generation might not have dreamed of.\u00a0 Until 1973, even in the Foreign Office a woman had to resign if she got married.\u00a0 This is simply unthinkable nowadays \u2013 and these changes in social attitudes have been underpinned by a strong legal framework making discrimination illegal and supporting maternity leave.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n –\u00a0 <\/strong>What does British political arena look like today from the perspective of women’s representation? <\/strong>Are there any women aspiring to high political positions?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We have a number of talented women in the front ranks of our political parties.\u00a0 To take just a couple of examples –\u00a0 Theresa May is our Home Secretary.\u00a0 Yvette Cooper is her opposite number in the Shadow Cabinet.\u00a0 Both have been mentioned as possible future leaders.\u00a0\u00a0 All the party leaders have noted the importance of promoting female MPs into high profile ministerial jobs \u2013 but we also need to keep up the efforts to get as many talented women into parliament as possible.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n –\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What do you think about success of woman in politics<\/strong>? What does it depend on<\/strong>? What features should a woman have <\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>in order to make a dizzy political career as Margaret Thatcher did in her time, setting a unique record of <\/strong>remain<\/strong>ing Prime Ministr \u2013 11,5 years…<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Being a politician is a tough business of long hours, no job security beyond the next election, constant media scrutiny and a lot of professional and personal criticism.\u00a0 As a non-elected civil servant, I really respect people who are willing to put themselves through this.\u00a0 Any woman going into politics needs to have a lot of confidence, resilience, and persuasiveness.\u00a0 But politics being politics, luck – and timing –\u00a0 is also important.\u00a0 You need to be in the right place at the right time and have the courage, as Mrs Thatcher did, to seize the moment.\u00a0 She famously said, in 1974, that, ‘It will be years – and not in my time – before a woman will lead the party or become prime minister\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 She then became leader in 1975 and won the 1979 election to become Prime Minister.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n – \u00a0 The first precedent of nomination of woman in presidential elections in Armenia was observed last year, when a journalist Narine Mkrtchyan was nominated as a presidential candidate. Another matter is that she did not participate in a race because of not paying the election pledge. Do you think that this nomination is able to change something in perceptions of women in the context of aspiring to high positions? <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I also really hope that Narine Mkrtchyan’s nomination this year will prove to be a watershed moment.\u00a0 The British Embassy, British Council and other international organisations have supported a lot of projects in recent years which have offered training \u2013 in media skills, in campaigning, in leadership \u2013 to women thinking about standing for local or national elections.\u00a0 These projects have been really successful in giving women the confidence to realise that they can go for it, and for helping them create support networks of other women in the same position.\u00a0 I hope Narine’s example will inspire others.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n – <\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>There is only one woman in our region \u2013 former Prime Minister of Georgia Nino Burjanadze \u2013 who became an Acting President during two months. In your opinion, what does prevent women from occupying managerial positions in post-Soviet region \u2013 peculiarities of mentality, lack of willingness to advance or other obstacles? <\/strong><\/p>\n It is difficult to boil this complex question down to one answer.\u00a0 If you look at the countries across the \u044bworld which currently have female leaders, they range from some of the richest (Germany, Australia, Denmark), some of the fastest growing (Brazil, South Korea), some which have only become independent countries in the past 25 years (Lithuania, Slovakia, Kosovo), and some of the poorest (Malawi, Liberia, Bangladesh).\u00a0\u00a0 Overall, an open transparent system of government where people strive to promote others solely based on merit should, in theory, open the door for more women to get to the top.\u00a0 But social attitudes are really important too \u2013\u00a0 I look at the example of my own country and how much has changed in my generation compared to my mother’s.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 British Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Armenia Katherine Leach is a \u00a0woman who managed to succeed everywhere and in everything : to give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-156"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.womennet.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.womennet.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.womennet.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.womennet.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.womennet.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.womennet.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.womennet.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.womennet.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.womennet.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/archive.womennet.amwp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/despanner.jpg\")
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