Jack Ma: Women Are Alibaba's Secret to Rapid Growth

Women are Alibaba's "secret sauce" and have helped them develop quickly over the past years, said Jack Ma, the e-commerce group's Executive Chairman, at a forum in New York on September 26.

"Thirty five percent of Alibaba's founders are women, 34 percent of the senior management of our company are women, and more than 52 percent of the employees are female," said Ma at the Business and Philanthropy Leaders' Forum organized by UN Women, the international organization.

"I think women can do much better in entrepreneurship because of the technology," said Ma. "On Alibaba, we have more than 10 million people doing business, and 50 percent of them are women."

Ma believes that females have the right skills to make businesses more engaging, cozy, human and part of a compelling lifestyle.

Ma also claimed that what we need to do is not only help women, but also to do everything to make women help us. "Empowering women will empower our future," said Ma.

During his speech, Ma shared a story about  foreign ladies he met at the beginning of his entrepreneurship.

"Twenty years ago, I started my business in Hangzhou and made homepages for companies in China. Few people knew about the Internet at that time, so it was very difficult. I convinced a hotel in my city to commission a homepage. Four months later, I received an email. There were three ladies who said that they were coming to Beijing for the World Conference on Women and they wanted to stay at that hotel. And I said, ladies, the hotel is 1,000 miles from Beijing. They said, 'We don't know that, and that's the only hotel they could find on the Internet.' Even when the meeting was over in Beijing, the ladies flew all the way to my city and stayed for two nights," said Ma

"I don't know where the three ladies are today. But I want to thank them for giving me the confidence and courage to continue my business."

At the forum co-hosted by the Alibaba Group and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ma announced it had raised U.S. $20 million for UN Women to close the gender gap, including U.S. $5 million from Alibaba and U.S. $1 million from the Gates Foundation, among others.

The forum took place alongside the Global Leaders' Meeting on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment which was co-hosted by China and UN Women.

In 1995, the fourth World Conference on Women convened in Beijing and passed the Beijing Declaration and Plan for Action. The summit held 20 years later aimed to call on every country to make further commitments to ensure women enjoy safety, dignity, education, employment and are free of violence in order to help women fully and equally participate in economic and social activities.

It is not the first time that Ma has represented women at international forums. In May 2015, his company hosted a global female entrepreneurship meeting which attracted more than 800 famous women from all over the world.

When sales on Alibaba's online store reached a record high in late 2014, Ma publicly thanked women for their contributions to his company's development.

(Source: People's Daily and Netease/Translated and edited by Women of China)