Interviewing for a new job – especially one you really want – is always nerve-wracking. These days, it seems the entire process is more grueling than ever. In an annual review of the “Top 25 Most Difficult Companies To Interview”, Glassdoor.com reported that recently “…the average length of the entire interview process is increasing, from an average of 12 days to an average of 23 days.”
The Paul Hastings law firm recently released the third edition of, Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Women in the Boardroom, a study that focuses on the role that stock exchanges and their listing policies can play in achieving gender parity in boardrooms around the globe. Exchanges can help in the march towards a more diverse boardroom by including diversity figures in their listing requirements and/or punishing companies who don’t comply. Like any diversity initiative, the important question is, does it work?
Female Millennials (or Generation Y) made up roughly of ages 13-33, may be in a better position to rise the corporate ladder than any generation before them. This is partially due to the amount of women who are graduating college, and receiving higher education, even more so than their male counterparts.
According to Census figures, there are 60 million Millennials in America, and 30 million of those are women. Keywords describing the generation have been ‘ambitious,’ ‘optimistic,’ and ‘dedicated.’
How easy is it for Brazilian woman to climb the corporate ladder in modern day Brazil? Brazil’s women have been making rapid but quiet advancements over the last decade. At the opening of the U.N. General Assembly in 2011, Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president announced that the 21st century is the century of women. “I speak to you with a feminine voice; it’s the voice of democracy, of equality.” Today her words seem to be ringing true as the trend of women entering into the Brazilian business world steadily increases. They have narrowed the gap in education and are now graduating at a faster rate than men. However when it comes to senior level positions within the corporate world, Brazil is still lagging far behind,
Top Brazilian Women in Business
1. Maria das Gracas Silva Foster
As the CEO of Petrobras, Silva Foster is undoubtedly the most powerful woman in Brazil. She was also voted the 18th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. Petrobras is a massive oil conglomerate and has the distinction of being the largest company by sales in the Southern Hemisphere. She grew from humble beginnings in a Favela or shanty town and still lives in a modest apartment between two large apartment buildings. She is known for her humble, down to earth demeanor and as the first woman in the world to head a major oil-and-gas company.
2. Chieko Aoki
Aoki is the CEO of a luxury hotel chain called Blue Tree Hotels based in San Paolo. A native of Japan, Aoki went to law school in San Paolo before rising through the ranks of the hotel industry and eventually founding her own luxury based hotel chain. Last year she saw the company earn $170 million in sales. This figure rose for the 2014 FIFA world cup and is expected to explode in anticipation of the 2016 Olympics.
3. Luiza Helena Trajano
As CEO of Magazine Luiza, a retail company Trajano was headed one of the most gainful Brazilian Retail stocks last year. She is rumored to have been offered a cabinet position by the president overseeing the growth of the countries small-companies sector. Today she has over 700 stores throughout Brazil. Her business strategy of targeting the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid has made her extremely popular with customers and employees. She is known as one of the few business people who have successfully been able to “court” Brazil’s poor.
4. Adriana Machado
Machado is the CEO of General Electric Brazil. She has recently been cast as an environmentalist with her support of Brazil’s fledgling wind industry. She is also very vocal about the slow moving bureaucracy of Brazil’s government starting rumours that she may be eyeing a government position sometime in the future.
The present reality and the future progress
Brazilian women are entering the business world at a rate never before seen and are making some significant advancements. In 2011 women comprised 42.7% of the entire Brazilian workforce. However the lack of women in senior positions within Brazilian owned companies still needs to be addressed. In a study launched by the 2011 Global Gender Gap study by the World Economic Forum, Brazil was ranked 82nd among 135 nations studied. In an Executive Opinion Survey done by the World Economic Forum, the ability of Brazilian women to rise to top business leadership positions was measured. Out of a possible scale of 7, Brazil received a mediocre 4.06.
These middling scores reflect a number of root causes of gender imbalance in both the Brazilian corporate world and society itself. According to IBGE on average, women earn 28% less than men in the same job. Saadia Zahidi, senior director of the World Economic Forum also noted that despite having a female president, Brazilian women still only hold 9% of positions within parliament.
But Brazil’s biggest barrier to corporate women is workplace discrimination and a culture of permissiveness. According to Time, 40% of Brazilian women felt that they were currently receiving treatment at work that was inferior to their male colleagues simply because they were women. And despite a legal platform designed to combat workplace gender inequality in the words of journalist Ana Paula Padrao, “I have never heard of anyone being arrested for underpaying women”.
Brazil is also a country which faces deeply entrenched gender roles if it wants to advance its corporate women. There is a prevalent “macho” business culture which calls for displays of manly intimidation as a boss and during meetings. Not only are women sometimes seen as unable to exude these qualities but their own place is perceived as firmly with their children. Even women who can afford to hire a nannie and return to work are sometimes dissuaded from doing so. Their morality is often questioned as if her love for her children is being tested by leaving them in someone else’s care. For many in Brazil, the word mother is synonymous with the word woman. And of course, the word mother includes all the domestic duties traditionally associated with it.
But Brazil has a lot to celebrate. Today 60% of all college graduates in Brazil are women. Brazilian women have also become fixtures with developing inroads to top tier positions in the industries of health, education, and many technological industries. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, a founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy recently wrote, “In Brazil, 14 percent of the C.E.O.’s of large companies are female.” This is in sharp contrast to the United States. Of all American Fortune 500 companies, less than 5% have female CEO’s. Anna Maria Tornaghi, an international communications and marketing consultant based in Rio de Janeiro summed up the situation when she said, “Dilma is the culmination, it’s a quiet revolution, which is growing by leaps and bounds.”
By Ben Rozon
How easy is it for Russian woman to climb the corporate ladder in modern day Russia? Russian women typically haven’t made their way into Russia’s management positions. However according to a recent survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Russian Association of Managers, women represent 93 % of chief accountants, 70 % of personnel directors and 47 % of finance directors in 2010. But Russia still faces many hurdles when it comes to workplace equality in the corporate world. A culture of leadership discrimination, male dominance in certain sectors and a marked lack of confidence in Russian women’s ability to hold high profile positions puts todays Russia behind many of its Asian (China) and European neighbours. Tatyana Dolyakova, general director of Penny Lane Personnel recently said these statistics are promising for Russia’s women, “But in general no revolution is in sight in the market for top managers”
The present reality and the future progress
One of the biggest barriers to Russia’s career driven professional women is Russia’s culture of discrimination. For many Russians in the corporate world, there is a belief that women simply do not make competent leaders. Elvira Maymina, CEO of Russia’s Gasinvest Bank says,“One thing that I understood very early on in my career is that whatever job you do you have to learn, you have to ”soak up“ professionalism and always be a head taller than everyone following you, otherwise you stop being a leader.” The qualities demanded by this distinctly macho leadership style are often seen in Russia as unobtainable by women.
But corporate discrimination in Russia isn’t as blatant as in many of Russia’s neighbors to the east. Tatyana Dolyakova, the general director of Penny Lane Personnel says, “It is quite a rare occasion that the gender of a future employee is indicated in an employer’s request sent to a recruitment agency.” This discrimination seems to be more concentrated in the traditionally male dominated industries like aviation, technology and oil and gas rather than media and retail. Dolyakova then goes on to say “Of course, on the one hand, the world of business was created by men and therefore a handicap of this kind is not surprising, but, on the other hand, a lot depends upon the particular industry.”
Recently a lot of attention has been paid to women who seem to have beaten the odds and attained leadership in industries not traditionally held by women. Again, Dolyakova states, “There are examples of a traditionally ‘male’ business being run by a woman, like general director of Ledovo (a sea-food producer), Nadezhda Kopytina, or president of Inteko (a construction group), Yelena Baturina.” However these women are often divided carefully between a minority who are self-made and the majority who are married to Russian business magnates. Russia’s most popularized business women, Daria Zhukova and Polina Deripaska, known for their art galleries and media house respectively were both “heavily associated” with two of Russia’s richest men when they launched their ventures. And the groundbreaking President of the Inteko Construction Group, Yelena Baturina was once married to Moscow’s former mayor and third richest man Yury Luzhkov. The perceived notoriety of such relationships is seen by many as an example of how Russian women really climb social ladders and acts as a barrier to young women looking to succeed in business on their own.
Today in Moscow, women are on average better educated than men. But despite this, they hold only 15% of management positions within the city. This is typical of Russia’s problem of limited regional success in the involvement of women in top tier positions. In the city of Belgorod for instance, women command a 65% share of all top management offices. Statistics like these are sometimes used to show Russia’s progress and avert attention from more encompassing statistics.
PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Russian Association of Managers reported that a whopping 91% of chief accountant positions were held by women but conversely women only occupied 6% of company president seats. The study blamed a large portion of this figure on Russian women themselves not reaching for the top. Panfilova, of Transparency International says candidly that “Sometimes women just prefer to keep a lower profile. We shouldn’t forget that most women are also mothers and simply don’t have the time to promote themselves. The time that men have to spend on self-promotion and PR, women spend cooking dinner.” What this reflects is not only the predominance of traditional gender roles in Russia but also the widespread acceptance of these roles as an excuse for the lack of women in business leadership positions.
But the Russian leadership disparity between genders is improving. In the first months of 2010 there were more women chosen for top level positions than left them. This could represent a shift in the philosophy of Russian’s big-wigs. And the PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Russian Association of Managers survey also reported that most people felt that pay and conditions were the same for men and women, with only 18 per cent saying their company paid women less than men in similar positions.
By Ben Rozon
How easy is it for Chinese woman to climb the corporate ladder in modern day China? Deborah Dunsire, Chief Executive Officer and President of Millennium says, “We have a very well-educated set of women in China who can contribute to the economic dynamism of the country, yet there does still seem to be a gender gap. It’s not a disparity in education anymore and hasn’t been for decades, and it’s not a disparity in the legal framework of work.” Evidently, the main barriers to women in professional services are not educational.
This article is part of theglasshammer.com’s annual Spotlight on Asia feature running throughout the month of August.
How easy is it for South Korean woman to climb the corporate ladder in modern day South Korea? Today’s South Korea is undeniably behind the rest of the world in its prevalence of women in professional positions. Most of Korea’s female workforce finds employment as secretaries or in low paid blue collar work. Compared with a worldwide average of 10.5%, Korean women hold only 1.9% of director level positions in Korea. This systematic inequality at corporate and managerial levels of Korean society resulted in South Korea scoring the lowest of all industrialized nations on The Economist’s glass ceiling index. But with the election of Park Geun-hye as president in 2012, change is on the horizon for South Korea’s career oriented women. Through Korea’s rapid development, women today have opportunities their mothers could only dream of at the same age.
Ben Rozon
This article is part of theglasshammer.com’s annual women in Asia feature running throughout the month of August.
How easy is it for Indian woman to climb the corporate ladder in modern day India? For the last decade India has been experiencing a quiet revolution in both gender relations within the workplace and familial relations at home that has impacted India’s professional women profoundly. Indian women now make-up 40% of the Indian college level student body with many earning degrees in the more traditionally male dominated subjects like science, engineering and I.T.
This article is part of theglasshammer.com’s annual women in Asia feature running throughout the month of August.
How easy is it for Japanese woman to climb the corporate ladder in modern day Japan? With the establishment of Japan’s Equal Opportunity Law in 1985, Japanese women have become a fixture on factory floors and construction sites across Japan. In universities, Japanese women consistently perform to the highest international standards and are viewed as one of the best educated female demographics in the world.
By Rebecca Caum
The power of social media lies in its ability to deliver information with unprecedented speed to a global audience. Like most kinds of power, the inherent risks are congruent with the potential benefits. We have all figured out how to avoid the most common mistakes: set your drinks aside, don’t post your political views, and leave all things private as just that—private. But, what about using social media at work—is being social becoming as important of an asset for America’s top CEOs as reading a balance sheet? Can being social online or having a blog actually advance your career?