11 de June de 2019
The EAE Alumni online campus includes a session run by Marta González-Peláez entitled "How to Promote Female Leadership". In the university lecturer's opinion, "female leadership is one of the great challenged of the 21st Century, along with immigration and climate change".
The resident of OIDECOM Iberoamérica (Ibero-American Observatory of Research and Development in Communication, Diplomacy and Similar Science) explained that female leadership is characterized by efficacy in terms of creating work teams and the capacity to make decisions. As such, it should be a priority for every company to develop, train and give the opportunity to women to lead the employees and thereby display all their skills and qualification.
Holding lower positions of business leadership is related to negative aspects such as a lack of education since childhood, the inability to transmit values, the failure to rethink companies when women joined the labour force and not integrating parenthood effectively in the day-to-day running of companies.
A total of 60% of women strive to combine work with their family or private, 20% decide to focus exclusively on their family and the remaining 20% prioritize their work above other areas at the certain times in their lives and professional careers. These percentages confirm that women want their right to choose to be respected.
Marta González analysed the data on voluntary withdrawal from promotion processes and the cement ceiling "that women impose on themselves by not pushing for promotion in view of the high personal and family costs that the new position would entail". 27 % of women reject the offer of a senior management/executive position, in contrast to just 2% of men.
Female leadership and equal opportunities
To analyse leadership, the professor used variables taken from a database created by the top 40 universities and business schools in the world, including 8,000 women qualified to be on Boards of Directors. The document aims to facilitate their integration in companies and reveals interesting statistics, such as the fact that 82% of women aspire to reach a leadership position in their career, compared to 89% de of men. In addition, among women, 26% aim to be a manager, 34% a director and 11% the General Director/CEO. In the case of men, 17% want to be a manager, 26% a director and 20% the General Director/CEO.
Three European countries, Sweden, Iceland and Norway, hold the top spots in terms of the greatest levels of female leadership and equal opportunities for men and women. At the other end of scale, we find Turkey, Japan and South Korea. At a global scale, Spain ranks eighth, right behind Portugal and followed by Belgium in ninth place. Compared with the analysis conducted in 2006, Spain has climbed just one place in the ranking. The country that has made the most progress in the last decade is France, according to the research drafted by the UN, I-WIL and OECD.
The Case of Spain
In Spain, we fail in terms of business leadership. In 2018, the countries that led the way in relation to female business leadership were Norway, Sweden and Ireland, with a higher-than-average proportion of women on Boards of Directors, and low rates of involuntary part-time work and female employment, as well as a more balanced working population in terms of men and women. We also fail with respect to social leadership social, based on an analysis of the support that women receive and the barriers they face to balance their personal, family and professional lives, using indicators such as the age when they have their first child, the length of maternity and paternity leave and the rate of children between 3 and 5 going to school. The countries that headed the ranking for greater social leadership in 2018 were Israel, the United Kingdom and France. Spain ranked in 29th position according to reports by the EU and I-WIL and researchh by Dr. Marta González-Peláez.
Women managers
Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Canada and the United States have a high ratio of men to women managers; a higher-than-average proportion of women on Boards of Directors; low rates of involuntary part-time work and female employment; and a more balanced working population between the sexes.
Although the average percentage of women managers in 2018 is 4.5%, very similar to the rate in 2006 (4.4%), the United States have the highest number of female executives and the best balance between male and female directors. The country also has the highest proportion of female and male managers: 14.6% and 16.9%, respectively.
The Nordic Countries lead the way with respect to female leadership and equal opportunities for women. Spain ranks second in terms of personal leadership, which refers to women's capacity to study after compulsory education or to launch an entrepreneurial venture, whether it be setting up their own company or developing and registering patents. However, it is one of the countries with the highest level of female employment, at 21.2%. In the last decade, female employment in Spain has risen from 10.9% in 2006 to 21.4% in 2018, while male employment has climbed from 6.2% to 18.1%.
Pending challenges
In view of all these statistics, Marta González-Peláez highlighted the outstanding tasks that lay ahead, including promoting corporate family responsibility, fostering female leadership and valuing its benefits, advocating the leadership of women in ministries and senior management, and, last but not least, taking full advantage of the talent and leadership skills of female professionals.