By Arturo Wallace

The new was hidden in a single line, as part of a table of a 198 pages report of the International Labour Organization (ILO): in Colombia 53.1% of top management positions belong to women.  

According to ILO, this makes Colombia one of the three countries where there are more women than men occupying these kind of positions. (The other two are the Caribbean islands of Santa Lucia with 52.3% and Jamaica with 59.3%).

However, Ximena Peña –a professor in the economics department of Los Andes University who has been studying the situation of women in the Colombian labour market for years- says these findings are a surprise.

“Honestly, this completely contradicts every result I have came up with in my researches”, she says to BBC World.

“I have conducted several studies using as a source the database of the Household Survey of the National Department of Statistics, which is the source that generates the official numbers of employment,” explains Peña.

“And by looking at the proportion of workers reported as owner or employer in companies of two o more people, over 80% are men (…). The truth is that the proportion of women who made it to the top in Colombia is very small,” she claims.

To emphasize her argument, the researcher gives an example: “If I ask you to name five important businessmen, it is extremely easy, but if I ask you to name two women…”

“Here, in Colombia, we can name queens (of beauty), we can mention journalists, but not women who are bosses or entrepreneurs”, says Peña.

Managers, but of what?

Nevertheless, the same ILO report acknowledges that the presence of women in top management positions is scarce all around the world, and that Colombia is not the exception.

For example, on a global level, less than 5% of the owners or managers of the largest companies are women, and in the Colombian case the number goes down to 4% when considering the 100 largest companies in the country.

And, generally, Colombian women have only 12.1% of the highest management positions (always according to ILO), a fact that seems to confirm a global trend that says that women have greater chances of leading specific areas, such as public relations, human resources, finances or administration, but they rarely lead entire companies.

“Every day, more women occupy top management positions in Colombia, but the truth is that there are more men than women in these positions”, says Sylvia Escovar, president of the oil and gas distributor Terpel, and, as such, the only woman leading one of the top ten companies of the country.

“You only need to make a guests’ list for a corporative cocktail to realize this”, she adds.

Better prepared

Nonetheless, Escovar says she is not surprised there is an increasing number of women in management positions.

“It is a phase of a process involving deeper changes that has been registered in the country since the 1960’s, such as the demographic transition with its’ profound implications on the configuration of families and the massive entering of women to the educational system”, explains the president of Terpel.

“There is an Act that sets a minimum percentage of women to be in high level public positions. Moreover, 3 years ago the Public Policy of Gender Equity for Women was launched”, she points out, but also states that there still is a long way to go to close the gap.

Certainly, according to Peña, women in Colombia have a salary that, in average, is between 17% and 20% lower than the salary of men who have the same responsibilities.

And that happens despite the fact that Colombian women are better prepared.

“We accumulate more years in education: we stay longer in school, end high school more frequently, access the university and our rate of desertion of university is lower than the rate of men”, said Peña.

Both, the researcher from Uniandes and Escovar agree on the fact that the “glass ceilings” that sets restrictions for women in the labour market still is the result of social roles’ distribution that give women lots of house chores.

“(There are lots of women) who do the invisible domestic work that allows their partners to show up at work and their children at school every day. In this area, men may grow professionally until they reach management positions, while women access the labour market late or do not access it at all”, says Escovar.

“And once they are in the labour market, women may be negatively affected when going for management positions due to ideas such as their physical weakness, their greater sensibility or others linked to pregnancy or motherhood at work”, admits Terpel’s president, who, nevertheless does not believe her career has been affected by her gender.

“Although I understand being a woman has been an obstacle or an accelerator for other women, I do not believe it was my case”, she says.

But the pending challenge is making that become the reality for women in Colombia and around the world.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk