Increasing the presence of women in top management and achieving greater levels of equality between men and women in the business arena is very important and beneficial for companies, but there are still many obstacles. So claims Nuria Chinchilla, professor of Managing People in Organizations at IESE Business School, who believes that “women are those who can best humanize a company” yet, they encounter many barriers that prevent their career from taking off.
Chinchilla distinguishes between “internal” and “external” barriers. The internal barriers, she explains, are those that come from living in “a world designed by men and for men of the last century.” “When a woman enters that world, it is like giving a right-handed tool to a left-hander; you fit in but you fit in forcing the situation a lot, unless you realize that you really are different and that you can make a difference,” she reflects.
This can be observed, Chinchilla claims, in the selection of candidates – where men in positions of responsibility tend to choose men – in remuneration, in the evaluation of work, in conciliation and in promotion to higher positions, when often unconsciously, motherhood is seen as an obstacle. “Companies are organized for an individual focused on work where family and personal life have no place,” says the expert.
On the other hand, the internal barriers are the “cement roofs that are forging the [low] self-esteem of women.” These are negative perceptions that women develop about themselves, often because they “compare themselves to a male leadership model.” This leads, among other things, to women “negotiating less for themselves than for others,” a trend that harms them both in selection processes and when promoting themselves or setting terms for their remuneration.
“Our brain leads us to be stricter with ourselves,” says Chinchilla, who bases her consideration of the laws of neuroscience and her knowledge of the world of women in business leadership, an area she has studied for decades. The professor points out, for example, that if a woman “has five of the six skills that the position requests, she does not apply for it, while a man with three of six skills goes ahead and presents himself as a candidate.”
According to Chinchilla, women also have a harder time delegating, as they think they “do it faster and better” and tend to want to carry the whole workload, both at their jobs and at their homes. Finally, Chinchilla explains, women “have a harder time networking.” “We think that we have to sell ourselves, and it’s not that we have to sell ourselves; networking is working the network of relationships, which is making ourselves known, because if we want to be used for something, and we want to contribute and people don’t know us, nobody is going to call us.” “With that vision of service, of doing it so as to be useful, it may be easier for us, but we have to invest in that,” she concludes.
Professor Chinchilla defines herself as a “synergistic feminist,” that is, she is not against men but rather she works “hand in hand with men, from the differences of man and woman, to be able to add and multiply.” She considers that, in the face of glass and cement ceilings (the external and internal barriers), women should not only be “empowered,” but also “prepared.” Furthermore, rather than receiving power from outside, women must give themselves power to do things.
Chinchilla made these reflections on June 6 in a round table held in Barcelona and organized by the Spanish newspaper ‘La Vanguardia’. She has participated in two STI Experts Meetings: ‘Ethics, Families, Entrepreneurship and the Corporation’ (Princeton, 2006) and ‘Family Policies in Western Countries’ (Rome, 2004).