Individual actions within cultural models give women different levels of participation in the institutions of our society.
Our Central American culture imposes a series of symbolic representations on women. Throughout history in periods of crisis, war, expansion or decline, women have had a certain role in the world of work.
After the Second World War, women are conquering increasingly broad areas and consciously demanding a situation of equality with men in the legal, labor and cultural fields in general.
Women are prepared to occupy hierarchical positions, but I believe that in Central America, women are still considered inferior to carry out certain tasks.
The introduction of women into the world of work is recent. Most of the time, women are expected to be administrative employees while the top positions are held by men.
Today's society (fortunately they are the least) does not trust the abilities of women as entrepreneurs.
Today there is a concern for the future employment of women and I believe that the potential that women can have as leaders is not valued. On the other hand, I think that some men are not ready to accept taking orders from a woman.
Female performance
Female performance means functional regularity in behavior: Individuals act according to a scheme that allows them to fulfill a certain function.
It is about the observation of a learned model, a model of behavior that is organized in relation to the position of the individual within the group with which they interact.
Thus, it includes the attitudes, values and behaviors assigned by society to every person.
Personality plays an important role in the choice and integration of the multiple roles that the individual assumes and, conversely, each of the roles will leave its stamp on the personality, with regard to the absorption of social and cultural models of an intellectual, affective, aesthetic order, etc.
The salaried woman
The equality between men and women in the world of work is still distant. However, the number of women with a work role is increasing day by day. Changes not only the amount but the characteristics of the job. However, the proportion of women in senior positions is considerably lower than they deserve due to their level of training.
Women began to work out of economic necessity, women of a lower economic level, married or single, worked outside the home. Women's wages tend to be lower.
In addition, the working woman had and continues to have to carry out her household chores at the same time as her work tasks.
The increase in the presence of women in universities is a phenomenon that began in the 1980s in Costa Rica. Then they develop their career, in some cases within the same company, and in others by changing companies in search of better positions.
These trained women participate in the labor market with different modalities, such as practicing the profession, teaching, and there is an increase in women in business leadership positions.
These women are building new models of behavior to overcome the limitations perceived by labor market policies and cultural rules.
The female entrepreneur typically runs a small, low-risk, low-funding business, and works in a tight market. Society does not bet on small businesses run by women.
One factor that affects the possibility of occupying management and leadership positions in companies is that women enter and leave the job market when they get married or have children, since this type of work does not allow withdrawal.
Another factor is that women often do not receive the necessary motivation to demonstrate their capabilities as they are subjected to work considered of little importance within the company.
In addition to receiving financial remuneration, they must receive affective remuneration.
Women who do not work as wage earners are often frustrated in their personal fulfillment and marginalized from modern life. Those who work are harassed by the idea (sometimes promoted by the family and social environment) of being bad mothers or bad wives and even by the idea that a woman should be a mother.
A woman who has achieved a balance between her maternal cravings and her fulfillment as an individual will establish a more beneficial relationship with her affections.
The influence of expectations on job development
It is worth highlighting the value that self-esteem and self-image acquire and the expectations about themselves for the development of their own self-esteem, allowing them to project and achieve goals that had not been proposed when they entered the labor market.
One of the ways to achieve change and increase expectations about themselves occurs in learning different tasks within the company, training at different levels, self-awareness of the proposed objectives and the consequent achievement. A high expectation about yourself allows you to propose to reach higher levels in the organization.
Those managers who achieve their objectives do not allow prejudices to become difficulties, they have confidence in the capacities they have to be occupying that position and from that place they work.
Taking care of people and not just tasks is made easier for women because it is part of learning care roles, which have to do with motherhood and caring for others that are attributed to women.
What will it mean for a woman to be successful?
Motivation is and always will be a direct consequence of recognition. Recognition is at the top of the pyramid of human needs, which Maslow defined. No one should feel expendable based on an achievement.
It is clear to a leader that the success of his team is his own success, but it is not always clear to the team. Sometimes leader satisfaction builds on group dissatisfaction and in that case, success will not be final.
A lot of passion, a lot of pressure, and then a huge decompression (which sometimes results in depression), with no inevitable cycles in some successful teams.
Unfortunately in high performance groups, reaching goals always produces a degree of burnout. A strategist will be better in terms of achieving his objectives with the minimum of casualties on his lines. After reaching a goal and before decompression, a staff evaluation must be made, which involves verifying the state of the people who participated.
I have listened many times to conversations between the members of a team that has just completed important projects and I am no longer surprised to hear: "wonderful, but don't count on me next time." The motivation for success should not be neutralized, by the demotivation caused by a high price paid individually.
Every leader is a visionary and is also a mentor for new leaders. It is inevitable that his influence will awaken the dreams of the team members.
The moment a person on the team begins to dream, an opportunity presents itself for the leader to support him or her and strengthen their sense of belonging. Discouraging him will lose a potential leader, and suppressing him creates resentment.
The strength of a visionary can always be channeled towards the fulfillment of goals. Competent people who remain committed must have access to development opportunities in the organization.
If your skills are different from those of a leader, they should be leveraged to expand the total talent reach of the organization. A talented person should never be forced to copy a successful model for another, if it is frustrating for him.
From least to greatest, it can be observed granting powers, the development of the personality and the capacities of each member of a team.
Necessity should never be the rule to assign a definitive task, but rather the intrinsic characteristics of that person should determine their role in the team.
In a sporting activity this comment would be unnecessary due to its simplicity, but my experience is that in companies it is conspicuous by its absence. I have heard that some companies behave like meat processors at times.
If a company only has plans for itself and does not have plans for its people, it is an egocentric organization and without esprit de corps.
The objectives of a Leader Schedule, organize, execute
If the function of a leader is to lead the human group he leads towards a goal, he must necessarily specify what he wants to do, study how to do it, and with whom.
For this reason, it is important to schedule the task, outlining in general the global (general) objectives to be achieved within a period, but also indicating in detail the activities that will be accomplished in a short and immediate period, such as for the next two months and so on.
The projects and activities to be proposed must be concrete and realistic, that is, although they require sacrifices and efforts, they are within the possibility of being put into practice.
If these attitudes are not met such requirements and it is noticed in advance that the project (or plan) exceeds the possibilities of what I can do personally, it is advisable to put them aside.
Discrimination against women
Discrimination within organizations manifests itself in different ways. The most common happens when assigning tasks. The woman is responsible for carrying out administrative tasks, or she can be a receptionist or secretary. While the managerial positions are reserved for the masculine sex.
The woman who gets to occupy one of those positions, generally, achieves it having worked an extensive period within the organization, making a career within it. So you can demonstrate your ability and be taken into account.
The problem arises when a woman wants to run for a high position and has not belonged to the company, it is difficult for her to be elected regardless of her title or experience.
In other cases, employers do not doubt the woman's ability but prefer not to hire her because of the costs that pregnancy could bring.
In other cases, discrimination is given in the case that the woman is married or with children, I suppose that in this case it is feared that the absenteeism of women is greater than that of men because they have to take care of the family.
However, statistics reveal that women workers who have a position of responsibility, even when having children, are not absent more than men.
Costa Rican culture, culture of the organization
Despite not being a feminist and accepting that some tasks have better results when they are carried out by only one of the sexes, I believe that our society continues to have macho characteristics.
By this I do not mean that the responsibility lies with men. We all do culture, women and men. From the moment that women accept their condition in society, they are legitimizing it.
Culture shows the woman as an instrument of pleasure, an object of exhibition and a reproducer of the species. The changes that must take place in culture to promote sexual equality take time.
This is because discrimination against women is deeply rooted. Not long ago, women could not vote, could not access political positions and could not even think of having a paid job outside the home without prior authorization from their spouse.
The Costa Rican culture is transferred to the organization becoming part of the culture of the latter. Here the decisions are made by top executives who are neither more nor less than men. The relationship between the woman and the man in the house is repeated within the organization.
The woman obeys orders, doing the least creative jobs while the man decides what is best for the organization. In the house the woman cleans and the man does the accounts and manages the expenses, in the organization the man makes decisions regarding the administration of resources while the woman prepares the invoices and other documents.
Today women are expressing their dissatisfaction with being considered different and unsuitable for certain activities and society is slowly accepting the new role of women, working women, women with leadership capacity.
The leading woman
The leader within the organization fulfills a guiding function for the other members of the organization. The legitimacy of the leader's power can come from different means such as charisma, experience, etc. I don't think it is the case to dwell too much on this.
What I do think we should stop to think about is how many women are taken as leaders within an organization. The cases that I know of are cases of women who become leaders due to their seniority in a job.
These women were assigned groups in charge to carry out specific activities. However, in most cases the role models are male. For sure, I believe that women have the capacity to be a leader just as much as men.
But the problem arises from the fear of senior managers that women will not be accepted as a leader by the rest of their colleagues, and in the worst case by themselves. We end up always coming back to the same thing: culture, customs teach us to look at the woman as a mother and the father of the family as the leader of the family. This carries over to all of our areas.
Leadership Conditions:
- Emotional balance: Exercise balanced and sensitive leadership, using ethical resources. Respect the opinion of the other and accept the divergence as something natural and enriching. Personal security: Starting with a positive self-esteem, keeping my ideas firm and ductile, trying a harmonious fit between my role and the requirements of the activity. Communication: Transmit and generate trust and commitment when I define my ideas and guide them on how to put them into practice. Provide the information taking into account the needs and expectations of the other. To be able to express my ideas clearly and to know how to listen and interpret my interlocutor. Be a good transmitter and receiver.
Women in the organization
The first steps that women took outside the home were in teaching. But not in any educational organization, only at the primary and then secondary level.
Participation in other areas was mainly due to the need for another source of income for the family, so women were allowed to go out to look for work. This was a world change that occurred mainly in the 60s and 70s also reached our women.
Then the woman becomes part of the professionals. Choose new careers. Not only do more women come to the faculties but they also go to careers that were considered typically male, such as engineering, architecture, economics, law, medicine, etc.
The woman even became part of the police force. Unfortunately, discrimination also continues to exist in this organization.
A survey was recently conducted and the results showed that there are now more female teachers than male teachers (51% and 49% respectively). Until a few years ago the proportions were reversed. The majority of women are seen in the careers of Philosophy and Letters, Pharmacy and Biochemistry and Psychology.
However, the proportions do not apply to all faculties. For example, in engineering and economics careers, the teaching staff is mostly male.
Having already made its way into organizations, now women, myself included, seek recognition and thus come to occupy a position according to their ability and not according to their gender.
Women had and still have an active participation in the development of humanity. The story has countless talented women in the most diverse fields. Although they stood out regardless of their feminine condition, it should not be forgotten that they had to overcome, in each case, the role assigned ancestrally: the home and the children.
Things were changing and women, with tenacity and sacrifice, day by day, were occupying places that were exclusively male domain. Today, there is almost no place left where women cannot work. There seem to be no limitations or barriers, and yet it is too early to say that we have equal opportunities.
This does not mean that the mere fact of being a woman affects or restricts the possibilities of professional development, what is stated is that attention must be paid to certain particular aspects of hiring or promotion within a company.
It is necessary, for women, to plan life in advance to obtain good results in the medium term and not find themselves with a very limited horizon.
Good evidence: Labor laws created to protect working women end up granting them benefits that employers take as a burden and, something thought with the intention of protecting, leaves them more exposed to not getting high-ranking employment.
The changes will take place over time, since from a demographic point of view there are more and more highly specialized women. The need to take advantage of these human resources will force companies to start looking for solutions to capture them before the competition does.
The weapons that I know to face the difficulties just mentioned, added to the already general ones of unemployment, are training with an eye on market needs and perseverance in the search for opportunities.
Spectacular progress has been made in recent centuries with regard to the position of women in the world of work. More and more women are working in positions traditionally considered exclusively for men. Expectations of themselves contribute to setting higher goals to achieve.
Likewise, women are still not listened to, this is seen for example in the fact that Latin American women decide to meet in women's meetings to have someone who understands their situation in society. In addition, access to high positions for women remains very difficult.
Employers refuse to admit women to traditionally male tasks. The same degree in the hands of a woman has less value than in the hands of a man and promotion is much more difficult.
To achieve this, a woman has to accumulate greater merits. The role of women as an autonomous and responsible person, capable of combining their roles as mother and worker, is not recognized.
This is a step that society must take. Adapting to this dual role can be materially facilitated through the creation of public services that enhance the quality and safety of childcare while the mother remains away at work.
The woman must stop being seen as a housewife. For this, women must continue trying to improve themselves professionally and personally.
At the same time, I believe that the government would have to do more than just promote the employment of women with words. The main objective being to ensure that both the public and private sectors incorporate women into senior positions.
This new organizational model revolves around the benefit of a fuller and more satisfying life not only for women, but for the human being in general.
