Women leaders and the challenges to achieve equality

Ways to Promote Equity

Darice Gubbins, Head of Sustainability, Credicorp

All change begins with the leaders and how they moderate their behavior is important, which requires training because sometimes there are unconscious biases.

Leaders and the organization must be trained to eliminate these biases and have more equitable. You should also go to the board of directors, where it is not easy to have gender equality.

Every effort must be very consciousThis does not happen alone: ​​you have to design a strategy and change accordingly. It is key to manage data to be able to make the right decisions and identify the root causes and see how our selection processes are moving.

Never take “no”

Nuria Esparch, Former Defense Minister

When I was Defense Minister, I called Michelle Bachelet, the former president and prime minister of Chilean Defense. I was obsessed with talking to her because she experienced much more machismo than the Peruvian. “Never take ‘no’ for an answer,” she told me. “When they say no, ask for the reasons and they will give you an explanation and you will have an answer, but on the third or fourth try you will realize if it is tradition or custom. That’s my best advice, get to the heart of the matter and don’t settle,” she argued. It is also important to mentor others, share life experiences, challenges and obstacles.

Women have fought throughout history for equality and an end to violence. Photo: Diario As

Challenges for equality

Mónica Obando, Central People Manager, Latam Airlines

In Peru, only 5% of the pilot crew are women. While many things have changed since the vote for women, this aspect has not. That’s where the challenges begin. We go out to the market and realize that only the 4% of applicants are women, it becomes difficult to change that reality. When our women decide to be mothers, they have to stop flying and our regulation only accepts three months, and the rest has to be assumed by the company. In large companies it may be possible to assume it, but not in small ones. So where is the incentive that we have to have as entrepreneurs to be able to continue advancing and have equity?

Jokes that are no longer funny

Claudia Draghi, Co-founder Minding

I was in Cajamarca with a mine that works with women leaders and I found two realities: they were certain that they had to take care of the house and that their work was not as important as that of their husbands, despite the fact that they earned more.

A few days later, we were 3 women and 4 men and suddenly one of the participants expressed her disagreement and one responded: “we are in those days?”. They withdrew it. That would not have happened 10 years ago. First, we would not have arrived at communities to help and a joke like that would have been funny. Today it is not only laughable, but it is punishable.

More women in leadership roles

Mariana Costa, Co-founder and President, Laboratoria

Few people know that at the dawn of the digital age, many of the first programmers were women. If you look at the data, when the race emerged in the 1960s, it was balanced, but then technology goes from being something that is manufactured to being at the heart of business, where women were not. We see that the gap is still large. Dropout in education also occurs at the job level, and in all industries women progress more slowly. How do we make sure that women who are still juniors and not yet seniors continue with their career? There we must work to have enough portfolio in leadership positions.

Mariana Costa Checa is co-founder and executive director of Laboratoria, a Peruvian company that promotes inclusion and equality in the labor market of the digital economy. Photo: Composition by Gerson Cardoso/Conicyt/RPP

Including women is good business

Tanja Goodwin, World Bank Economist

There is a difference between politics and culture. I had to travel to a country with an expressly feminist president and when I was in meetings in the Treasury I asked for a lactation room, because I have a one-year-old daughter, and they gave me an office with four glass walls. This reflects that they do not know what our challenges are. The narrative has to change from a rights issue, which is important, but many times the economic part works better: including women is good business.

It is important to continue thinking about women who are not here, from the private or public sphere, to continue promoting inclusion.

Diversity and labor equity

Leyla Krmelj, Ratings Manager, Moody’s

If diversity and equity are managed well, you can achieve greater inclusion in your work team and the employees who work will feel a greater sense of belonging to the corporation.

At Moody’s, more than 40% are women; however, as we begin to look at positions of position at a high hierarchical level, drop to 30%. Something that we identify is education, women, compared to men menMany times they cannot dedicate time to a master’s degree due to cheaper issues or because they are single mothers or have to face other expenses at home.

Owners of our finances

Briggit Bencich, Chairman of the Board, COFIDE

Internally, at Cofide, the wage gap does not exist and more than 72% are women. There is an empowerment of women because leadership positions are assumed by them: more than 60% of these savings and credit unions are made up of women and what they do are productive developments for their communities. We also have a capital fund for innovation entrepreneurs, with more than S/75 million, and when it comes to having an eligibility criteria, we see how these funds are governed in order to include the gender approach within our guidelines.