Raphael John-Lall

De­spite T&T hav­ing its sec­ond con­sec­u­tive fe­male Pres­i­dent, women in the busi­ness world still have a long way to go be­fore they are treat­ed in the same way as men, ac­cord­ing to sev­er­al fe­male busi­ness lead­ers who spoke to Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

Many more women still need to break the prover­bial glass ceil­ing, the fe­male busi­ness lead­ers said.

In March, Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo was sworn in as the sev­enth Pres­i­dent of T&T and she al­so has the ho­n­our of be­ing the sec­ond fe­male Pres­i­dent.

Pres­i­dent of the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Cavelle Joseph-St Omer said women are mak­ing progress but “slow­ly.”

“In T&T, women are ris­ing (slow­ly, but ris­ing nonethe­less) in­to po­si­tions that al­low them to demon­strate in­flu­ence in ac­tion, geared to­wards the achieve­ment of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al goals. We ob­serve this in pol­i­tics, civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions, acad­e­mia, and the cor­po­rate world.

The per­for­mance of women in the C-Suite and board­rooms are less than stel­lar and there is a need for greater op­por­tu­ni­ties and gen­der par­i­ty,” she told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Women ac­count for ap­prox­i­mate­ly on­ly one in every five mem­bers of a board of di­rec­tors in T&T, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est Cor­po­rate Di­rec­tors’ Com­pen­sa­tion Sur­vey.

The sur­vey was pre­sent­ed last Au­gust by HRC As­so­ciates.

Com­ment­ing on this, Joseph-St Omer said peo­ple get on boards be­cause of net­work­ing and be­cause men tend to be at the high­er lev­els in the cor­po­rate world, nat­u­ral­ly they choose oth­er males.

“One out of five means eighty per­cent or so are men. So when think­ing about who they are adding to the board, they are go­ing to go to their com­fort zone, or the usu­al sus­pects. It means, women need to net­work and build those bonds of trust, that is re­quired for the board­room. It is al­so im­por­tant to ac­knowl­edge the im­por­tance of hav­ing a pro­fes­sion­al back­ground, com­mer­cial ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge of good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance.”

On the top­ic of salaries, she said there is still a con­sid­er­able pay gap be­tween men and women.

She re­ferred to da­ta by the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) from 2018 which showed that the pay gap be­tween men and women in T&T ranged from 8.9 per cent for tech­ni­cians and as­so­ciate pro­fes­sion­als and up to 34.7 per cent for ser­vice and shop sales work­ers.

“De­spite sig­nif­i­cant progress in fe­male labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion over the past 25 years, per­va­sive and on­go­ing gen­der dif­fer­ences re­main in par­tic­i­pa­tion, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and earn­ings.

“Gen­der dif­fer­ences in paid and un­paid time at work are an im­por­tant as­pect of gen­der in­equal­i­ty. Women tend to spend more time on un­paid house­hold and fam­i­ly care work, and men spend more time on paid work. This un­equal dis­tri­b­u­tion of time cre­ates bar­ri­ers to women’s ad­vance­ment at work and re­duces women’s eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty.”

Look­ing in­to the fu­ture, she said com­pa­nies and busi­ness­es must make gen­der equal­i­ty a part of their cor­po­rate vi­sion.

“Many for­ward-think­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions are mak­ing gen­der equal­i­ty a mat­ter of pol­i­cy, whether it’s com­mit­ting to equal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women in the board­room or through their hir­ing poli­cies and pro­ce­dures.

“Dis­cour­ag­ing and cir­cum­vent­ing bias through hir­ing pol­i­cy will help or­gan­i­sa­tions reap the ben­e­fits of bal­ance and equal­i­ty. Sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions seek po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ness or buzz­words, how­ev­er, if di­ver­si­ty, in­clu­sive­ness, and gen­der equal­i­ty be­come pol­i­cy and are em­bed­ded in busi­ness strat­e­gy and cul­ture, busi­ness­es will thrive. ‘

Ob­sta­cles

Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and lead­er­ship con­sul­tant, Max­ine At­tong, who has coached women in the cor­po­rate world, told Sun­day Busi­ness that it is “un­for­tu­nate” that many women in cor­po­rate T&T still face ob­sta­cles to recog­ni­tion and ad­vance­ment de­spite high lev­els of ed­u­ca­tion, ex­pe­ri­ence and suc­cess.

“When we jux­ta­pose this against the fact that since 1983 more women have en­rolled at Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) it makes us won­der why on­ly one in five board seats are oc­cu­pied by women.”

She said women are im­pact­ed by two main psy­cho­log­i­cal sit­u­a­tions that erode their abil­i­ty to move for­ward and lim­it their abil­i­ty to set and achieve their per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al am­bi­tions called the “im­poster syn­drome” and the “sec­ond shift.”

Im­poster syn­drome means women doubt their abil­i­ties even when they are high per­form­ers.

“A 2020 KP­MG re­port shared that 75 per cent of ex­ec­u­tive women have per­son­al­ly ex­pe­ri­enced im­poster syn­drome dur­ing their ca­reer and 74 per cent of ex­ec­u­tive women be­lieve that their male coun­ter­parts do not ex­pe­ri­ence feel­ings of self-doubt. As a re­sult, women are less like­ly to ap­ply for jobs for which they are suit­ably qual­i­fied, to com­fort­ably ask for pro­mo­tions or rais­es and to ne­go­ti­ate for the re­mu­ner­a­tion that they de­serve.”

The sec­ond shift con­cept means women work a dou­ble day or sec­ond shift as they per­form most of the house­hold and child care re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, this is com­pound­ed for sin­gle moth­ers, she said.

“As a re­sult women of­ten re­port feel­ings of guilt, in­ad­e­qua­cy and re­la­tion­ship ten­sion, as they progress in their pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer. I have coached many women whose re­grets in­clude plac­ing work com­mit­ments above at­tend­ing a child’s sports day or PTA meet­ing.

Re­mote work­ing and flex­i­ble work hours, hav­ing a ded­i­cat­ed child care area at the work­place, nor­mal­is­ing chil­dren in the (vir­tu­al or phys­i­cal) work­space, can help women who have care­giv­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Women can al­so lim­it the sec­ond shift ef­fects by hir­ing help, where af­ford­able.”

On the is­sue of pay in­equal­i­ty be­tween gen­ders, At­tong said the pay gap is an ar­ti­fi­cial and per­sis­tent prob­lem that af­fects women and calls for com­pa­nies to re-ex­am­ine their hir­ing and com­pen­sa­tion prac­tices to en­sure that they are not per­pet­u­at­ing in­equal­i­ty.

“Pay should be based on qual­i­fi­ca­tions, skills and ex­pe­ri­ence, rather than gen­der and out­dat­ed stereo­types about women’s roles or on bi­ased, un­sci­en­tif­ic be­liefs about women’s fi­nan­cial needs. This is an easy fix. We need to con­tin­ue the con­ver­sa­tion about gen­der equal­i­ty in cor­po­rate T&T.”