It’s our time to shine

The year 2020 was when female CEOs of the Global Fortune 500 companies hit an all-time high. However, despite much progress pre-pandemic, the qualified pipeline from junior to senior leadership roles has been shrinking. This was even more highlighted during the pandemic when thousands have lost jobs. IBM’s study, “Dismantling the glass ceiling,” conducted among over 7,000 respondents globally during the pandemic has shown that gender bias and discrimination has held back getting more women in leadership roles.

Over the last two to three years, we have also seen a similar increasing trend of more successful female leaders in business, including tech-enabled emerging sectors. The pandemic lockdown highlighted our challenges of working from home, yet it enabled us to also demonstrate our resilience. The truth is, for the most part, we collectively made it work at scale, perhaps much to our own surprise. In fact, three years ago, flexible work arrangements was one of the key recommendations of the Makati Business Club’s (MBC) joint project research with the Philippine Business Coalition for Women Empowerment (PBCWE).

Despite improvements here in CEO representation and women leadership pipeline, many organizations still continue to struggle. Many women with high potential continue to keep a silent stance. The same IBM study in fact suggests six key actions organizations can take to level the playing field for women and create a more equal workplace for all: (1) help women maintain work-life balance; (2) understand the impact of gender bias; (3) empower women of color; (4) train men to be allies; (5) use technology to reduce discrimination; and (6) make STEM careers more accessible and inclusive.

This is exactly our sweet spot in the Philippines. Awareness is higher. We learned many hard lessons during this pandemic regarding work-life balance and hybrid workplaces. There are now many top male executives as allies. We are now able to use technologies such as artificial intelligence to eliminate gender bias and discrimination in areas such as talent acquisition, career development, and compensation planning. Many of us have been actively promoting STEM careers. Yet, many of those with strong potential still lack the confidence to even assert themselves and speak up. The issue is no longer as much about women representation but sustaining the momentum.

The challenge is broad but for MBC, our focus is on women mid-managers to be given the right support and opportunities to take on senior leadership roles. Our three action items are: engaging CEOs and inspiring them to take action, presenting ways to operationalize policies with metrics to allow for course-correction, and offering platforms for companies to learn from each other. In line with this, the MBC recently created the Women-in-the-C-Suite Committee precisely to lead this agenda.

One of the first things the committee did was to run two pulse surveys last December, one for senior leaders and another for mid-level managers/leaders, to assess where companies are in terms of inclusive workplaces. We found that women’s advancement is supported with varying degrees of policies and programs in place. However, there is a lack of clarity in communications specifically at the mid-level and high potential talent in terms of their pathways to the top. Accountability metrics and the need to better understand cultural implications of unconscious bias and gender norms vs job roles are other areas of concern. I encourage our readers to join us on March 30 at the MBC forum to hear more about the results of the survey and what we are doing to make MBC a safe space for those who want to learn and partner.

The good news is that we in the MBC WIC, IBM, and other organizations including the Filipina CEO Circle, UN-Women, foreign Chambers, ILO, and academe are all willing to help to further the advancement of women in the workforce.

To all of us women business leaders, let us partner with others for success. To all our allies, thank you for your support. We need more of you. To all of you women out there in the pipeline, remove your blinders. Discover your true potential. Speak up and network. Challenge yourself to lead because you can. And because we now have a stronger support network. The window of opportunity is now more than ever.

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Aileen Judan-Jiao is the president and country general manager of IBM Philippines and chair of the Makati Business Club’s Women in C-Suite Committee. She is also the vice-president for the American Chamber of Commerce.