The challenge of gender equality in Venezuelan companies

The Gallery of the Táchira Chamber of Industry and Commerce shows the faces of all the men who have made a wonderful history in 91 years of management, but there is no female president throughout the vast history of the trade union. Have you ever wondered why? Within the framework of International Women’s Day, we share on lapatilla.com the opinion of several personalities who analyze the role of women within the Venezuelan companies.

Anggy Polanco / Correspondent lapatilla.com

In Táchira there are many family businesses, in which the husband and wife appear, but always the visible face and the one who holds the highest position is the man. This is how Ildemaro Pacheco, Executive Director of the Táchira Industry Chamber of Commerce, describes it and who believes that it is time for women to begin to make themselves visible and take leadership positions.

“That sometimes the husband presides but sometimes the wife presides, and thus we break that pattern because women have a lot to contribute, and from this Chamber we make this call, because we are promoting female empowerment,” he stated.

Currently, the Táchira Chamber of Commerce and Industry board of directors has five women who are part of the organization. For teams to be successful, they must be composed of different genders, said Pacheco, who has dedicated himself to studying everything related to the objectives of sustainable development.

His opinion is that inVenezuela the work of female empowerment is more advanced, because many families have been matriarchies, where the woman is the one who directs and sets the tone, this favors having women in positions of authority and leadership.

“I don’t feel that there is any greater difficulty for Tachira businessmen in moving towards that, it is just a matter of breaking habits and paradigms,” he highlighted.

Multiple tasks

However, in the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, in the frontier area, a woman, Isabel Castillo, has been in charge for a long time. She stated that there has been a change for many years now, and it is noticeable in important positions in many industries where there are more women leaders in administrative and political positions and business owners.

“This means that every day we are empowering ourselves and removing that image that it was men who should carry out these roles,” said Castillo.

She highlighted that women are often very organized because they are used to fill multiple roles at the same time, such as being mothers, wives and successful in their professional field.

The preference to promote men

In Táchira State, there is no noticeable difference in salaries between women and men, but there is a preference in the hiring processes. When there are two resumes of people equivalent in talents and credentials, there is a greater tendency to hire men than women. Also, when there are promotions in positions within companies there is a tendency to prefer promoting men.

For this reason, Ildemaro Pacheco pointed out that in the Sustainable Development Goal there is an important component that addresses the empowerment of women, and UN Women has come up with seven principles for the empowerment of women in the private sector, which is not aimed at environmental issues, NGOs or human rights, but is aimed at empowering women in the business sector.

Having empowered women allows us to build strong economies, and within the principles we talk about equal growth and remuneration, but there is an important indicator, according to UN Women: all entities must work to ensure that at least 30% of leadership positions are held by women, he reported.

“If you want your organization to be within sustainable development goals, at least 30% of leadership positions have to be led by women,” he argued.

He pointed out that UN women’s organization proposes guidelines so that the managers and directors of the entities have the capacity to detect signs of gender violence, harassment and discrimination so that the company can act and correct this in time.

“Do not wait for the woman to make the complaint, but rather the company must have a proactive attitude and have the ability to detect these signs to proceed to correct them,” added the representative of the Táchira businesses union.

He commented that the company must go out its entourage and promote leadership in the organization’s area of influence and make public all the efforts that the organization is making to promote women, set an example, carry out a marketing process internally and externally.

Regarding marketing, Pacheco stressed that it is important that companies also combat the policies of using women as an object in marketing processes.

Latent violence

Karol Vivas, a volunteer psychologist in the ‘Movimiento Somos Táchira’, an organization that advocates and fights for the rights of LGBT people, as well as women survivors of gender-based violence, explained that they constantly see the challenges that women face to reach a leadership position.

She explained that in women’s stories they hear that many fail to obtain a position of command or power because it is usually thought that these positions are for men.

“Some who have managed to reach these positions have had to take a more defensive position and a more serious attitude, something that wasn’t comfortable at all because they were not taken seriously by their colleagues in their department. Those are the challenges we encounter as women.”

She pointed out that they have detected cases in which women are not paid the same as a man in the same job position, when women face a greater burden, because that is how society has imposed it.

“Many times we have been educated to obey and to serve, and they are not negative aspects, it is simply not the only thing that as women we are capable of doing. The fact that symbolic violence still exists in all the areas in which we develop is something worrying, and this violence is not popularly known. It is that violence that is not perceived with the naked eye and that we have become accustomed to normalizing when it is really not something normal, this accompanied by the gender stereotypes to which we have been taught since we were very small and young, and we have become accustomed as women, not to see ourselves with the characteristics of a female boss,” she stated.

She considers that the aforementioned aspects make it difficult to reach these positions of power, which are often held by men and rarely by women. Sometimes women see themselves as competition among themselves.

“I am happy that every day this is changing and that united women are breaking stereotypes and showing our capabilities, which are valuable for the simple fact of being human. My feminist utopia is that we can occupy the positions we are capable of holding and we are recognized for everything we have done to get there regardless of our gender.”