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Women Executives Still a Rarity (Portugal)
The following is from the article written by Mario de Queiroz, published by Inter Press Service News Agency:
It is not common to see a woman’s name on the board of directors of one of Portugal’s biggest companies, and even comes as a surprise to some.
In the European Union, Portugal and Italy are at the bottom of the list in terms of female representation in economic decision-making positions, along with Cyprus and Luxembourg.
The sharpest contrast in Europe is with Norway, a non-EU country that is the most advanced in the region with respect to gender equality in the economic-financial sphere, where women held 34 percent of high-level executive positions in business in 2007, a proportion that is expected to rise to 40 percent by the end of this year.
In Portugal, only seven women hold executive positions in the 20 biggest companies listed on the Portuguese Stock Index (PSI-20), compared to 116 men (94 percent).
The seven women in question are on the boards of directors in five companies, three of which are family businesses.
The Mota-Engil construction company is the only PSI-20 company with an equal number of men and women on its six-member board of directors. But the explanation becomes clear with a glance at the full names of the three female executives: María Manuela Vasconcelos Mota, María Teresa Vasconcelos Mota and María Paula Vasconcelos Mota -- three members of the family that owns the company.
The scarcity of women in top business positions comes as no surprise to María Manuela Tavares, head of the Uniao de Mulheres Alternativa e Resposta (UMAR), a women’s rights group, as she told IPS when commenting on the data contained in a research study by analyst São José Almeida that was the focus of a late March article by the Público newspaper in Lisbon.
"In Portuguese society, there is a masculine model of power -- in politics, business management, decision-making positions and other high-profile posts. Centuries of history have made women invisible," said the 56-year-old university professor, one of Portugal’s leading women’s studies researchers.
Tavares acknowledged that advances have been made in the professional and social status of women in Portugal since the 1926-1974 dictatorship was toppled by the leftist army captains who carried out the so-called "carnation revolution", "but that progress has not yet done away with gender stereotypes based on specific ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ images."
Professor Antonia Pedroso de Lima at the University of Lisbon Higher Institute of Sciences of Labour and Business (ISCTE), who is quoted in Almeida’s study, says executive positions are seen as "more legitimate when they are held by men."
The constitution approved in 1976, two years after Portugal’s return to democracy, granted women complete legal autonomy for the first time in the country’s history.
Read the entire story here.
