A debate on women’s leadership focuses on demolishing unconscious biases
Why do companies usually have over 50% women in their teams at the beginning of the professionals’ careers but a much lower percentage at the managerial level? Which are the barriers preventing the woman’s access to leadership positions? How can such situation be changed?
Replies to the above questions were discussed at the second lecture of the Women in the Profession program of the CyrusVance Center for International Justice, a forum organized by the main law firms in Uruguay and hosted by their female partners: Verónica Raffo (Ferrere Abogados); Corina Bove (Guyer & Regules);Marcela Hughes (Hughes & Hughes); Virginia Brause (Jiménez de Aréchaga,Viana & Brause); and María Elena de Posadas (Posadas, Posadas & Vecino).
Over 130 female lawyers gathered in the morning of Friday 11 at the Hyatt Centric Montevideo Hotel to listen to the lecture by Patricia López Aufranc, a partner of the Argentinean Marval, O´Farrell & Mairal law firm, and to discuss how to increase the percentage of women in Law and how to facilitate their access to managerial positions. The lecture was also attended by representatives of the Chilean Carey law firm and the Brazilian Mattos Filho law firm.
The opening presentation was offered by Corina Bove, who thanked the generosity of the presenter and her willingness to share her knowledge, and stressed the importance of the formal creation of a national committee for Uruguay within the scope of the Women in the Profession program, that is designed to contribute to “promoting the recruitment, retention, advancement, and promotionof women in the profession”. This committee includes representatives of Ferrere Abogados, Guyer & Regules, Hughes & Hughes, Jiménez de Aréchaga, Viana & Brause, and Posadas, Posadas & Vecino.
Then Patricia López Aufranc took the stand. She referred to the current gender gap and explained that, while at the beginning of the legal career there is about the same number of men and women, later on, at the managerial level, women only hold between 8% and 15% of managerial positions, depending on the country. She added that such figures remain unchanged since the 1990s, which means that the number of women in managerial positions has not grown in line with the growth in the number of women in the legal profession.
“Why is it so hard for women to make any progress?”, asked the lecturer. In her opinion, the answer should be associated to certain “unconscious stereotypesand prejudices which erect internal and external barriers that subtly hinder the development of women”. Such stereotypes, she explained, derive, among other causes, from the games children play, where boys are trained to compete while girls are trained to be well behaved. In her opinion, this bias is reinforced by ads in the media and by the roles of females in films, inter alia.
According to López Aufranc, cultural changes are slow and the growth in the number of professional women is not per se adequate to promote such change, whereby women must work on the internal barriers which operate inside them. “Opportunities will not come towards the women; women must proactively fight to get them”, she stated.
After the lecture, the attending professionals grouped in several round tables to discuss, in workshop fashion, several topics related to the current status ofwomen in the legal profession and their access to major positions in law firms: the main challenges for the professional development of women, and the importance of networking and marketing.
VerónicaRaffo, Marcela Hughes, Virginia Brause, and María Elena de Posadas presented a summary of the issues dealt with by each group and stressed the need to repeat this kind of gatherings for the promotion of female professionals in the legal arena and the positioning of women.
Finally,Virginia Brause thanked the presence of participants and invited them to the next lecture to be held in Montevideo within the scope of the Women in theProfession program.
Previous