By Teresita Sy-Coson 

FIRST of all, let me thank the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines (Ejap) for this privilege to speak before a distinguished group of journalists, people from government and from business.

I have been asked many times about the challenges that women CEOs face.  I have not, however, given it a lot of thought until I was asked by Ejap to speak on the topic tonight.

I actually consider myself lucky to be born and to be working in the Philippines, where we have a strong support system at home. This has enabled me to devote a lot of my time to assist in our family business.

Interestingly, while I have a very demanding father, I also had a very understanding husband. The wonderful combination made me think that being involved in the family business was the most natural thing to do.

The way I see it, there is an abundance of opportunities for women here to grow in business.  However, as the Filipina takes on the role of mother, daughter and/or sister, she constantly looks more into family matters; oftentimes, at the expense of her own career prospects.

Women often choose to prioritize their family over their professional roles. As a matter of fact, many wouldn’t mind stepping on the brakes in their careers to meet the demands at home. It sometimes becomes a matter of choice, rather than talent or skills, that have made women a minority in the senior management of large corporations.

Men are reared differently. While the women attend to family matters, the men are more privileged to spend time outside the home. This allows many of them to develop their careers faster than their female counterparts.

Men also tend to socialize outside the house, and form networking groups that often share the same masculine interests. They tend to form more partnerships, businesses and clubs among themselves. The so-called old boy’s network has a way of reducing women’s access to informal information.

In our society, many women are still conditioned to taking a back seat—watching, listening and learning.  They are supposed to work quietly and selflessly, and not be too competitive.  Without much ego for self-promotion, they are expected to support the men in their lives.

I see many of my friends doing that, enjoying their supporting role while their husbands are perceived as the one making the right moves. The saying that “behind every successful man is a woman” is a way of complimenting women, but perhaps, it is also a way of telling women to be good and stay behind their men.

After all, we still seem to have a society where women still like to do many things for their husbands, and where mothers pamper their sons.  The girls in many families are usually trained to do household chores, take care of the budget, and to look for ways to make ends meet. As such, our tendency as women is to look into the details, while the men look at the bigger picture.

Luckily, I grew up in a family where my parents trained my siblings and I equally about the principles of business.  We were taught that business was our destiny, and we had to sharpen our skills in it.  We had to develop our own business sense, work hard, have a sense of integrity, help out the family in or out of the home, and to provide for our own families.

Like most women in the workplace, I used to be shy and was more comfortable in the background when I was younger.  Working in the family business was not easy for me.  But I didn’t know if those challenges were gender-related or was simply because I had limited exposure to many things in life. I was naïve in many ways. I didn’t have enough confidence. In fact, as I was growing up, I would admire big business people and their accomplishments, wondering how they became so successful.  Not surprisingly, most of these people are men.

I was often awed about the stories I would hear from my father, my husband and my brothers.  Many of these stories became part of my learning, while some served as my inspiration. Listening and observing them gave me the advantage of choosing and picking the tried-and-tested techniques.

I must admit that there is a glass ceiling, or at least there used to be. That must have been borne out of the camaraderie of men in business. But because many women have already excelled in many areas—like the number of female journalists who have won awards in Ejap—the glass ceiling may have long disappeared.

So I worked hard, read a lot of books and business magazines to compensate for my limited exposure and to meet the demands of my work. Through the years, the learning experiences, successes, and even the mistakes of the men in my life became part of my learning.  Their friends became my friends. That is the advantage of being a woman—you can learn from the men in your life by simply being there and listening.

Being young in the business, I worked long hours. I poured in 10 hours almost every day for many years. This built my confidence, and developed my stamina for work, allowing me to remain unfazed by heavy workloads.  When my husband passed away, I focused even more on my work to fill the void.

Many women are used to working long hours.  It is said that women executives are able to advance faster now because they can work more hours in and out of the house. Hard work helps in ensuring success.  Sometimes, it is not because you are smarter, but because you work harder than the guy next to you. This is because working harder helps in making smarter decisions. 

It is also a fact that there are a lot of obstacles in life, perhaps more so for women because of the limited opportunity to network.  Women often have to prioritize their families. So that means working even harder to be in the loop.  This is how I tried to compensate for the lack of networking. But while hard work can get a woman far, her charms can get her even farther.

Women also have innate qualities that can help an organization, such as their inclination to collaborate, listen, nurture and build relationships. As mothers and sisters would do in families, women are widely known for their ability to collaborate with and nurture those around them. In the workplace, they have a natural tendency to form lateral connections with others and spend a lot of time working on these ties. They see these connections as power, while men regard them as rank.

Listening is another consummate feminine trait.  The woman’s best weapon is not muscle, but patience. 

Women are instinctive, and are sensitive to emotions and feelings. They are also generally better caretakers of people. They usually don’t end their business lives and links when they leave the office.

Let me say that women fit into the new paradigm of leadership, which revolves around integration, consensus, collaboration and teamwork.  Relationships are a natural part of a woman’s being—we have been trained to be keepers of the flame. Our heightened sense of responsibility for relationships extends to whatever business we are in. This trait makes a woman valuable when building relationships with customers, with those in the organization, and in building teams. The more wired the world becomes, the more relationships matter. So all the more being a woman becomes an advantage.

Women’s skills in collaborating with staffers and connecting with customers on a human level ensure that they will excel in this highly competitive age, where partnering is a vital competitive advantage.  Women should use these qualities—empathy, collaboration and cooperation—in their management style to achieve better results.  Not only will they reach their objectives more quickly, they will build leaders to follow in their footsteps.  Such is the role of a woman executive.

Women also recognize that by sharing recognition, they increase their power and their effectiveness.  Being a mother gives the woman the tendency to forge trusting relationships with subordinates. It’s like getting children to play together, which is similar to getting people to talk about concerns that divide them, such as turf issues. In fact, even in the most professional organizations here in the Philippines, rank-and-file employees fondly refer to their female bosses as “mother.”  This feminine trait helps in building management teams quickly. It’s the ability to form collegiate relationships with employees and customers, which is not only vital to motivating employees and drawing customers; it is essential to the company’s growth.

Women leaders use skills like nurturing, displaying warmth, and engendering loyalty and respect in the workplace.  Like mothers and sisters would do in the family, they like to train, lead by example, and like to develop other people’s talents to enable them to excel in the fields they are looking into. They look for opportunities to connect with employees, rather than operate from a distance.

A woman’s ability to be flexible and efficient also helps her juggle the demands of her work and family.  This strengthens her ability to adapt to new situations.

What has also helped me a lot is the understanding that all persons have both masculine and feminine qualities in them, although in varying degrees. This determines each and every individual’s personality and uniqueness, and despite the biological differences, there is no difference in our brains.  This, in turn, produces a diversity of leadership styles. I believe that focusing too much on gender diversity could distract a person’s attention from seeking her overall level of competitiveness.

Now that I am older, the gender issue has become less of a concern to me. I can very well be considered to be part of a grandmother generation, as well as a mother or an ate.  Because of this, I feel comfortable working with the different organizations that I manage or in business functions.  Many times, I forget that I am the only woman in a group of men, and have learned to take gender-related slurs with indifference.

Women can develop confidence and withstand the natural and psychological barriers to advance in the corporate worlds.  We should not be too concerned with gender diversity, as there are many aspects we need to develop in order to advance. Rather, we should draw on our strengths as women to grow in the business world. 

Women can develop themselves into what they want to become.  Rather than dwell on the gender issue, let us focus on our strengths to attain what we want to in life.  After all, in Philippine business, gender is not much of an issue, that is, unless we make it so.

(Ms. Sy-Coson is vice chairman of the SM Investment Corp., the holding company of the Sy family. She was the keynote speaker at the Business Journalism Awards sponsored by the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines and Globe Telecom, October 12, 2007, Hotel Intercontinental Manila.)

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