Female leadership is an extremely important agenda at Datum. Currently, 83% of the leader’s board is composed of women. One of these leaders is Jéssica Pessoa, our Head of Customer Success, that recently concluded an international Women’s Leadership Program. In this post, she brings her perspective on opportunities and challenges faced by women in positions of power
Recently, Forbes published and article about the increase in the prejudice against female leaderships. The content is the result of an international research called Reikjavik Index for Leadership, that interviewed more than 10 thousand people in 14 countries. The study points out that most young people have a less progressive opinion.
According to the perception of the Global CEO at Kantar Public, Michelle Harrison, in times of economic struggles, people tend to seek for “safer places”, going back to the roles of men in position of power. The stereotypes about women leader certainly weight on the minds of employees all over the world.
In counterpart, in January a piece regarding new opportunities for women leaders was published by Forbes. Valor Econômico talked about a fund that values female leaderships and outperformed the Bovespa Index, which also brought a positive perspective.
The latter demonstrates how actions by big players can have a positive impact on the search for gender equality in leadership positions. The index fund Women in Leadership, ELAS11, since its launch on March 8th 2022, until last December, accumulated a 2,043% growth, while the Bovespa Index decreased by 1,66% in the same period.
Today the fund has 66 shareholders and sums up R$ 79.5 million in shareholders’ equity. To join it, companies must have women in strategic positions, in addition to meeting liquidity and market value criteria. The number of companies with, at least, one woman in the directors board increased 6.5 percentage points in the last 12 months, reaching 67,8%. An evolution, considering that in 2018 the number was 37%.
Let’s talk about the future of female leadership?
Giving these scenarios, I would like to invite you to bring forth this discussion and change history’s course in 2023. We can’t let situations of economic difficulty allow society to overshadow us, allow them to take what we’ve already accomplished or let our achievements be questioned on account of stereotypes.
Last year, I participated in an international training, focused on women in leadership, where we had exchanges about how much we should lead ourselves, society, and organizations, in order to provoke our presence in the places of speech and management.
But, beyond us, women, have you ever reflected on what are your actions related to gender equity? If you represent a company, how many women are in leadership positions? As an employee, do you support recently promoted women? We need to understand, as a society, that we are shaped by change as it happens. So, what type of change do you want?
Here at Datum, we have created mentorships and trainings focused on women, demonstrating that we have women in positions of power and care about them. We are providing transformative roles and giving voice to female employees through development and diversity programs.
Our role is to fight backlash and lead change!
