Seven out of ten female executives in Latin America think that the pandemic will have negative impacts on gender equality and 41.4% think it will affect their promotion possibilities negatively. These are some of the findings of the second edition of the ‘Esade Gender Monitor Latam” report published by Esade in conjunction with América Economía Intelligence, based on a survey of more than 1,000 female executives in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru about the obstacles they face at work and also, on this occasion, about the impact of Covid-19 on their personal lives and careers.

Regarding the workplace, 76.8% of the female executives surveyed say that their company adapted to their family circumstances during the hardest part of the pandemic, and 80.9% say that the solutions implemented by their company to pursue office tasks have facilitated or will facilitate flexitime. “There is consensus about the positive impact of corporate flexibility policies on women’s career development and, as a result, on real gender balance in society,” says Eugenia Bieto, director of the Esade Women Initiative and co-author of the report, who added that “the speedy roll-out of working from home during the pandemic put paid to the reluctance and obstacles that still affect its implementation in many cases.”

The percentage of female executives who say they have faced or now face more difficulties doing their job than their male colleagues is 22.2%. Another 44.7% say that they have had the same difficulties and 32.4% say they have none. However, this number climbs to 35.3% when they compare themselves with their partners, and 19.7% have even contemplated leaving their job because they cannot balance it with household chores. Co-responsibility at home did nonetheless increase during the toughest moments of the pandemic with 78.3% of respondents saying they shared household chores with their partners.

Main obstacles to gender and promotion

The latest 'Esade Gender Monitor - Latam' report reveals that the percentage of female executives citing men being preferred for management positions has increased seven percentage points since its first edition in 2020 up to 82.8%, and, in the cases of millennial and generation Z professionals (aged between 20 and 40 years), up to 87%. “This detail is very striking,” says Patricia Cauqui, co-author of the report and professor of Gender Balance and D&I programmes at Esade, “because it is happening in a generation brought up in a landscape of complete formal equality. As this second edition of the study shows, progress is being made in co-responsibility, but even the youngest executives are still under a lot of pressure as regards the role that society expects women to conform with in their country”.

The main gender barriers that female Latin American executives face every day at work are the wage gap (22.9%), lack of acknowledgement of their work (20.8%) and difficulties in striking a balance between work and family life (15.1%). The most common obstacles to promotion they mentioned were a lack of or ineffective gender equality policies (16.5%), difficulties in combining childcare with management positions (15.8%) and the fact that women usually take jobs that enable a better work-life balance (15.1%).

The number of respondents who say that their companies have implemented gender parity policies rose from 56.9% in the first ‘Esade Gender Monitor Latam’ report to 59.8% in the second edition, with 81.2% saying that these measures are part of their company’s strategy. The most common policies aim to foster leadership training and performance in key areas (20.6%), flexitime (17.3%) and the implementation of performance management systems (14.1%). However, they feel that the best way to achieve gender equality would be for their companies to implement indicators that measure equal opportunities (15.5%).

Progress in work-life balance and joint responsibility

Slight progress has also been made regarding work-life balance. When asked what their companies understand by the balance between personal life, family and work, the percentage of respondents who answered “a way of giving employees greater well-being and balance” climbed to 51%, and those who answered “a way of improving corporate productivity” increased to 19.2%. However, 18% acknowledged that their organizations still see the work-life balance as “an issue that only affects women.” This old-fashioned way of thinking also persists in the companies whose female executives say that their companies do not really endorse flexitime and working from home and continue to reward actually being in the office (17.8%). In this respect, 34.8% say that their companies have implemented enough measures to achieve this flexibility, and 47.7% agree but think there is still room for improvement. In the household scenario, 64.6% of female executives share household chores with their partner (up from 52.3% in 2020), whilst those taking care of all such chores fell from 47% to 34.4%.

Associations and networking: increasingly important

Associations of working women have contributed the most to gender equality, according to the respondents, although the numbers of female executives belonging to one or more groups has fallen from 36.4% to 23.3% over the last year. On the other hand, the largest increase during said period, particularly since the outbreak of the pandemic, was in the frequency of contact with professional support networks. So, although the percentage of female executives who thought they spent enough time networking was 27.1% in 2020, this climbed to 76.48% in 2021. They prefer networking with people with good business connections outside their company (39.2%) and with other career women (25%). They also network, albeit less, with colleagues (24.3%) and bosses and influential people in their companies (11.5%).

Female executives want a permanent shift in mindset

Female LatinAm executives agree that the most important measures for achieving gender parity in their country are: a shift in mentality regarding the functions assigned to women by society (with a score of 9.3 out of 10); effective laws against harassment and sexual violence (9.1); and encouraging co-responsibility in the public and private arena (9.0). These are followed by three other factors each with a score of 8.8: spreading the word about the benefits and advantages of gender equality for the economy; training and advice for women; and the visibility of female leaders in the media and culture. They also believe the following are important: measures to combat segregation (8.6) and foster investment with a gender perspective (8.3) and, lastly, the introduction of quotas (8.2).