PHILIPPINE COMPANIES should make a more conscious effort to bring more women into their businesses and give them opportunities to grow, in order to narrow the gender gap predicted to continue until the year 2186.

Speaking at a briefing for the “Women Next: Accelerating Tomorrow to Now” forum on Tuesday, Filipina executives said eliminating gender bias in the workplace starts as early as the hiring process, where some companies would look only for male candidates. 

“It’s very important in the hiring process that even from the time you send out the notice in the advertisement about job openings available, you have to be conscious that there is no gender bias,” AirAsia Philippines Chairman Marianne B. Hontiveros told the media in a press conference in Pasay City on Tuesday. 

Ms. Hontiveros said hiring more women would allow the company to train them to reach top level management positions. The AirAsia executive said this would address the results of a study that said women accounted for only 7% of the total number of positions in the C-suite of the Philippines’ top 1000 corporations. C-suite refers to chief executive, chief operating officer, and chief finance officer positions. 

“To make it possible for women to make it up to the C-suite, they have to make that commitment, affirmative action if you want to call it. Because unless they see it as a problem, they will never find a solution,” she said. 

Cristina Concepcion, president and chief executive officer of Business Process Outsourcing International, Inc., meanwhile, said companies must have programs in place that would help women change how they look at their careers. 

“It really has to come from the top…it really is having the right programs in place. Studies have shown the advantages of how different companies are when women are in influential positions,” Ms. Concepcion said. 

Cultural and subconscious biases must also be looked at, in order to make these changes sustainable, she noted. 

Ms. Hontiveros said one of the programs implemented by AirAsia is to hire women pilots and engineers, as well as training cabin crew members to become pilots. This will ensure that women are visible at every step in the workplace. 

“For instance now I think we have 16 female First Officers that have joined the ranks. It must be driven by the top,” she said. 

Ms. Concepcion noted that leadership is key to enforce these changes, because policies in place themselves are sometimes unable to keep up with the pace of how society changes. 

“Every company can do it. You don’t have to have million-dollar programs in place, you do have to have the leadership and be very aware of what is the right thing to do. It can be things as simple as that,” Ms. Concepcion said. 

Both Ms. Hontiveros and Ms. Concepcion said increasing women in the workplace will accelerate the narrowing of the gender gap, which the World Economic Forum predicted would end only after 169 years— in 2186. The report released in 2016 said that relative discrepancies existed between men and women in four aspects: health, education, economy, and politics. — Arra B. Francia

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