From the perspective of the European Commission Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Men and Women, what kind of motivators do women need in order to strive for the leading positions?

Today, it is a statistical fact that men have many more opportunities than women to take their careers to the top. McKinsey's divided the world into 10 regions and determined that, if every country would achieve gender equality within their region then world GDP would grow US $12 trillion. This is a powerful number. Enabling women to be part of the workforce and to progress through the institutional hierarchy actually benefits both the economic and democratic development of a country and region. The UN calculated that such a trend would increase global GDP by 12%.

From the perspective of the EC Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Men and Women, a body that combines all EU Member States and observation organisations, within which I represent the CEC - European Managers Association, gender equality in all walks of life is important. Equality is one of the leading virtues of the EU and it is an integral part of a fair society. We have to ensure equal opportunities in terms of gender because gender is not a minority - neither men or women can be seen as a minority. I believe that if we cannot fix the balance between genders then there is no chance that we will ever fix it with minorities of any sort or eliminate discrimination based on age, nationality, religion, sexual orientation etc. Societies that are more liberal and open to human differences usually translate into being a more equal society and are simply more prosperous. This is the vision that drives me.

How does Slovenia rate in terms of gender equality?

There is no single country in the world where there is not a gender gap. The gender pay gap in Slovenia is among the lowest and Iceland, which has the lowest, is predicted to achieve gender pay parity within the next 10 years.

In the Global Gender Gap Report, prepared by the World Economic Forum, Slovenia is eighth. In some of the United Nations ratings Slovenia is sometimes first due to a better political balance and our very good infrastructure: kindergartens, schools with after-hours care for children, the extent of maternity leave provisions... In the current government, half of the ministers are women and there is a high percentage of women in parliament, over one third. Slovenia's free education is extraordinary - 63% of university graduates are women. There is also a high rate of female full-time employment. So, Slovenia has this excellent infrastructure that allows people to work and move forward in their careers although, when it comes to senior management in Slovenia, there is the same challenge as in any other EU country. Women achieve middle management positions but thereafter it is closer to impossible than possible to get ahead. Why is it so hard for women to have, at the very top levels, the same opportunities as men despite their education and competence? This is a daunting social problem. Many other countries rate much lower on gender equality because they do not have the aforementioned social infrastructure that Slovenia has, and yet Slovenia proves that even great social mechanisms are simply not enough.

Executive Director of The Managers' Association of Slovenia, Sonja Šmuc, in New Delhi (India) as one of the panelists speaking at the Women's Economic Forum which took place in May 2017 under the motto "Creating, innovating, understanding and management of the future" where she received a special award from the organisers for her contribution to change in the field of gender inequalities and creating a better world for all.

 

Can you highlight some prominent female managers in Slovenia and share their achievements?

20 years ago, the most prominent female business leaders included Tatjana Fink, Danica Purg, Cvetka Selšek and Sonja Gole who had all been in leading positions for some time and some of them still are. Danica Purg is still an inspiration with her unbelievable stamina, Sonja Gole is also not backing down - Adria Mobil, one of the biggest European caravan producers, is having a record year every year under her guidance. Also amazing is Aleša Mežigoj who completely transformed Medex, and from the younger generation I recently met Sabina Sobočan in Lendava who took on the leadership of Varis from her father. Varis manufactures pre-fabricated bathrooms and is a company which now has around 240 employees after Sabina employed 80 new people last year. 

There are many fantastic business women in Slovenia, but many more are caught up within companies that don't know how to use their talent. The data from the 101 largest Slovenian companies for 2014 is surprisingly disappointing since 71% of those companies do not have a single female Management Board member. From this perspective Slovenia is actually quite a long way from gender equality.

Why do you think it is harder for women to get ahead?

The answer is a complicated maze of layers and layers of reasons. One of them is the lack of role models making it more difficult for girls to envision their possible grand future. For instance, in media the ratio between female and male experts is 20:80, in films women are still portrayed in traditional stay-at-home-or be-gorgeous roles and have only about 30% of speaking roles. This, along with our up-bringing that focuses on ladylike behavior, has a profound influence on low self-esteem and deep self-criticism.

A huge part of the problem is also human resource practices in organisations which are shaped to 'appear' gender neutral but the statistics show that, in practice, they are working for men and against women. Companies cannot say that they promote the best people they have unless they have both men and women at all levels! If only the men are getting promoted then the companies are blind to half of the population and simply cannot prove that they are promoting the best people. 

Most disturbingly, research shows that we do not measure the work of women in the same way as the work of men. The work and creativity of men is valued more highly than that of women - even when it is exactly the same. This phenomenon of double standards, which has been proved beyond doubt in business, music, science ..., is probably the hardest obstacle to achieving gender parity. Because we don't even recognise the gender bias that is rooted in all of us - women and men - we all discriminate against women without even knowing it. A lot of times when we think we are objective, we are actually not. Changing these psychological and social patterns is the real challenge of our and the next generation.