Raoul A. Villegas l March 3, 2023 l The Manila Times
THE politics of gender equality changed the professional landscape. This impacted what it means to lead firms. LinkedIn features many posts with hashtags like #investinginwomen; #womenempowerment; #womensupportingwomen; #femalefounders; among many.
These are all laudable objectives. The question that I ask is, “why is a perception created that empowerment begins and becomes more intense only when women enter their careers?”
I believe empowering women starts earlier, with the parents and family, vis-à-vis daughters. The formative years constitute the best time for empowering daughters that become capable professionals. Daughters absorb empowerment more deeply during this time and benefit from it longer, earlier than waiting until they enter their careers.
Another question I pose, “who is more qualified to empower daughters that become professionals of high ability, than their own father, mother, brothers and sisters?”
A father who is a real man can share an example of professional behavior; the appropriate skills and knowledge to develop; and set expectations for their daughters on the standards of proper attitude and behavior for men in business relationships.
A father who is a real man, through the relationship with his spouse, demonstrates to his daughters the proper dynamics and expectations for personal relationships. He impacts powerfully the standards that daughters set for their future partners and spouses.
A father who is a real man provides an example and guidance to his sons, his daughters’ brothers, on how to protect and watch out for family. These examples also inform powerfully how sons should treat women across all of their relationships, whether personal or professional.
A mother who is a real woman sets the example among daughters and sisters in terms of providing emotional support and female empowerment in both personal and professional terms.
Sisters provide another crucial support group that empowers the daughter and the future professional for a lifetime. Business relationships, jobs and careers change; but siblings bond for life. If one cannot trust one’s sisters, then who can one trust?
This illustrates an important message: the family, led by the father and mother, with consistency from brothers and sisters, empowers the daughter early as she grows into an able professional. Doing this shows powerful empowerment examples from the age of 7 onwards. By the time she turns 22, the woman professional would already have 15 years of family-driven empowerment.
A complement to this concerns knowing which skills and attributes to incentivize daughters to develop. I submit that the following constitute important skills: critical and interdisciplinary thinking; questioning for discernment; rhetoric; developing confidence; and independent thought.
Critical thinking begins with the discipline of daughters asking “why?” and distills relevant information down to first principles. Interdisciplinary thinking involves bringing disparate perspectives from different fields to problem-solving, and using that to synthesize a new approach for understanding, leading to novel solutions.
Questioning for discernment highlights the importance of daughters not accepting “spoon-fed” points of view. We question because we seek to clarify and understand; because knowing and right understanding is preferred to a flawed appreciation of the facts in the guise of an easy consensus.
Rhetoric challenges daughters to use the art of effective, and persuasive speaking and writing. More than any skill, mastery of rhetoric separates candidates for future leadership vs the followers. Not enough people know effective rhetoric. One might say the bar for distinction has been set low. With enough effort and savvy, daughters can create distinction easily in this area.
Developing confidence speaks to the daughter knowing themselves and how to position themselves appropriately to the world. One does not develop misplaced confidence should one have a solid sense of self, knowing one’s skills and limits, with a respect for not pushing the boundaries of one’s abilities.
One may consider independent thought as the rarest of attributes in this age of mass social media adoption and herd-like “challenges” on TikTok and other platforms. Having a greater number of people behind the consensus does not make a flawed consensus correct. Daughters can develop the fortitude to exercise independent thought, and they will be rewarded for it.
The entire family can contribute to the development of these skills and the empowerment of daughters through spending time at the dinner table; family conversations during downtime; and any number of occasions where one can talk and ask questions. Private conversations between a father and daughter during drives are ideal.
Time encapsulates the key ingredient. Fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, spending time together; asking questions, talking, challenging, learning and mentoring; makes for a powerful environment to hone daughters to grow into empowered women professionals.
Start as early as possible. If one focuses on empowering women just as they enter the professional world, there’s too much time to make up, and it’s too late. Start with empowering our daughters.
*** At the time of this writing, Raoul Villegas had retired from PwC Isla Lipana & Co., where he was a managing director and leader for the advisory practices in Deals Strategy, Value Creation and Commercial Due Diligence.