Monthly meeting for (HPWA) Hispanic Professional
Women Association in Florida.
Good morning! My name is Maria Rodriguez and I am currently
a Professor as well as the Assistant to the Director of Faculty and Curriculum
at Ana G. Mendez University System. This is an institution dedicated to educate
with excellence in a Dual Immersion Program teaching both in English and
Spanish. You can tell this is my passion.
I am delighted to be here today and share my
experiences with you. I am originally from Puerto Rico and have lived in Tampa
for 20 years. I have a Master in Business Administration with a Certification
in Human Resources, and I teach all Management and HR courses. Since this is not
going to be a lecture but a life experience testimony, please write down any
questions or comments you may have for a Q&A session we will have once I
finish my talk.
The topic for today is Professional Women Life Challenges/Establishing
Priorities.
Let’s
define what a challenge is. We want to understand what the meaning of this is
before decipher and act on it. The best definition for the word is “a call to
engage in a contest”. There are challenges if you think they are there, they are
not challenges if you work without thinking about them.
I
want to talk about my experience as a Hispanic woman and how different
situations I’ve endured through my life have changed my way of thinking. Sharing these experiences I feel will help you
to relate to many stories you know of other women that have accomplished
something big in their lives. For example starting and operating their own
businesses. Who here is that entrepreneur? Great! I believe you can be whatever you want to be
in life, if you really want to. Who here
is a professional woman? Applause please!
It takes a decision, courage, self
determination and perseverance to accomplish goals. You also have to be realistic and sacrifice
if that is what it takes to get to where you want to be. You may think wow!
Maria is a go getter. Yes you are right,
I am now, but that was not the case 11 years ago. I developed this as a skill,
as I tried to survive and support my family when I became a widow exactly 11
years ago. I had to retrain my brain, and change my attitude, like any woman
can. There is hope. I have to say that there is a Supreme Power that also keeps
me going every day. That is God. Without Him I would not be here standing and
talking to you today.
Let’s
take a look at some of those so called challenges that society has imposed to women
which may make a difference in the way they grow and behave in the business community
compare to men.
One is the so called male dominant
industries.
Let’
take a look at the Military, the Mine industry and the Trucking Companies.
Decades ago there was no possibility for a woman to fly a fighter jet, or for a
woman to be a coal miner, or a woman to drive an 18 wheeler truck. That started
to change as women started to realize that they were not only created to be a
housewife, cook and have children. During WW II, and when industries were short
of manpower men had gone to war, women substituted them and did perform well if
not better than men.
Women
were needed to fill many traditionally male jobs and roles during the war and
various advertisements were used to encourage and empower women to take on
these duties. This was a big awakening for the predominantly male workforce.
Another
challenge women face is companies or businesses with the gender specific jobs. Women
have achieved a lot in the workforce over the past century, but we’re still a
long way from reaching equality. Men occupy the vast majority of leadership positions – in
both the private and public sectors – and, at nearly every step on the career
ladder, they get paid more too.
Gender
stereotyping in the workplace often leads to discrimination. Gender
discrimination has many severe consequences ranging from unequal pay for women
for equal work, to the lack of promotions, to sexual harassment. These negative
effects are still very prevalent in the workplace despite the many laws that
have been implemented to prevent the discriminatory effects of gender
stereotyping, and despite the court system that is supposed to uphold those
laws. Accordingly, other measures need to take place in order to rectify the
problem.
Family, (demand from husbands, children and
elderly parents)
At
home, things are also changing. Men are taking more responsibility
for cooking; cleaning and child care, but many women still do more than
their fair share. Back in the 50’s and 60’s most women stayed home and raised
their children. That is no longer the case. More and more women go to college
and beyond, and enter the workforce to support their families whether they are
married or not. They try to accomplish
their professional goals and move up in their career ladder as well as to
balance work and life, which is something men are starting to understand and
accept.
In addition, there are women that once
they reach 45 years or older, start to see how our elder family members pass
away or we encounter the situation of having to be the caregiver for our
elderly parents. Some go through the decision on where their parents are going
to live and deal with the so common Alzheimer’s disease or any other type of
dementia. I tried to be my mother’s caregiver for 35 days. She has vascular
dementia and when we moved her here from Puerto Rico, she did not know day from
night, so I did not sleep for those 35 nights and ended having to make the
decision of taking her to an Assisted Living Facility. Thank God she is stable
but the disease progresses every day.
Stereotyping us as:
1.
The
weak sex,
2.
lack
of confidence,
3.
too
emotional,
4.
physical
appearance/not taken seriously,
5.
we
put lifestyle first rather than business,
6.
don’t
know how to generate constant new business,
7.
Glass
ceiling.
How can we overcome these challenges?
Again I will say that if you encounter
challenges and they are there, work around them, like if they were not there. I
know, I know, you may say is easy to say it but not to do it. Let me give you
an example: Any individual that you know
who sees you as a weak person or a person with lack of self-confidence is a
challenge for us. Work close to them and work hard, so when you accomplish your
goals and excel, they realize that you were not as weak or not confident in
yourself as they thought you were. You will be internally rewarded and probably
recognized by that person. That person may be a man or another woman.
While is not always true, women often
do not realize their value in the same way men do, and have a tendency to
undercharge and limit their perceptions of what their business is capable of
financially.
Believe that you are a beautiful
woman, that you are intelligent and you can accomplish a lot more things that
the opposite sex, or some people from your same sex. Think that it takes a
decision to start to change your behavior towards becoming successful in
anything you do. Your self esteem is your closest ally. Love yourself to be
able to love others. Be empathetic to others, and use your emotional
intelligence to leverage relationships. Yes, there are going to be obstacles along
the way. It would be too easy and we would not enjoy accomplishments if there
were none. Take that obstacle and think like Dale Carnegie wrote in his book
“How to Stop Worrying and Start Living and I quote “Ask yourself: What is the worst that could happen? Prepare
to accept the worst. Try to improve the worst. Remind yourself of the exorbitant
price you can pay for worry in terms of your health”
Whether your professional environment
is a stay home business or a Fortune 500 or 1000, remember you are the CEO of
your brain, your ideas and your creativity, and you must to put them to work. Never
underestimate yourself for being a woman.
One more idea I would like for you to
take from his talk is that no matter what your profession is do is with a
passion and special love. It will make your life so rewarding and worth living.
I know Elizabeth Smith. She was Avon’s
Vice President until 4 years ago when the Board of Directors of OSI Partners,
Inc. (parent company of……) called her to become the company’s CEO. I was at
their Christmas Party, and waiting in line behind her to go into the ballroom
of the hotel, she turned around and greeted me. I was so tempted and I said, Elizabeth,
how do you feel wearing such big shoes? Her answer was. You know Maria; I do
not know anything about OSI. I am learning. All I know is who I am and what I
can bring to the table. Needless to say that the company just went publicly
traded again last year, and its revenues were about 3.5 billion dollars. I’m
sure some of us if not all can be another Elizabeth.
Thank you. Questions?
References:
NWHM (National Women’s History Museum
(2012). Partners in winning the war. Women
in World War
Reynolds,
M. (2012). Emotional intelligence in the workplace. How does working with emotional
JABE (Journal
of Academics and Business Ethics (2012). Professional women. The problems working
