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Managing Across Cultures

Week 4

P.22 : The cultural iceberg

We are now in the middle of cultural iceberg (time). Today, we will go further and talk
about sex and gender equality. It is not very respected in the countries we live in, in the
West. At school, there is gender equality, at university too but we notice that men tend to
follow scientific studies ≠ women. Culture does not help much, because in patriarchal
societies for instance, it is more difficult for women to be CEOs.

Saudi Arabia : women got the right to drive not long ago.

Document 1 : The global gender report,

2020, World economic Forum.

Percent of women in companies board of directors.

In the best case, it is over 1/3 women : France (43,4%)

, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Finland,
Germany, Belgium, Denmark, New Zealand
==> It is mainly developed European countries.
There are more Northern countries (except Italy).
But, UK is not part of the countries leading the way even
though they have a great tradition queens.

Over 1/5 women : Netherlands, Latvia (28,8%), Australia

(28,7%), UK (27,2%), Canada, Israel (23,1%),
Slovenia, Spain, United States (21,7%),
South Africa (21,4%), Switzerland (21,3%)

Over 1/10 women : Austria, Portugal, Colombia, India (13,8%), Luxembourg (12%), Greece
(11,3%), China (9,7%), Brazil (8,4%), Chile (8,2%), Mexico (7,5%)Estonia (7,4%), Russian
Federation (7%), Japan (5,3%), Indonesia (3,3%), Korea (2,1%)

Document 2 : The global gender gap index ranking, 2020, World economic Forum -
Global, Top 10

The teacher is not so sure about this document because France does not appear while
Rwanda does.

—— ——— —— —— — —— —— —— — ——
Northern Europe countries, tend to do better in gender equality and the main difference with
countries such as Southern Ireland s that they are protestants. Catholics are not the best
when it comes to gender equality.
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In France, it is working so well because there are laws to be sure that in politics and
companies there will be parity. France is the first country to provide free education from the
age of 3, which allows the mothers to go to work. Childcare is very modernised in France,
so when women have children, they can actually go to work.

Text on p.19

US : There are more and more women in the Congress, but when it comes to business
women are less present. But, on some aspects, women are doing better than men when it
comes to management skills.

Fortune 500 is an index in the US, only 4,9% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. The CEO of
General Motors is a women.

WE COOULD TRY TO RESEARCH THE WOMEN CEOs IN MAJOR US

COMPANIES

This is not a problem of competences, but a problem of unconscious & cultural biases,
stereotypes,…
Resilience is the capacity for a person to recover after a big shock, results show that women
are more resilient than men. Women score a little bit higher, but the difference is not that
big.
Women rate themselves as less confident than men until their mid-40’s.

==> FINISH READING THE TEXT

We have to be careful with the cultural aspects, human rights are involved when it comes to
culture. We do not have to underestimate the cultural aspects, the bottom of the iceberg does
not change.