Women and the Politic and Economic Elites in Portugal

Women in the political and economical elites in Portugal

WORKING PAPER

Women in the political and economical elites

in Portugal

(PIHM/SOC/49931/2003)

2005

Abstract

We will focus on the first results obtained by an undergoing research project on the evolution of women’s participation in the political and economical decision centers in Portugal since the transition to the democratic system (1974-2004).

In the authoritarian regime, before the 25th April 1974, women’s social participation was very restricted. After the Revolution new economic and political opportunities appeared, but do men and women have the same chances in the access to top social positions?

Our aim is to present the existing differences in women’s participation and opportunities in political and economical organizations.

One of the goals of this paper is the analysis of the feminine and masculine participation in governments since 1974. We will focus not only in the direct title-holders (Ministers and Secretaries of State) but also in the members of cabinets and others that generally have an influence in their decisions (Chiefs of Cabinet, Adjuncts, Assessors and General Directors).

Concerning the Portuguese leadership of top business organizations, we will consider the presence of women in the management of the major companies along the same period of time (1974-2004).

Our results indicate women’s presence in the leadership of top economic organizations is scarce, especially if we considerer administration boards.

As to women’s presence in political positions, the results are similar: low participation at the highest levels in all the 22 Governments.

These results are singular because it is the first Portuguese study that analysis and compares the women’s economic and political participation in top organizational positions and also allows a temporal comparative analysis between obstacles and success situations during 29 years of democracy in Portugal.

Women in the political and economical elites in Portugal[1][2]

Introduction

In the last three decades, Portugal was affected by deep changes, which approached the country to the development and social patterns already present in other European countries[3]. Yet, did these changes find a reflex in terms of social practices, social representations and mentalities? Which are the resistances and the potentialities of transformation within this scope?

Women’s social role changed too. These changes were especially legal. But, were they enough to interfere in other social dimensions, like the participation in the economic and politic elites?

We will try to answer these questions through the results of a national research on women’s participation in the top positions of economic and politic organisations between 1974 (25th April) and 2004.

We consider that this sociological subject is a good observatory to analyse change, particularly in social and cultural dimensions. By presenting results on the measure of women’s participation in elite positions we aim to reveal a reality of major importance for the study of social change[4].

We begin by analysing how economic, politic and social changes are related with the women’s participation in Portuguese society to go on focusing on women’s participation at the highest places of the economic and politic organisations.

We will also address to methodological research considerations before presenting results.

1. Methodology

This research methodology contains different approaches to the object of study, because the political and economical areas need different research instruments.

Both contain a quantitative and qualitative analysis in order to achieve the proposed goals.

The quantitative analysis aims to measure women’s prevalence in the participation in top economic and political positions as well as characterize their role in it. With the qualitative instruments (in-depth interviews), we expect to achieve more comprehensive results on women’s profiles and backgrounds, careers (work positions, occupations, professional life) values, motivations, future expectations, as well as lifestyles, socialization patterns and informal networks, leisure activities and work-life balance.

We are now presenting results of the first stage of this research; the quantitative results.

For the political area, the followed methodology until now includes bibliographical gathering in order to trace the theoretical framework of the study, meetings with privileged informants and also gathering of information about the title-holders of the selected functions. For the political area, the aim of the first phase is to characterize the governmental elites (between 1974 and 2004) having in mind characteristics such as sex, academic title, occupied functions (type, number of functions and areas of work), and the political tendency of governments in which they occupied these functions[5].

We have already constructed a database that contains 2218 records until the moment (1 record corresponding to one person). These data will be object of statistical analysis, with resource to the techniques of univariate and multivariate analysis.

In the second phase of this study, to develop at a later stage, we will focus on the biographies and life stories of women that occupied positions in governmental bodies, privileging thus a more qualitative analysis, through in-depth interviews. Not denying the importance of studying the obstacles to the access and progression in the career (in this case to the access to positions in the elite), it is also vital to make a sociological analysis of success cases.

One of the aims of this study and particularly of the second phase, specially related to this last aspect, is to contribute to the construction of indicators that may allow the comparison of the Portuguese situation with other countries, especially the ones from EU. Also, we hope that these indicators may contribute to the implementation of measures that stimulate a more paritarian participation of men and women in the political centers of decision.

In this phase we expect to deepen the social and cultural characterization of the women in the political elite, since we will have in account their professional trajectories, motivations, values and future expectations. Other privileged axes of analysis within this scope will be their daily social relations, inside and outside work spaces (including social networks and leisure activities), as well as their socialization patterns, intergenerational mobility and compatibility between professional and personal life.

Some of the questions to be approached are whether their patterns of socialization did, in any way, influence their professional options; and if any discrimination or constraint based in gender was felt in the access or progression in the career.

A research work always bears some difficulties, this being no exception. One of them has to do with the fact that data are only more systematized from the beginning of the 90’s onwards. In fact, there is a lack of information about the office-holders for some periods of time. As to what regards some functions, especially Secretary-Generals and General-Directors, the information is scarce and dispersed.

Also, we have to bear in mind the registry incoherencies in data: e.g. the same person registry appears in different ways – full name or only name and surname - and there are errors and omissions in what concerns academic background.

Besides, the constant change of terminology in what concerns areas of work, as well as the different aggregation of areas along time, create difficulties in tracing long temporal series (e.g. at a certain period youth is aggregated with sports and education, meaning that all of these are in ward to the same ministry/minister; later each of these is an autonomous area, subject to different tutelages.

The research methodology for the economical area has three phases: in the first we proceed with the bibliography gathering for the construction of the theoretical framework, selection of official statistics as well as other data sources; in the second we used a sociological inquiry; finally, in the third stage we will apply in-depth interviews to women in top positions of economical organisations, concerning their trajectories and life histories.

With the gathering of quantitative data and their statistical analysis our aim was to measure women’s participation in management positions.

For the economic dimension we developed a data base containing records on identification and characterization of the major companies. The period of time analysed is between 1980 and 2003 (with the exception of 1993 e 1994; years with no comparable data).

The selection of the data sources for the economic area was harder than what we first expected due to changes in the criteria of statistic production that occurred in the considered period of time, which made the systematic recollection of comparable data more difficult.

The most complete data series we managed to consult contains information on the 1000 major companies[6] in Portugal between 1980 e 2003 (again, with the exception of 1993 e 1994).

A critical procedure accompanied and validated all data recollection. This process forced the consultation of all available data on these 1000 companies to select the 50 major in the considered period of time. The result was a data base with 1200 records from which we extracted a sample for inquiry. This sample contains 124 enterprises which along the considered period of time were among the 50 major companies.

The constructed questionnaire was sent by mail to 124 companies inquiring on: name, area of activity, foundation date, juridical form, sales volume and number of employees (2004); board of administration composition, such as the number of directors, ages, sex, academic degree, date for the beginning of functions and identification of prior posts.

Until now we received 74 answers and are still expecting more answers; 19 of them are valid answers. These 19 companies represent 234 individuals in management and 27 of them are women.

The second step consists on in-depth interviews to man and women in top positions, with the aim of examining thoroughly data about their socio-cultural profiles, work positions, occupations, professional life, values, motivations and future expectations, as well as analyzing lifestyles, socialization patterns and informal networks, leisure activities and work-life balance.

The interview guide is semi-structured and is already constructed and contains 75 questions.

The study of success cases and the comparison between man and women allows the understanding of their social and cultural context.

2. Social changes in Portugal in the last thirty years

In the last decades, the Portuguese society was marked by deep changes at several levels: economic, demographic, political and social, changes that had its beginning in the sixties.

The industry, the tertiary and the tourism have known a strong impulse[7], which contributes to the process of economic modernization. Also, there is a growth of the gross domestic product and the Portuguese markets start opening to the European and North American markets, in prejudice of the privileged relationships until then established with the colonial markets, namely the African ones[8].

An intensive flux of internal migrations from rural areas to the cities and the littoral zones resulted in the diminution of the rural population. This is also influenced by a strong emigration to other European countries[9]. These movements are accompanied by a progressive aging of the population, partly due to the increase in life expectancy and the diminution of birth and of infant mortality rates.

The Welfare State developed greatly, with effects in sectors like justice, social security, health and education. In 1998 the State expense with the social security represented 9,4% of the GDP, while in 1960 it amounted to only 1,4% (Barreto, 2000)[10].

In terms of health, there is an enormous growth in the sector, conducting to the universalization of health care, with consequences like the increase of the number of doctors, the generalization of the compulsory vaccination, the campaigns of fight against tuberculosis and the assistance to births.

The access to education becomes generalized and there are significant transformations in the social and professional composition of both the resident and the active population. As to the education, the illiteracy dropped enormously[11] and the attendance/conclusion of the secondary and of the superior levels of instruction expanded rapidly since the late 70’s[12].

Also, the activity rate increased from around 38% in the beginning of the 60’s to 50% in 1998 (Barreto, 1996 e 2000), especially due to the growing importance of the tertiary sector.

These changes played a role in the contribution to the political revolution of the 25th April 1974. From that moment on, the processes of change already in course have accelerated and some new ones have emerged, especially at the political level: 48 years of dictatorship and of a closed society gave place to the birth of democratic institutions, free elections, multiparty system and freedom of speech and association.

All these changes had in impact in the raise of the medium classes[13] and in transformations related to their social and cultural aspirations and their consummation habits. Cultural consummation goods became of generalized consume and the improvement of life conditions is marked, namely at the habitableness conditions level.

What about the level of values, citizenship and individual involvement with social and/or political projects? As it is well known, during the period of the authoritarian regime (from 1926 to 1974) freedom of expression, association and civic and political participation were severely restricted and punished with prison sentences and torture. Did the possibilities created by the political revolution of 1974 produced results in terms of a more widespread desire of individual participation in the construction of the global society?

3. Observing social change through gender analysis

Enormous changes occur in this period. But the question is how deep they modified mentalities and values and were accompanied with transformations in gender relations.

3.1 The social construction of gender

If gender roles are a social construction that differ trough time, they are a good observatory to analyse social changes in many other dimensions.

We address gender as a social construction that results from influences of different systems - social, cultural and economic -, which interact, overlap and consolidate into representations that guide our practices, interpretation models and our relation with ourselves, others and the world. In this sense, representations are a form of social knowledge, a construction of the social reality that combines value systems and practice guidance (Jodelet, 1999; Moscovici, 1984; Archer, Lloyd, 2002).