Are companies in the Philippines really open to hiring women workers?

I recently participated as a speaker in a two-part open forum of #JobstartToEQUAL: A Capacity Building Program On Inclusive Leadership for PESO Personnel event held for Public Employment Services Offices (PESO) managers and staff from the Philippines.

This was the culminating event of the Jobstart Program sponsored by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) with support from the Government of Canada (GAC) through its Global Affairs Office and implemented by the Philippine Women’s Economic Network (PhilWEN) through the Philippine Business Coalition for Women Empowerment (PBCWE).

The Jobstart Program aimed to increase the capacity of Public Employment Services Offices in providing gender-inclusive full employment lifecycle services that enable young women to fulfill their potential as active participants in the labor market. However, anecdotal field reports indicate that gender stereotypes and gender biases are still factors that make it difficult to recruit, train and place women in the workforce. Some participants from the local government units believe that private sector companies or businesses are not too keen on hiring women. They were also interested in how they could encourage Jobstart participants to finish the program.

During the Open Forum, I was honored to share the virtual stage with Aibee Cantos, former CEO of Philamlife, and Art Florentin of the Civil Service Institute in the morning session for Luzon participants, and in the afternoon session for Visayas and Mindanao participants with Art Florentin and Judd Balayan, Group CFO of DDB Group. The sessions were ably moderated by PBCWE program manager Amor Curaming.

As the voice of the private sector, we shared our viewpoints, experiences, policies, practices, and strategies for recruiting, retaining, and developing women workers. In essence, we wanted to show the hardworking PESO staff that the private sector values women workers, and are great supporters of women economic empowerment and gender equality.

As chairperson of the Women’s Business Council Philippines (WomenBizPH), I shared the experiences of several of our members culled from their case studies in our 2021 e-book entitled “I Am Woman : A Gender Responsive Guide for Business and Corporate Leaders.” The e-book is a compilation of the learnings gleaned from our six-series womenars (women seminars) which tackled gender fundamentals, inclusive leadership, corporate communications, marketplaces and supply chains, corporate policy review and safe spaces. This e-book serves as a guide for business leaders so that they can effectively provide a safe, productive, and encouraging environment for their women employees; develop a cadre of strong women leaders; and thus harness their full potential.

On a personal basis, I shared my experiences as a women entrepreneur. Together with my business partner, Michael Alan Hamlin, I set up The Events and Awards Managers of Asia Limited (TeamAsia) in Hong Kong in 1992. With a team of three, we organized The Asian Management Awards in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, and made it highly successful. In the process, Mike and I fell in love. We got married in 1994 and set up TeamAsia in the Philippines, with Mike joining me full time in the business. Talk about retention!

What we lacked in size or manpower, we made up for with passion. During the early years in the Philippines, TeamAsia pioneered brand visibility and management thinking in the continent. In 1992, we started to bring the world’s top business speakers to Asia and organized a wide range of highly targeted events from international conferences and exhibitions for brands such as Intel, Compaq, Canon, Microsoft, SAP Software Solutions, and IBM, to name a few.

Over the years, TeamAsia began offering other services such as public and media relations, creative services, web development, and digital services. Without realizing it, we had grown organically into an integrated marketing communications agency.

When Mike succumbed to cancer in 2013, my daughter Beatriz Lim, who was then finishing up her masters in Boston, came home to help me with the business. She is now our managing director. So while TeamAsia was once a Mike and Monette tandem, it is now a Bea and Monette tandem. Still a partnership steeped in love.

TeamAsia is an award-winning, strategic marketing communications firm that creates, develops, and sustains visibility for brands through effective, meaningful, and compelling integrated marketing experiences.

We bring brands to the next level experience. And we do this through our team of amazing people who create innovative ideas and deliver next level experiences to brands that want to meaningfully engage their audiences.

We are celebrating our 30^th year on May 15. Thirty years of living and leading with purpose. Thirty years of storytelling.

We have 56 full-time employees, of which 37 or 70% are women. 14 out of 17 managers are women. Eight out of 11 directors are women. The two top posts: president and managing director are held by women.

Why do we have a lot of women at TeamAsia? Because we believe that women have special strengths, particularly for the kind of services that we provide our clients. Women are intuitive, insightful, highly resourceful, detail-oriented, multi-tasking, people-oriented, nurturing, and passionate.

And that is a clear signal that TeamAsia values women.