Desigualdad y relaciones de género en las organizaciones: diferencias numéricas, acción positiva y paridad

Abstract

There is an invisible limit which prevents women to reach men´s level in the public domain. This is what has been called the glass roof, which hides an indirect discrimination, not reflected in the law and which can be measured by differential results. This justifies affirmative actions and paridad. Our point of departure are present substantial inequalities found in relation to access to resources, the power of friends, the time available, and socialization models. To counteract inequalities between members of groups with different social power there has been used, first of all, affirmative actions, whose goal is to «un-male» actual systems of cooptation; more recently, the term democracia paritaria was coined after checking that in democracy, numbers are relevant: we need a critical mass, i.e., to increase the relative amount of women to be able to reach a qualitative change in power relations, which is the goal of both initiatives. To understand the need of those initiatives we will discuss what happens when women, a group with less power than men, form a minority and become token women. This way some of the myths and speculations about whether women in power or in high positions become assimilated without any changes will be broken off. Moreover, the costs to be a minority in a place where the majority belong to men will be understood. To become a more numerous minority –around 30-35%- will allow to start to influence the group´s culture and to establish alliances between members of the minority group. This way those members will be able to start to change the power structure and, in addition, their own status as a minority.