EDITORIAL
Women ´ s Role in Panama
Alejandro Escobar Editor
Panama is masculine-oriented country where men and women have very traditional roles- men provide support and women take care of the home- or at least that’ s what I thought when I first arrived to Panama a few years ago. My perception did not change at first, but recently I started to pay more attention to my environment.
Not long ago, I got the opportunity to start working at a big firm in Panama, and to my surprise, more than 50 % of the leadership positions were held by women. In fact, the male / female ratio in the department I work for is 1:4- there are 4 females for each male. I never thought this could be possible in a country as young as Panama, but I was pleasantly surprised. After my amazement, I started paying close attention to the proportion of male / female at everyplace I went thinking that the firm I work for could have been an outlier.
Just a few days ago, I was at a meeting with top executives from a local bank, and women executives were majority with just two or three men in the room.
I cannot confirm that this is the trend across Panama, but I ´ m sure that women are not a“ minority” as many people tend to think.
At the University of Louisville-Panama, women are the majority and men the minority. Apparently, this is the same in the other universities in Panama, which leads me to think that women are taking their education more serious than men. This could be the reason why many women are occupying leadership positions in the country.
The leadership role of women in Panama is more important than what I thought, they are taking control of the country and this could be a good thing. I do not have any proven numbers, statistics or facts, but I do know that Panama had a female president a few years ago. Personally, I think this is more representative than any number or statistics about the leadership role of women in Panama.
LATITUDE
U N I V E R S I T Y O F L O U I S V I L L E P A N A M A
President / Editor Alejandro Escobar Founder Librado E. Gonzalez Design Keisha De Sedas P.
Latitute Team Bruno Ferrari, Keisha De Sedas, Lina Escamilla, Regina Dutary, Rivca Zayat.
Facebook: http:// www. facebook. com / pages / Latitud e / 372471416160870