Rocsana
B. Manea Tonis
Spiru
Haret University, Romania
E-mail: rocsense39@yahoo.com
Cezar
Braicu
Academy
of Economic Studies,, Romania
E-mail: cbraicu@hotmail.com
Radu
Bucea-Manea-Tonis
Hyperion
University, Romania
E-mail: radub_m@yahoo.com
Elena
Gurgu
Spiru
Haret University, Romania
E-mail: elenagurgu@yahoo.com
Submission: 9/15/2019
Revision: 10/2/2019
Accept: 10/22/2019
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the Romanian women influence as
political leader over the Romanian economy. The whole research is based on
global gender gap index for Romania analyzed on 2013-2018 period. The data was
integrated in a linear regression model. The model interpretation findings show
that reducing gender gap in Romania could bring an increase on Romanian
GDP. The paper states that this
situation is due to a higher emotional intelligence of Romanian women as
leaders. They are also characterized by perseverance and conscience. In 2017
Romania made important progress in reducing this gap, but it seems that the
world political dimension gap could be closed within 99 years.
1.
INTRODUCTION
Conflicts
within groups can be beneficial, and here comes the role of the leader.
Cognitive diversity is the important antecedent of creativity and innovation,
the emergence of task-related conflicts being beneficial to creative
performance. Integrating and coordinating different points of view allows for
new forms of task solving. Examining divergences can lead to the discovery of
unobservable solutions. A good leader will extract the best solution to the
most complex conflicts.
In
most cultures there are woman capable to assume leadership roles, having the
education required, but not having the experience and the acceptance of the
community for them in this role (BIEREMA, 2016). Moreover, they have important
family responsibilities that men usually do not to like to assume. For woman it
is difficult to maintain a good balance between life and work.
For
the political gender gaps was incriminated “women's poorer knowledge of
political institutions, self-assessment of leadership skills, literacy rates
and asset ownership, or their mobility and voice in household decisions” The women
experience an unfair and inappropriate treatment starting
from his position in the household, in work, in social life, and others
(KESUMA, 2018). Some authors (IYER; MANI, 2019)
proved that real causes of this gap are fare away of personal characteristics,
being in fact external factors, such as the “roles played by voters, political
parties or societal groups, that may constitute important barriers to women's
political participation”.
Prioritizing
bottom line results and accountability are also very important, but in a
balance with emotional comfort. Men like
to analyze the figures and woman like to analyze the soul. A study on funding’s
CEOs in USA show that women are characterized by creativity and men by teamwork
(HMIELESKI et at., 2019). Some studies (MOKAT et al., 2018) shows that women
political leaders take decisions under the influence of religious leaders,
ignoring cultural value.
Important
lessons of leadership we can take from Hillary Clinton. She has crossed the borders imposed by the
“expectations of the role”. She struggled to expand the health insurance for
disadvantaged children, she supported new legislation for protecting children
coming from abusive environments and new legislation for reducing violence
against woman. She chooses her own way, without facing the opposition.
She
preferred not to stick to stubborn beliefs, but to adapt her politics in
accordance with the social-economic context. She maintained her way, fighting
for the cause she believes in, not being influenced by unfair criticism, or
media trends.
The
difference between woman and men leaders are due to the context, the job type
and/or industry/sector, culture within the organization and group composition
(GIPSON, 2017). She demonstrates that the best leader, is not a man or a woman,
but a qualified, capable professional with a very high emotional coefficient
(EQ).
Women
leaders have a higher EQ. Due to their role of child-bearers and care-givers
they are on the “Left” wings in politics. Women naturally facilitate consensus,
collectivity advantages and compassion (DOWNING, 2018). Leaders with focus on
communal goal orientation have pro-social attitude, are more responsible in
power manifestation and enforce gender equity (LONDON et al., 2019).
“There
cannot be true democracy unless woman’s voices are heard. There cannot be true
democracy unless women are given the opportunity to take responsibility for
their own lives. There cannot be true democracy unless all citizens are able to
participate fully in the lives of their country.” – Hillary Clinton (1997),
Vital Voices Conference in Vienna, Australia.
Charismatic
leadership is a feature with positive influence on political and business
leadership, but a self-protective leadership has a negative influence in
political leadership participation (BULLOUGH, 2014). This is way Hillary gain
so much popularity.
Some
studies show that women’ leadership has the advantage of trust in times of
crisis, when consequences are known (POST et al., 2019). A lack of today woman
leadership is that they do not form woman leadership groups to gain more power.
Moreover, some of them adopt masculine style leadership, such as Gandhi, Meir,
and Thatcher, and they don’t have a positive influence on woman statute.
(JALALZAI, 2010). There are other leaders to be mentioned, such us Mary Barra
of GM, Indra Nooyi of
PepsiCo, and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook.
Having in mind the
statements before the authors decided to analyses the global gender gap weight
to find out woman political empowerment over GDP in Romania.
This indicator was
initiated in 2006 by the World Economic Forum, introducing a new index (Global
Gender Gap Index - GGGI) with four dimensions: Economic Participation and
Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political
Empowerment, to reveal and track over time the gender-based disparities and a
panorama of this inequity over the world.
The main objective was to find out stress points met by people in their
struggle to professional evolution and show the opportunities arise by reducing
gender gaps.
Figure 1:
GGGI over the world and Romania value in 2017
Source: adaptation after
WEF,2017)
Woman
empowerment would facilitate a “dynamic of reciprocity whereby claims about shared
European concepts of gender equality serve to address EU democratic deficits,
and EU frameworks discursively legitimate gender knowledge and expertise”
(ENDERSTEIN, 2017).
Gender
dimension is particularly important in the current situation, in which the
Members States are starting to implement the initiatives for sustainable urban
development co-funded by the Structural Funds¹ in this period of the Cohesion
Policy (2014-2020) (DE GREGORIO, 2017)
A panorama of GGGI for 2018 is presented in
figure1, where the blue diamond shows the average of the index and each
dimension (sub index) and the red empty diamond approximates Romania position
in reference with other countries. Overall, Romania has a small index, very
close to average GGGI and India GGGI. The country with the highest index and a
very small gap between genders is a democratic country, Iceland. In Romania in
2018 the index is small especially because of the political empowerment
dimension, 0,159, which is much below under average, meaning that in Romania
the gender gap is very high.
The
GGGI it places Romania low below United Arab Emirates and United States. The
other 3 dimensions (economic, education, health) show a good balance between
genders. Talking about education GGGI places Romania between China and United
Kingdom. Thus, in this article we put
the focus on political status in Romania, in order to develop a regression
model to measure the impact of woman in politics on GDP.
In
2018 Romania has the rank 63, out of 149 countries. In 2017 Romania has the
rank 58, out of 144 countries, very close to Croatia (54) and Ukraine (61). The
overall gap in 2017 (32%) maintained almost the same gap as last year. An
average gap of 32.0% remains to be closed worldwide across the four Index
dimensions in order to achieve universal gender parity, compared to an average
gap of 31.7% a year before (WEF, 2017). Social media influences political participation and the political views
and decisions of citizens, with this influence being perceived as low by users
of social media (Gounas, 2019).
2.
ROMANIAN WOMAN POLITICAL LEADERSHIP
Analyzing
the GGGI for Romania for 2006-2018 period it is obvious that the stress points
that increase the gender gap are politics empowerment, and in a small percent
economic participation and opportunity (Figure 2).
In
Romania the most important factors that influence economic participation are
the higher percent of men engaged in functions with higher education
(legislator, managers, or senior officials). Talking about central government there are a
lot of woman in executed or limited liability posts. Also, there are very few
women in high decision positions.
The
estimated earned income (PPP US$) and wage equality for similar work sub-index
show that the men are favored earing a higher salary for the same
function/activity. This means the 2 managers (a woman and a man) have different
wages, accomplishing the same activities and having the same responsibility.
Figure 2: GGGI for Romania throughout the period
2006-2018 (own processing)
The difference between
woman and men in labor force participation rates (57.3 woman, 74.3 men, 0.77
ratio in 2017, decreased in 2018 at 0.75. This difference is
explained by the fact that most of the women in the countryside are not
employed (Figure3).
Figure 3:
Economic participation and opportunity in Romania throughout the period
2013-2018 (own processing)
Because of the
evolution of technologies and the high rate of woman culture there is no gap in
professional and technical level/activity. This assertion is based on the
educational attainment score that shows that regarding the process of education
woman and men are both involved in the same percent. This means that in Romania
there is no discrimination regarding the woman and men education (Figure 4)
Figure 4:
Educational attainment in Romania in 2013-2018 period (own processing)
In Romania the Health
and survival sub score shows
that woman and men can expect to live in good health on long term. The
phenomenon of “missing woman”, obvious in a lot of countries, with a higher
preference for sons, is not present in Romania (Figure 5). In Romania the
overall population sex ratio is slightly in the woman advantage. The situation
reveres only in 2016 and 2018 (Figure 6). It is worrying that population growth
% is in constant decrease since 2013 to present, affecting the entire economic
situation.
Figure 5:
Health and survival in Romania in 2013-2018 period (own processing)
Figure 6:
Population evolution in Romania in 2013-2018 period (own processing)
In
2017 Romania had only 20 women in parliament versus 79 men. In ministerial
positions there are 24 woman and 76 men. The sub index woman in parliament
shows a gender ration of 0.26. The sub index woman in ministerial positions
shows a gender ration of 0.32. It was the highest score in the last 10 years,
when the ratio was less than 0.2.
In
2018 Romania has reduced the gap in Political Empowerment, although there is a
small fluctuation in wage equality woman and men with the similar functions.
After 20 years of democracy, Romania has first woman prime minister in 2018, Viorica Dancila, but no woman as
head of state. Viorica Dancila
has a long background in politic carrier, being a member of Social
Democratic Party (PSD) since 1996, and had some other public positions in
Romania, before becoming a member of the European Parliament in 2009. Nowadays,
19% of members from Romanian Parliament are women and almost a third of the
ministers are women (MARICA,2108).
Romania
can take as good example countries such as: Ireland, Finland (choses woman as
president), Germany (Chancellor) and Spain (50% of the government are women),
followed by Denmark, Sweden and Austria.
In
Romania the top positions were originally distributed on the basis of gender
equality in multinational companies, then in the political environment,
following the pattern of stable economies (Germany, UK).
In
opposition to mainstream criticism of emotionally-sensitive decisions, it can
be observed a decrease of aggressive or vulgar messages in the political
environment and the encouragement of amicable solutions in labor or commercial
conflicts under the women's management. The most delicate aspect is that any
appointment of a female person in a top position is assimilated to nepotism in
the most favorable cases, in a paternalist society marked by traditional
values. Misogynist attitudes may be in the context of a tense organizational
climate, dominated by men at executive and female leadership levels.
Figure 7:
Political empowerment in Romania in 2013-2018 period (own processing)
Although
the total population was constantly decreasing from 21.38 million in 2013 to
19.78 million in 2018, in Romania. It might be also observed a doubled
productivity per capita from 11% in 2013 to 23.31% in 2018.
3.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
In order to design a
regression model we stat from negative hypothesis that:
·
H0:
The woman political empowerment, in
Romania, has no influence on Romanian GDP.
·
H1:
The economic gender parity could
increase GDP
Table 1:
Linear Regression – Least square regression analysis
Regression Statistics |
|
|||||
Multiple R |
0.999 |
|
||||
R Square |
0.998 |
|
||||
Standard Error |
0 |
|
||||
Observations |
5 |
|
||||
ANOVA |
|
|
|
|
||
|
df |
SS |
MS |
Significance F |
||
Regression |
4 |
66.29679 |
16.5742 |
0.00009 |
||
Residual |
0 |
0 |
65535 |
|
||
Total |
4 |
66.29679 |
|
|
||
|
Coefficients |
Standard Error |
P-value |
Lower 95% |
Upper 95% |
Intercept |
-111.742 |
0 |
0.00004 |
-111.742 |
-111.742 |
Overall population sex ratio (male/female) |
99.74197 |
0 |
0.00007 |
99.74197 |
99.74197 |
Woman in parliament |
171.1939 |
0 |
0.005 |
171.1939 |
171.1939 |
Woman in ministerial positions |
-117.333 |
0 |
0.0006 |
-117.333 |
-117.333 |
Political empowerment |
205.4573 |
0 |
0.009 |
205.4573 |
205.4573 |
The aim of the research
methodology is to design a regression model that can weigh the importance of
woman political empowerment.
The
R2 coefficient of this model is 0.999, indicating that 99% of the
variable GDP variance is determined by the variation of causal variables and
only 0.1% of this influence cannot be explained by the model. As R2
takes values closer to 1, the regression model better adjusts the data in the
sample. In this case, the value of 0.998 demonstrates the validity of the
model, which means that the variables Overall population sex ratio
(male/female), Woman in parliament and Woman in ministerial positions and
political empowerment influence GDP (Table 1).
Also,
the adjusted value of R2 (0.998) is close to the value of R2,
which proves that the influence of the independent variables (Overall
population sex ratio, Woman in parliament and Woman in ministerial positions
and political empowerment) is significant to explain variance of the dependent
variable (GDP).
The
T test for each variable generated validates the model and contributes to the predictive power
of regression. The Prob the significance !???
threshold of the variables should be less or around 0.05. In our model Prob (p-value<0.01)???!!!, meaning that the model
estimates very well the variable coefficients.
Significance
F is<0.01, meaning that H0 (negative hypothesis) has to be rejected, and H1
has to be accepted. This means that economic gender parity increases GDP. This
conclusion is supported by the evolution of GDP in Romania in 2013-2018 period,
when the gender gap was reduced (Fig. 8).
The
model’s regression equation is:
GDP
= 99.74 Sex ratio + 171.19 Woman in parliament - 171.33 Woman in ministerial
positions + 205.45 political empowerment -111.74 + ε
Figure 8:
Romania’s Key economic indicators on 2013-2018 period
4.
RESEARCH
FINDINGS
The
main explanation for the statement that economic gender parity could increase
GDP is that Emotional Intelligence, which is rather met by woman. This
characteristic seems to be more important than in the last periods. People have
not to be seen as machines of increasing GDP. Good leaders have a very high
emotional intelligence, trying to put themselves in the stewardship/mind of
people they are leading.
They
understand that each person has a specific personality, with unique perceptions
and opinions of the world and each person had different formative experiences.
Each person has to be treated different in order to meet their expectation.
When a leader meets the expectation of his employees, he gets the cooperation
and self-motivation of the employees in everything they enterprise. Leaders
invest a lot of time to understand his employees’ personalities and try to see
the world through their lenses.
Good
leaders have an acute self-awareness characteristic. They know very well which
the influences and consequences of their feelings are over them and over
another people performance. They know how to put the focus on their priorities
and values. They know exactly which the target is and why is important to reach
it. They are enemies of politics, infighting, and passive-aggressive behavior.
Furthermore,
the continued progression of woman into leadership roles is having a profound
impact on the way we of running companies, and the attitudes of the
millennial generation are accelerating progress toward a workforce that expects
more emotionally enlightened leaders because they were raised to expect it. The
bar ???!!! (exigence) is being raised, and EQ matters more today than it ever
has before (RAKE, 2015).
Good
leaders are contagiously optimistic, even when they face difficulties, and are
happy to see employees’ happiness, leading them to success. If the success is
not coming right away, they have the ability to make the people patient while
searching for a new solution. They are open-minded and eager lifelong learners,
looking for challenges that empower them with new skills, capacities, knowledge
and innovation. They seem to be servant leaders to their employees, committed
to help them reach own goals in the interest of both company and employees.
Intelligent emotional
leader has the capacity and courage to deal with employees’ feelings, taking
principle-based decisions and showing integrity and strong character. The same
treatment is developed in the relationships with teammates, customers,
stakeholders, and partners. They have a very flexible communication with strong
principle, adapting it to the audience need and situation, tracking win-win solutions, into situations that
might seems unsolvable.
Intelligent
emotional leaders brings solid advantages for companies, because they become a
model for employees and attract intelligent, creative and positive people in
their team. The employees are inspired by such as leaders them and love
to help them on their way to success. This is the reason for what emotional
intelligence (EQ) is so important nowadays, more than ever before. Women
leaders have a higher EQ.
Men
and women have to work together for common progress and economic sustainability
(SHINBROT, 2019). The society has to promote and develop educational,
occupational, and economic contexts to rise women leaders, as to form women
group leaders. Women incline the balance to equilibrium, equity, equality.
Thus, the entire society will be the beneficiary of women leadership style, bringing socio-economic
equilibrium and increasing the GDP, as our regression model shows.
5.
CONCLUSIONS:
The
least square regression analysis demonstrates that gender parity in Romania
could increase the GDP, being a good solution for challenges that are facing
the Romanian economy.
It
seems that the woman political empowerment would bring a socio-economic
equilibrium, especially due to the high emotional intelligence of the women-leaders.
Gender distribution is, therefore, recommend not only at the statistical level,
but also at the organizational levels, even if in the long run female tend to
occupy the company's administrative and management positions, being preferred
by top management.
In
the tumultuous conditions of politics nowadays EQ seems to matter more today
than it ever has before.
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