The gender agenda
Western antiglobalists may have reformed multinationals' attitudes to social and environmental issues, but when it comes to sexual equality, feminists have had no such luck.
Wanda Rapaczyńska, CEO of Agora, the domestic media giant, believes that Western business culture works against women's advancement.
"In the beginning of the ‚90s, the labor market for executives was open, and they accepted anyone who was qualified," she says. Rapaczyńska, named one of the 25 most influential businesswomen in Europe in a recent survey by The Wall Street Journal Europe, is just one, albeit spectacular, example of how women seized the opportunities afforded them in the immediate post-communist days.
After rising to the position of vice-president at Citibank in New York, Rapaczyńska returned to this country to help set up Agora, the publisher of Gazeta Wyborcza, the first independent paper in Poland since 1939. At a time of severe skills shortages, when the market economy was a new concept to everyone here, a Yale graduate in management with experience as a top executive at a global bank was a genuine star. But today, she says, meteoric careers in the style of the 1990s are much less frequent, particularly for women.
"Then [after the early 1990s] more foreign companies started coming in, and now men have more say. We've become more Westernized, with fewer women in higher positions," she continues.
And this scenario seems to be supported by the recent United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) report on employability policies in transition countries. The report finds that the rolling back of state-provided childcare benefits and of guaranteed job stability that has accompanied Poland's shift to free market economics means that women in Poland are finding themselves increasingly unable to compete on an equal basis for jobs, particularly if they want to have children.
Before 1989, women tended to be, as now, concentrated in lower paid jobs and sectors, largely because the demands of their 'other job,' i.e. looking after the home and family. But the introduction of capitalism has intensified the problem. The importation of a Western corporate culture of ever longer hours, for example, means that, even for dogged working mothers, advancement is increasingly difficult.
Judith Gliniecki, a partner at law firm Piontek, Rymar, Ślązak, Wiśniewski LP, thinks women here, as in the rest of Europe, often choose to be sidelined at work because, within the current corporate working culture, this is the only way to find time for home and family.
"It can't be denied that when promotion means not getting home till your babies are asleep, working the weekend and jumping on a plane at a few hours notice, somebody has to put the little ones first," she says. Indeed, Gliniecki herself gave up a job at an international law firm for a partnership in a local firm, as it offered her greater scope for harmonizing her working hours with the needs of her family.
And while, on paper, this country has embraced all the rhetoric of equal employment opportunities, here, as elsewhere in Europe, the state does very little to make this rhetoric a reality.
The current employment law says it's illegal to discriminate on grounds of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. But, as Paulina Pilch, a lawyer at TGC Tax Advisers, points out, the same law obliges firms to take back female employees up to three years after having a baby. This obligation makes respecting equal opportunities positively unprofitable for business, since attributing this risk factor to employing female, but not male, employees, she says, makes hiring females instantly less attractive than employing men.
In order to secure against companies following up logically by avoiding women likely to have babies, employment law declares it illegal to ask job candidates questions about family planning, or to sack a female employee after three months into her pregnancy. There are, however, no enforcement mechanisms to make sure companies respect this. And so, not surprisingly, they don't.
One lawyer tells how, recently, when she reported to her (British) boss after interviewing a woman for a job, he asked her if she'd 'checked out' family issues. When she reminded him that this was against the law, his reply was simply: "So what?" And this not atypical tale further lends substance to UNECE warnings that Poland, since 1989, has gained a reputation among foreign investors as a place where the usual employment standards can be bypassed.
And the problem of equal pay isn't getting better either. According to Urszula Nowakowska, director of the Center for Women's Rights (CPK), women in Poland currently earn on average 80 percent of what men earn for the same job, a figure that differs little from pre-‚89 statistics, and more or less corresponds to figures throughout Europe, with the exception of some Nordic countries where figures are closer to 90 percent.
In Poland, as in the rest of the EU, there's no law obliging companies to reveal what pay packages or bonuses they've offered whom, and since, as Pilch says, "corporate culture encourages and sometimes even demands confidentiality concerning salaries," injustice is actually very hard to establish.
The only way wronged employees can get justice against sex discrimination at work is to sue, which is also the case throughout both the EU and USA. At least in some countries, like the UK, for example, the Equal Opportunities Commission can at least act as an intermediary for conflict resolution. In Poland, though, there is no such stop before the courts.
But, as Pilch points out, suing not only means automatic job loss, but in many cases is tantamount to blacklisting yourself for potential future employers. And in a country of high employment and low awareness of, or regard for, women's rights (as evidenced by a Częstochowa court ruling during a sexual harassment case in March that, although later overruled, stated that "grabbing a woman by the crotch does not constitute a sexual act, in the legal sense, if she is wearing trousers"), most people aren't prepared to take the risk. Nowakowska says she knows of no single case in Poland where a woman has taken an employer to court on an equal opportunities issue.
As Alicja Kornasiewicz, managing director of CA-IB, an investment bank, points out, the problem is that you just can't bring about equal opportunities at work for women unless you bring about equal responsibilities at home for men. But while some see the way forward as coming through bringing previously unvalued jobs like food preparation, ironing, cleaning and childcare into the money economy, old habits die hard. And changing attitudes, businesswomen are quick to admit, is a challenge that faces women just as much as men.
"I've only ever met one woman who said that her children were primarily her husband's responsibility," says Kornasiewicz. While Gliniecki observes, "If men are proving unwilling to give up their promotion prospects to spend more time with family, women aren't noticeably keen to trade in their role as 'center of the family' in return for climbing higher at work."
Others see hope in the fact that, as childcare subsidies have been rolled back, admittedly at the same time that living standards have soared, births in this country, as elsewhere, have significantly fallen. The argument goes that the growing problem of finding the money to fund old-age pensions will eventually force states to really get down to making equal opportunities at both work and home a reality.
And arguably there has been some headway made in this direction. Since January 2004 new fathers in this country can take, instead of the new mother, a three-year 'upbringing leave' with the right to return to work. However, perhaps because this is on an entirely optional basis and so would inevitably affect the competitive standing of those who chose it, Nowakowska says that, as far as she knows, no men have yet taken advantage of this opportunity. Men, it seems, as much as women, demand an equal playing ground and want to be sure that spending more time with children won't negatively affect their opportunities for promotion.
In Sweden, for example, state funded child-care leave is parceled out so that at least part of it has to be taken on by the father. Yet, most of the work still falls to the women, as men still tend to take no more leave than the legal requirement. But even so, Swedish women are not only among Europe's highest earners, in relation to men, but also have the most babies.
Of the current predicament here, Henryka Bochniarz, owner of Nicom, one of the oldest consulting companies in the country, and president of the Polish Confederation of Private Employers (PKPP), says that "you cannot underestimate the power of the Church."
Nowakowska says that the Catholic Church is positively against promoting women's economic advancement, although this view is not shared by all Polish businesswomen. Agora's Rapaczyńska, for one, disagrees, saying, "The Catholic Church has never prevented a woman from being successful in business."
All agree, though, that, quite apart from counting on governments to provide reformist legislation, there's not really much that can be done to make promotion easier for women until there are enough women in high positions to change the tune of corporate life. But this critical mass is hardly likely to happen overnight in a culture currently tailored to fit the habits and life-rhythms of men, and that works on the assumption that home and family somehow exist in an unconnected sphere.
Quite apart from the legal and cultural obstacles, says Gliniecki, women often get blocked from both influence and advancement at work because they remain outside the informal social networks that often matter the most when it comes to promotion.
According to the UNECE, this is one reason why women tend to be the first to get hit in a shrinking economy. Dorothy Hansberry, chief operating officer at Project Management Services, a legal consulting firm, agrees.
"In the ‚90s, qualifications were what mattered because the economy was growing," she says. "Since the recent slowdown, we have had a situation where there weren't enough jobs to go round, and in an economy of shortages like this, what matters most is not what you can do, but who you know."
Since women tend to have less informal work networks and professional protectors, she adds, in a situation like this - they are the first to lose out.
The lack of networks is, again, partly to do with time constraints imposed by their 'other job' at home. Women rushing back to their children often don't have time to stay for the after-work beers, where bonds are made and ideas bounced around. It's also partly because the tone of business social occasions is set, quite naturally, by the males who overwhelmingly dominate business. Few women, after all, are interested in joining the corporate rugby team, for example.
Bochniarz, for one, has taken action. Club 22, a group of distinguished and successful women from public life that she set up ten years ago, she says, is growing ever more in power and influence. "We have people from every walk of life, from finance to law to media, so when we really decide to do something, there's almost nothing to stop us!" she jokes.
Bochniarz, like Gliniecki, thinks that women have particular qualities to bring to business, although other businesswomen are wary of such statements. Bochniarz cites a particularly feminine ability "to read what isn't written." She says that both the Enron scandal and the threat of a 9/11-scale terrorist attack were first spotted by women, who, sadly, were not taken seriously by their male bosses.
Gliniecki also thinks that women can often identify problems more accurately and solve them much more effectively. "Negotiations hardly ever break down over business issues; they break down because of emotions," she says. "Somebody feels he hasn't been fully heard out, or that the intelligence of his point hasn't been fully recognized. And sometimes all it takes is a right word, or a listening-out, and the apparent impasse disappears. "
Others, though, are wary of attributing particular skills to women. And most businesswomen agree with Bożena Batycka, owner of the Batycki clothes retail firm, that success is irrespective of gender. In her view, it doesn't matter whether you're male or female. If you want to get to the top, you need "self-esteem, ambition, and a clear goal of what [you] want to get."
Henryka Bochniarz
"If you want to be successful, it's not always enough to be smart and hard-working. Sometimes you need contacts," says Henryka Bochniarz, head of her own consulting company and also of the Polish Federation of Private Entrepreneurs (PKPP). Recognizing the need for women to have a place where they can network, Bochniarz started Club 22, a group of Poland's most successful and influential women.
"When I first started I had no one to turn to for advice, and I realized that women in the business world here have lacked a network of contacts that men have had for years," she explains. "We had a few requirements, the first being that the woman had to be successful. Two, she had to be successful in her own right - not as a result of her family or husband." Now a large network, Club 22 holds monthly meetings and, through its members, has the resources to be a major lobbying force. Some of its high profile members include Wanda Rapaczyńska, Maria Wiśniewska, Alicja Kornasiewicz, and Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz.
Judith Gliniecki
Originally from the American Midwest, Judith first came here with her Polish husband in 1994 and started working for Hunton & Williams. She speaks Polish and Russian and, as an expat, has made her home in Poland. Now at law firm Piontek, Rymar, Ślązak, Wiśniewski LP, Judith has earned the respect of her clients and colleagues through her sharp intellect and savvy professionalism.
Despite a demanding workload, Judith is able to effectively balance her time between work and family, while at the same time maintaining a professional image for her firm. In the interest of keeping her family life separate from work, Judith doesn't advertise when she leaves the office for her young daughter's piano lesson, instead telling clients she "has a meeting at six." As a successful partner in Warsaw, Judith has found that cultural differences between Poland and the USA do not hinder her work in any way. After she arrived here from America, Judith quickly learned certain traditions. For one, while initially she wasn't used to men holding doors open for her, now she "certainly doesn't mind the gesture."
Bożena Batycka
While originally a lagging leather goods shop during Poland's communist years, the brand Batycki has significantly increased its worth. Today it stands as a sexy designer purse label whose unique identity sets it apart as the 'national purse' of Poland. Its success is due entirely to the vision of its owner, Bożena Batycka, who acquired the firm in 1989 and spent years turning around a small family-run shop into a prosperous company, in the process carefully developing the label's unique identity. Amber, or what Batycka calls "the gold of Poland," has become her purses' trademark. "It's important to have a trademark in this business. Today it's not enough to simply have excellent quality and design. You have to distinguish yourself," she says. Batycki's widespread popularity in Poland has made Batycka consider going global with her designs, an expansion that will most likely occur over the next few years.
Wanda Rapaczyńska, CEO of Agora, the domestic media giant, believes that Western business culture works against women's advancement.
"In the beginning of the ‚90s, the labor market for executives was open, and they accepted anyone who was qualified," she says. Rapaczyńska, named one of the 25 most influential businesswomen in Europe in a recent survey by The Wall Street Journal Europe, is just one, albeit spectacular, example of how women seized the opportunities afforded them in the immediate post-communist days.
After rising to the position of vice-president at Citibank in New York, Rapaczyńska returned to this country to help set up Agora, the publisher of Gazeta Wyborcza, the first independent paper in Poland since 1939. At a time of severe skills shortages, when the market economy was a new concept to everyone here, a Yale graduate in management with experience as a top executive at a global bank was a genuine star. But today, she says, meteoric careers in the style of the 1990s are much less frequent, particularly for women.
"Then [after the early 1990s] more foreign companies started coming in, and now men have more say. We've become more Westernized, with fewer women in higher positions," she continues.
And this scenario seems to be supported by the recent United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) report on employability policies in transition countries. The report finds that the rolling back of state-provided childcare benefits and of guaranteed job stability that has accompanied Poland's shift to free market economics means that women in Poland are finding themselves increasingly unable to compete on an equal basis for jobs, particularly if they want to have children.
Before 1989, women tended to be, as now, concentrated in lower paid jobs and sectors, largely because the demands of their 'other job,' i.e. looking after the home and family. But the introduction of capitalism has intensified the problem. The importation of a Western corporate culture of ever longer hours, for example, means that, even for dogged working mothers, advancement is increasingly difficult.
Judith Gliniecki, a partner at law firm Piontek, Rymar, Ślązak, Wiśniewski LP, thinks women here, as in the rest of Europe, often choose to be sidelined at work because, within the current corporate working culture, this is the only way to find time for home and family.
"It can't be denied that when promotion means not getting home till your babies are asleep, working the weekend and jumping on a plane at a few hours notice, somebody has to put the little ones first," she says. Indeed, Gliniecki herself gave up a job at an international law firm for a partnership in a local firm, as it offered her greater scope for harmonizing her working hours with the needs of her family.
And while, on paper, this country has embraced all the rhetoric of equal employment opportunities, here, as elsewhere in Europe, the state does very little to make this rhetoric a reality.
The current employment law says it's illegal to discriminate on grounds of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. But, as Paulina Pilch, a lawyer at TGC Tax Advisers, points out, the same law obliges firms to take back female employees up to three years after having a baby. This obligation makes respecting equal opportunities positively unprofitable for business, since attributing this risk factor to employing female, but not male, employees, she says, makes hiring females instantly less attractive than employing men.
In order to secure against companies following up logically by avoiding women likely to have babies, employment law declares it illegal to ask job candidates questions about family planning, or to sack a female employee after three months into her pregnancy. There are, however, no enforcement mechanisms to make sure companies respect this. And so, not surprisingly, they don't.
One lawyer tells how, recently, when she reported to her (British) boss after interviewing a woman for a job, he asked her if she'd 'checked out' family issues. When she reminded him that this was against the law, his reply was simply: "So what?" And this not atypical tale further lends substance to UNECE warnings that Poland, since 1989, has gained a reputation among foreign investors as a place where the usual employment standards can be bypassed.
And the problem of equal pay isn't getting better either. According to Urszula Nowakowska, director of the Center for Women's Rights (CPK), women in Poland currently earn on average 80 percent of what men earn for the same job, a figure that differs little from pre-‚89 statistics, and more or less corresponds to figures throughout Europe, with the exception of some Nordic countries where figures are closer to 90 percent.
In Poland, as in the rest of the EU, there's no law obliging companies to reveal what pay packages or bonuses they've offered whom, and since, as Pilch says, "corporate culture encourages and sometimes even demands confidentiality concerning salaries," injustice is actually very hard to establish.
The only way wronged employees can get justice against sex discrimination at work is to sue, which is also the case throughout both the EU and USA. At least in some countries, like the UK, for example, the Equal Opportunities Commission can at least act as an intermediary for conflict resolution. In Poland, though, there is no such stop before the courts.
But, as Pilch points out, suing not only means automatic job loss, but in many cases is tantamount to blacklisting yourself for potential future employers. And in a country of high employment and low awareness of, or regard for, women's rights (as evidenced by a Częstochowa court ruling during a sexual harassment case in March that, although later overruled, stated that "grabbing a woman by the crotch does not constitute a sexual act, in the legal sense, if she is wearing trousers"), most people aren't prepared to take the risk. Nowakowska says she knows of no single case in Poland where a woman has taken an employer to court on an equal opportunities issue.
As Alicja Kornasiewicz, managing director of CA-IB, an investment bank, points out, the problem is that you just can't bring about equal opportunities at work for women unless you bring about equal responsibilities at home for men. But while some see the way forward as coming through bringing previously unvalued jobs like food preparation, ironing, cleaning and childcare into the money economy, old habits die hard. And changing attitudes, businesswomen are quick to admit, is a challenge that faces women just as much as men.
"I've only ever met one woman who said that her children were primarily her husband's responsibility," says Kornasiewicz. While Gliniecki observes, "If men are proving unwilling to give up their promotion prospects to spend more time with family, women aren't noticeably keen to trade in their role as 'center of the family' in return for climbing higher at work."
Others see hope in the fact that, as childcare subsidies have been rolled back, admittedly at the same time that living standards have soared, births in this country, as elsewhere, have significantly fallen. The argument goes that the growing problem of finding the money to fund old-age pensions will eventually force states to really get down to making equal opportunities at both work and home a reality.
And arguably there has been some headway made in this direction. Since January 2004 new fathers in this country can take, instead of the new mother, a three-year 'upbringing leave' with the right to return to work. However, perhaps because this is on an entirely optional basis and so would inevitably affect the competitive standing of those who chose it, Nowakowska says that, as far as she knows, no men have yet taken advantage of this opportunity. Men, it seems, as much as women, demand an equal playing ground and want to be sure that spending more time with children won't negatively affect their opportunities for promotion.
In Sweden, for example, state funded child-care leave is parceled out so that at least part of it has to be taken on by the father. Yet, most of the work still falls to the women, as men still tend to take no more leave than the legal requirement. But even so, Swedish women are not only among Europe's highest earners, in relation to men, but also have the most babies.
Of the current predicament here, Henryka Bochniarz, owner of Nicom, one of the oldest consulting companies in the country, and president of the Polish Confederation of Private Employers (PKPP), says that "you cannot underestimate the power of the Church."
Nowakowska says that the Catholic Church is positively against promoting women's economic advancement, although this view is not shared by all Polish businesswomen. Agora's Rapaczyńska, for one, disagrees, saying, "The Catholic Church has never prevented a woman from being successful in business."
All agree, though, that, quite apart from counting on governments to provide reformist legislation, there's not really much that can be done to make promotion easier for women until there are enough women in high positions to change the tune of corporate life. But this critical mass is hardly likely to happen overnight in a culture currently tailored to fit the habits and life-rhythms of men, and that works on the assumption that home and family somehow exist in an unconnected sphere.
Quite apart from the legal and cultural obstacles, says Gliniecki, women often get blocked from both influence and advancement at work because they remain outside the informal social networks that often matter the most when it comes to promotion.
According to the UNECE, this is one reason why women tend to be the first to get hit in a shrinking economy. Dorothy Hansberry, chief operating officer at Project Management Services, a legal consulting firm, agrees.
"In the ‚90s, qualifications were what mattered because the economy was growing," she says. "Since the recent slowdown, we have had a situation where there weren't enough jobs to go round, and in an economy of shortages like this, what matters most is not what you can do, but who you know."
Since women tend to have less informal work networks and professional protectors, she adds, in a situation like this - they are the first to lose out.
The lack of networks is, again, partly to do with time constraints imposed by their 'other job' at home. Women rushing back to their children often don't have time to stay for the after-work beers, where bonds are made and ideas bounced around. It's also partly because the tone of business social occasions is set, quite naturally, by the males who overwhelmingly dominate business. Few women, after all, are interested in joining the corporate rugby team, for example.
Bochniarz, for one, has taken action. Club 22, a group of distinguished and successful women from public life that she set up ten years ago, she says, is growing ever more in power and influence. "We have people from every walk of life, from finance to law to media, so when we really decide to do something, there's almost nothing to stop us!" she jokes.
Bochniarz, like Gliniecki, thinks that women have particular qualities to bring to business, although other businesswomen are wary of such statements. Bochniarz cites a particularly feminine ability "to read what isn't written." She says that both the Enron scandal and the threat of a 9/11-scale terrorist attack were first spotted by women, who, sadly, were not taken seriously by their male bosses.
Gliniecki also thinks that women can often identify problems more accurately and solve them much more effectively. "Negotiations hardly ever break down over business issues; they break down because of emotions," she says. "Somebody feels he hasn't been fully heard out, or that the intelligence of his point hasn't been fully recognized. And sometimes all it takes is a right word, or a listening-out, and the apparent impasse disappears. "
Others, though, are wary of attributing particular skills to women. And most businesswomen agree with Bożena Batycka, owner of the Batycki clothes retail firm, that success is irrespective of gender. In her view, it doesn't matter whether you're male or female. If you want to get to the top, you need "self-esteem, ambition, and a clear goal of what [you] want to get."
Henryka Bochniarz
"If you want to be successful, it's not always enough to be smart and hard-working. Sometimes you need contacts," says Henryka Bochniarz, head of her own consulting company and also of the Polish Federation of Private Entrepreneurs (PKPP). Recognizing the need for women to have a place where they can network, Bochniarz started Club 22, a group of Poland's most successful and influential women.
"When I first started I had no one to turn to for advice, and I realized that women in the business world here have lacked a network of contacts that men have had for years," she explains. "We had a few requirements, the first being that the woman had to be successful. Two, she had to be successful in her own right - not as a result of her family or husband." Now a large network, Club 22 holds monthly meetings and, through its members, has the resources to be a major lobbying force. Some of its high profile members include Wanda Rapaczyńska, Maria Wiśniewska, Alicja Kornasiewicz, and Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz.
Judith Gliniecki
Originally from the American Midwest, Judith first came here with her Polish husband in 1994 and started working for Hunton & Williams. She speaks Polish and Russian and, as an expat, has made her home in Poland. Now at law firm Piontek, Rymar, Ślązak, Wiśniewski LP, Judith has earned the respect of her clients and colleagues through her sharp intellect and savvy professionalism.
Despite a demanding workload, Judith is able to effectively balance her time between work and family, while at the same time maintaining a professional image for her firm. In the interest of keeping her family life separate from work, Judith doesn't advertise when she leaves the office for her young daughter's piano lesson, instead telling clients she "has a meeting at six." As a successful partner in Warsaw, Judith has found that cultural differences between Poland and the USA do not hinder her work in any way. After she arrived here from America, Judith quickly learned certain traditions. For one, while initially she wasn't used to men holding doors open for her, now she "certainly doesn't mind the gesture."
Bożena Batycka
While originally a lagging leather goods shop during Poland's communist years, the brand Batycki has significantly increased its worth. Today it stands as a sexy designer purse label whose unique identity sets it apart as the 'national purse' of Poland. Its success is due entirely to the vision of its owner, Bożena Batycka, who acquired the firm in 1989 and spent years turning around a small family-run shop into a prosperous company, in the process carefully developing the label's unique identity. Amber, or what Batycka calls "the gold of Poland," has become her purses' trademark. "It's important to have a trademark in this business. Today it's not enough to simply have excellent quality and design. You have to distinguish yourself," she says. Batycki's widespread popularity in Poland has made Batycka consider going global with her designs, an expansion that will most likely occur over the next few years.
