Women in the Social Economy: at the heart of action, far from the decision

Abstract

With this text, it is intended to alert to the persistent disproportion between men and women in the leadership positions of social economy entities. To this end, we observe the Portuguese reality on which, for the first time, updated data are available at the national level, collected by INE - National Institute of Statistics. Reflecting on the underlying causes, we also propose to address the ways to overcome gender segregation. At this point, we start from an important observation, that there is a blockage to change within the aforementioned organisations due to the invisibility of gender issues and a denial of the problem, to advocate that part of the dynamics of change in favour of equality of power requires internal action, at the level of awareness, empowerment and a transformative approach.

Keywords:
Leadership; Social economy; Organizations; Vertical segregation; Statistics