Woman on Top

Based on studies, women are perceived to often be better than men in coordinating activities among different groups–from birthday parties to national elections.

When top executives of six of the most powerful business conglomerates in the country decided to band together and start an internet venture in the middle of last year, they held off naming a president and ceo.

At first, observers thought one of these high-profiled honchos–with surnames like Aboitiz, Ayala, Gokongwei, Lopez, Pangilinan and Campos–would take the role. But after almost four months of silence, it was apparent that the six were thinking of something else.

They wanted a woman on top.

The venture was announced on June 19, 2000. Between then and September, the Bayantrade founders poured over hundreds of resumes, interviewed dozens of candidates and even sought the help of headhunters. By September they had made their choice.

Carol Carreon is a no-nonsense lady who initially strikes people as suplada. She is described in tech circles as mataray and galit sa bobo. She was already a boss when Bayantrade called her. She was managing director of SAP Philippines, a multinational software company. Before that she was with the Bureau of Internal Revenue as deputy commissioner. And further back she was head of Megalink, the nationwide ATM network. But just like other tech guys, Carol was surprised she got Bayantrade’s top post.

She was told that based on studies, women are perceived to often be better than men in coordinating activities among different groups. This has been seen in different levels–from ordinary occasions like birthday parties to extraordinary events like national elections. In all these, women were always part of, if not on top of, the action.

And Bayantrade’s business is, in many ways, similar to coming up with a simple party that has the enormity of a national election.

There were, of course, other reasons why she was chosen and they were all based on her achievements. The Bayantrade founders saw in Carol the profile they were looking for. She was, indeed, their man...err, woman.

Not every man would have done what the six Bayantrade founders did in choosing Carol. Despite great strides in the workplace, it still surprises many to find a woman behind the boss’s desk at the 24th floor of the IBM Plaza in Libis, Quezon City, managing billions of pesos worth of transactions instead of a household budget and mentoring future industry leaders rather than a brood of kids. This is true even in a supposedly gender-blind industry such as technology, where talent is measured by brain, not brawn, power.

The United States-based National Council for Research on Women, in a study released in July, said women made up 45 percent of the US workforce but held only 12 percent of business and technology jobs.

This did not surprise Laura Meyer, president of World Women In Technology (World WIT), a community of women working in information technology or in jobs that support the industry. According to her, there are less women in technology right now because there are not as many women at the level to mentor other women.

The study, titled "Balancing the Equation: Where are Women and Girls in Science, Engineering and Technology," showed significant gender differences in university degrees earned over the years. In 1984, for example, women earned 37 percent of undergraduate computer science degrees. But in 1999, the figure went down to only 20 percent. Although the reason for the decline was not mentioned, other studies show that women in general perceive a glass ceiling in the technology sector that prevents them from reaching the top.

The US study commissioned by Deloitte & Touche showed that almost two-thirds of women working in the industry believe they can only reach a certain level but not the top, which is often reserved for men. The women surveyed said the industry considers them as less knowledgeable and less qualified.

But Carol believes these studies do not necessarily apply here. "There is no glass ceiling for women," she declares. "I wouldn’t be here had there been one."

Though Carol is very supportive of women, especially those with drive and ambition to reach the pinnacle of their careers, she is in no way a female chauvinist. She simply preaches the gospel of equality of the sexes.

"I don’t believe one gender is superior to the other. It all gets down to who is working harder," she says.

When Carol was starting out, she got one of her first big breaks from an equal opportunity program of IBM Philippines. It was 1976 and Carol, then a computer programmer, decided that she wanted to go into sales to earn more money. But IBM at that time only had male sales representatives.

"The equal opportunity program made me IBM’s first female sales person," she remembers.

Now in Bayantrade, Carol makes sure that each of her employees–regardless of gender–gets the chance to improve himself or herself. She sees to it that those wanting to excel get the opportunity to realize their full potential.

"The key is to create a level playing field," she says. "Right now we have 64 employees, 32 men and 32 women. And we not only give equal opportunity to both genders, but also equal chances to both the young and the old."

Born Carol Gutierrez Esguerra to a poor family in the slums of Sampaloc, Manila two years after the war ended, Carol’s father Manuel, a former soldier from Bulacan, couldn’t afford to buy a lot for the family home. He was able to build a small house on government land along Domingo Santiago street, beside a creek. The house was demolished decades later when a street was constructed along the waterway. With his meager paycheck as a security guard and his wife Sergia’s income as a teacher, they raised five children–all girls–to become achievers.

Carol, second in the brood, says she and her sisters got their inspiration from their mother who defied poverty to become the only person in her family to have a college degree. "Our grandmother only sold eggs in the market and our mother got through college on scholarships," she reveals. "She taught us to work hard for our dreams."

Sergia Gutierrez Esguerra was the first teacher in the country to teach the deaf to speak. She was sent to the Central Institute of the Deaf in the US to learn a method of teaching deaf children how to read aloud and communicate orally and not just by sign language. An expert in her field, she became principal of the Philippine School for the Deaf and later division chief of the Department of Education in charge of special education.

It was from Sergia that Carol and her siblings got their love for work. Sergia had worked all her life and retired when she was 69, already suffering from a lung ailment believed to have been caused by too much exposure to chalk dust. But instead of resting, she accepted an offer from Arellano University to be the dean of its College of Education.

"She went to the university with an oxygen tank to help her breathe," Carol recalls. "She was working until the day she died when her lungs collapsed."

Carol also owes much of her success to her father. Manuel Esguerra may have lacked education, but not the desire to learn. He instilled in his daughters discipline and a sense of responsibility. He wanted his daughters to be equal to men, if not better.

Just like his wife, Manuel never stopped trying to improve his lot. At 49, when half of his daughters were already working, he went back to school, intending to finish college. "I even helped him with his math homework," says Carol, who has a BS Math degree. But Manuel did not realize his dream because one morning his body was found floating in Manila Bay. He had been murdered, and the case remains unsolved up to now.

Carol’s upbringing obviously made her tough. She excelled in school–going through high school (International School) and college (UP) on scholarships. She finished her degree almost at the top of her class. She was always studying, always had a book by her side. Anyone who sees her today would probably be surprised to learn that she was a nerd in college, with 1,000-grade glasses that were so wide they almost covered her square face. She has a master’s degree and is a doctoral candidate.

Her coming from a poor family also made her value whatever money she has earned. "I hate wasting money," she says. "I always tell my children that I only want them to learn three things–learn how to study and work hard, learn how to choose the right partner in life and learn not to waste money."

Success, though, has its downside. Ever dedicated to her career, her marriage failed. Her former husband simply didn’t appreciate her working and would rather have had her play the traditional role of wife and mother. She gave the marriage a chance and stayed home for two years, but still it failed.

"It didn’t work out," she says. "My former husband simply did not share my dreams."

Carol had to raise her three children–all girls–by herself. Short of cash, she decided to move to sales from systems and software services to earn more. The move proved to be a major turning point: She discovered that she had a marketing personality and that she loved to work with people.

She went on to become head of Banco Filipino’s computer services, then marketing manager and later general manager of the SGV Group’s software business. She also became vice president of the Development Academy of the Philippines before becoming the founding general manager of Megalink, deputy commissioner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue and managing director of the local SAP.

She confessed that she achieved all these by sacrificing her personal life. "My former husband was my first boyfriend. I never had any serious relationship since we separated and our marriage was annulled," she confesses. "I lead a very unbalanced life without much time for leisure."

Carol says she is surprised that her three girls–now 27, 23 and 21 years old–grew up to be achievers just like her. Her second daughter finished Business Administration cum laude and her third took up Psychology and graduated magna cum laude, both from UP.

"I often ask them how come they turned out to be balanced achievers when I never had time for them," she wonders.

Carol will be turning 53 this November. Though already at the top of her profession, she still works 12 hours a day, five days a week. Her Saturdays are full of work, too, since it is on those days that she attends to the foundation she set up for her mother that helps educate deaf children. It is also on Saturdays that she goes to other civic groups to extend help. Sundays are the only time that she gets to rest, with her daughters, her four sisters, her eight nieces, three nephews and two grandchildren – again all girls – coming to her house for lunch.

Even though she now has more money than she needs, she has remained the same poor little girl from Sampaloc who never splurged. Her company-issued Compaq iPaq PDA is a witness to this. If only it can talk, the small gadget would reveal that Carol herself buys every ingredient of the food she eats at home and that she has a limited set of clothes. She mixes and matches her blouses, skirts and blazers so as not to appear to be wearing the same clothes everyday.

"I am still a poor girl at heart. My sisters say I’m not matipid. They say I’m kuripot," she laughs.

In these hard times, when businesses must cut costs to survive, the founders of Bayantrade definitely made a wise decision in choosing Carol. And not just because she’s a woman.