Women’s Leadership Programs: Why Do We Create Them and How?

The power of online courses or MOOCs

Several years ago, I was visiting a Bank project in a very small locality near Huancavelica, in Peru. While waiting for the rest of the team in the central square, a woman who seemed to know me approached me.

Affectionately, she asked me:

“Miss, are you the teacher from the IDB?”

For a few seconds, I was somewhat confused and unsure how to respond. After a while, I realized that the woman had participated in one of the first open online courses (known as MOOCs, for its acronym in English) launched by the IDB, whose preparation I led, and she recognized me from the course videos. It was a pleasant encounter, and we talked for a good while; we even took a selfie. This encounter left a significant impression on me because it was a confirmation of how a MOOC effectively expands access to learning opportunities on a scale that other modalities had not been able to achieve.

Untapped Talent

In 1970, around 9 out of 10 legal professionals in Mexico and in medicine in Brazil were men. By 2010, this figure had reduced to 6 out of 10. Since it is unlikely that the population distribution of innate talent for these professions between men and women has changed, what these figures reveal is that in 1970, there was a significant amount of untapped talent in these professions. Greater female participation in them has allowed for correcting an inefficient allocation of talent in professions whose contribution is very important to society.

Now let’s think about leadership positions. In both the public and private sectors, in politics, in companies, in science, in culture, and in many other areas, female presence in leadership positions is still far from parity in our region. These are just a few examples:

• In 2021, only 15% of the municipal governments in the region had female mayors.
• Although women represent 40% of middle management positions in companies in the region, they only occupy 20% of top management positions.
• In academia, although women represent 35% of assistant professors of economics in the region, they are only 25% of full professors.

Like in the example of Brazilian doctors and Mexican lawyers, there are probably thousands of women in our region who possess the innate attributes of a good leader – such as empathy, integrity, communication skills, the ability to listen, and resilience, to name just a few – and whose talent is likely untapped. The low representation of women in leadership positions is not only a problem of inequity. It is also a problem of inefficiency. We are not allocating the resources of our society to their best use. And the cost of not doing so, in spaces as important as leadership, is likely enormous.

How to scale a female leadership course

At the beginning of 2020, I assumed the leadership of the Gender and Diversity Division of the IDB. Upon my arrival, I found that the team had developed an interesting leadership training program aimed at women professionals working in the public and private sectors. The course offers tools to analyze one’s own leadership skills, as well as to strengthen some key areas. Some examples of these contents are building networks, communication skills focused on persuasion and influence, or resilience. In its original version, the course had been offered in person to groups of women from some countries in the region. Each edition of the course had the capacity to reach small groups.

This program had an enormous potential impact: providing tools to more women interested in reaching leadership positions. Tools that allow them to overcome some of the barriers that prevent them from advancing within the organizations where they work. However, one of the first challenges we faced was: how to offer this program at scale? That is, how can we expand access to these tools to a larger audience? That’s when I remembered my encounter with the woman from Huancavelica.

Clearly, an in-person course is not entirely replaceable by a completely virtual one. Hence, the challenge was to identify the essential elements of leadership training that could be transferred to that format to scale it up. The appeal of offering these tools to a greater number of women in the region, overcoming geographical and socioeconomic barriers, was crucial. So, we got to work.

An online course, accessible and free

The leadership program evolved and transformed into the MOOC, “Female Leadership: Boost Your Skills and Drive Change,” launched initially in Spanish. The interest generated by this course posed the challenge of adapting it to the reality experienced by Caribbean women and translating it into English. Recently, we have launched the course adapted to the Brazilian context and translated into Portuguese.

To date, around 8,000 people have enrolled in the course, of which more than 80% are women. Most of the enrolled individuals have higher education (a bachelor’s or master’s degree) and are of working age (26 to 62 years old). If you are not familiar with the program, we invite you to explore it. And if you like it, please help us share it with other people who may benefit from it.

At the IDB, we are betting on a region where women are not only recognized in more and better leadership roles, but when they reach these roles, they have the necessary tools to exercise them.