Puerto Rican Women in International Business: Then and Now

Maritza Soto-Garcia
(University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus, Spain)

Abstract: This paper was carried out to compare the perceptions and attitudes towards Puerto Rican women in international business and assignments that foster or hinder their participation in this area. The study compares data from research conducted from the same researcher at the end of the 1990’s and the present time, specifically, 2016. A self-administered questionnaire was sent through SurveyMonkey using Likert scale. 

A 42% response was obtained of the respondents, 30% were male and 67% were female. Respondents were selected using random sampling from a database of 200 local domestic and multinational firms.

In general, the majority of the responses received support women’s participation in international business and assignments now as compared to the previous study. However, although respondents supported women’s participation, it was noted that organizations still remain hesitant to send women to international assignments, there remains a perception that foreign companies are prejudiced against women in international assignments and that when given an assignment, women are measured again male norms. It was found that the organizational departments that are most likely to have women in international assignments are Quality, Marketing, Human Resources, Legal, Services, Public/Government Relations, and Research & Development as compared to Sales, Marketing, Human Resources and Quality in the previous study.

Although men and women have similar attitudes and perceptions regarding Puerto Rican women in international business and assignments, we find that women continue to be limited regarding their participation in careers dividing these into those that are most likely or less likely for women. It was also interesting to find that the perceptions and attitudes exhibited in this survey continue to be the perceptions regarding women’s participation in international assignments around many countries in the world. Findings need to be interpreted cautiously because 67% of the respondents were women although there is a greater tendency to find more females than males in the general workforce. A follow-up study with a broader group of respondents is recommended.

Key words: international business; gender equality; discrimination; perceptions of top management; human capital

JEL codes: J00, J79, F230