UP Alumna Breaks The Glass Ceiling

Aurora Mauricio Rubin

The rise of the first Filipino partner, man or woman, in Deloitte & Touche is truly an historic and noteworthy accomplishment. Aurora Mauricio Rubin, a cum laude business graduate of the University of the Philippines and trained at SGV, joined Deloitte & Touche in 1969 at a time when few women were in practice in the accounting field and when no woman had ever been made partner in the firm. In twelve years, she was promoted to partner, which is within the normal cycle of 10 to 14 years preparations if one is ever going to be made a partner. There is great incentive to being a partner: at the Big Six firms, average partner earnings range from $275,000 to $400,000 a year. Moreover, these firms are organized in that all partners own a stake in the company.

Among the largest accounting, tax and consulting professional service firms known collectively as the Big Six, for example, only 6.7% of partners are women, according to Bowman�s Accounting Report. These firms have been criticized for their pace in promoting women, Deloitte & Touche, for instance, which is the third largest in the United States, has only one woman partner for every 12 male partners. Yet this represents the highest percentage among the Big Six. At Arthur Andersen, for example, out of 1714 partners, only 104 are women.

Surveys have pointed barriers to jobs as stereotyping, exclusion from networks and lack of managerial experience. Women bear and care for children and it is said that they are not serious enough about maintaining a career. Consequently they are not set on track to high positions through programs of mentoring and succession strategies, keys to be in the tope corporate tier. Today a number of companies are beginning to implement diversity training, formal mentoring and cross training programs.

Aurora Mauricio Rubin, the daughter of the well-known editor of the SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE, the late P.C. Mauricio and the former Director of Golden Acres, Aurora B. Mauricio, admits to have benefited from an informal mentoring provided by a senior male manager who discerned great potential in her. Obviously, he also determined that she was partner material. By encouraging her to accept more challenges, to speak up and to think in English in order to succeed in the American corporate world, he provided a crucial resource by enabling her to grasp the corporate �rule� in a male dominated culture. At the same time, his intervention placed her on the partner track. To be sure, academic preparation, work experience, skills, talent and ability all matter. But having a mentor provides an edge to success. Long hours, travel and pressure of work are to be considered especially if one is married and with children. In her case, she fees so lucky because her husband, who is in the same field but works independently, is a great supporter. She was also fortunate to have had the same nanny to care for her two children, without whom she would have had difficulties.

If considering the discouraging statistics on opportunities for women to break into the ranks of management in corporate America, Aurora Mauricio Rubin�s feat in being one of only six women to have been admitted into the partnership in a national firm of 685 partners in 1981, without the benefit of formal cross training and mentoring programs, was not only pioneering but astounding. SInce then certain strides have been made by her firm. In 1993, the Initiative for the Advancement of Women was launched. For their successful efforts to date, her firm has received various awards including the 1995 Catalyst Award and the 1996 Optimas Award for Competitive Advantage, and has been consistently cited by WORKING MOTHER magazine and others for leadership in this area. Today, 25% of the firm�s senior managers are women, compared with 18% in 1993; 8.6% of the partners are women, up from 5.5% in 1993.

It is still a long way to ending the glass ceiling. But when it comes, Filipino women will join others in proudly crediting Aurora Mauricio Rubin as one of many women who helped paved that day.