Women’s Empowerment and Retention Rate

There is no clear link between women’s empowerment and retention rate; the next theoretical foundation points toward women’s empowerment and entrepreneurial development. Khan (2018) “finds that participation of women in microfinance, more particularly through self-help groups (SHGs), empowers them in economic, social, psychological, and political factors. The issue as to whether microfinance empowers or disempowers women is an open question.”

The paper presents three microfinance institutions and examines retention rates and their effect on women’s empowerment. It is noble to propose that retaining women in the microfinance system and making them eligible to stay in the program can benefit and empower them, thus maximizing access to growth opportunities. However, at the end of the day, retention rates remain a business decision.

Eighty four Filipino counselors with at least one year of active practice participated in the study by answering a survey to gather dishonest behaviors and motivations. This survey was an which was an adaptation of the situation sampling method. The findings have given us a more detailed look at dishonesty in the counseling setting as they have provided documentation of counselors’ actual dishonest behaviors. Although counselors more frequently reported being dishonest towards their clients, this does not necessarily indicate that the behavior is malicious or harmful. Counselors reported being dishonest to accommodate the client even though they did not feel ready or willing to do so, to lie about their perception of clients’ attributes to give hope to clients about the client’s situation and try to make the client feel better.

This is a promising finding, as this means that counselors tend to uphold the client’s welfare as recommended by Sokol for patients. Some reports of dishonest behaviors pertained to disclosing case information without the client’s consent, but these were mostly done when the counselor believed that disclosure would lead to better case management, such as in consultation with superiors or colleagues. This implies that counselors tend to regard client welfare over simply following guidelines, which is noble. However, this also suggests that counselors may depend on their own good judgment as to when and to whom to disclose information, regardless of the clear guidelines of keeping confidentiality. This finding may merit further inquiry as this behavior poses a risk for the practice, and there may be a need to develop clear decision-making steps in situation where existing guidelines do not seem to apply.

In the situations outside work, counselors reported being dishonest towards different people that they interact with presumably on a daily basis, including friends and family, acquaintances, service providers, and strangers. An analysis of what counselors are dishonest about include dishonesty about their feelings, evaluations or opinions, such as expressing a positive emotion even when feeling the opposite, pretending to be okay when actually feeling tired or angry, or not disclosing a dissenting opinion. The dishonest behavior manifested masks an emotion, condition or opinion that if revealed could damage the smooth interpersonal interaction between the person engaging in the dishonest behavior and the target. This finding is consistent with the previous research on Filipinos, asserting that they value smooth interpersonal relationships and strive to maintain harmony with people they interact with. Data also show that dishonesty about one’s feelings, conditions or opinions tends to be a common theme across the different targets.

This means that in identified situations, the participants were not candid about how they felt, and actually tended to present a more positive feeling or evaluation to the target. This supports the findings of DePaulo et al., which identified this theme as one of the most common that people lie about in everyday life. This suggests that smooth interpersonal interaction is perceived as more beneficial, and thus more important than simply being transparent. This is similar to how counselors use dishonesty in the workplace setting, which suggests that the tendency to be dishonest about one’s feelings, conditions, or opinions cuts across contexts for counselors.

To answer the very first question forwarded, finding show that counselors do lie. The findings of this study however show that lying and dishonesty cannot simply judged as is. As has been shown in the results, counselors do engage in forms of dishonesty, but the context of these behaviors has to be considered. Client welfare, better case management and maintenance of harmony, among others, are worthy matters that appear to be behind the said behavior. Further inquiry is needed to further help us understand how cognitions and judgments, as well as behavior tendencies operate, when counselors decide to engage in a behavior that is dishonest.