From Employment to Empowerment: A Phenomenological Study of Women’s Leadership Development in the Service Industry as Basis for Enhancing Technical Vocational Programs

While Filipino women are globally recognized for their exceptional performance in technical and vocational skills, they are constrained by gaps locally in terms of opportunities for leadership capacity building. The Philippines’ technical and vocational education and training (TVET) have been focused on providing immediate employment for economic and financial stability. This research expanded this vision by studying how leadership learning and development practices could be embedded within an existing all-female TVET institution. Using the latest iteration of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to generate actionable leadership development strategies, ten themes of leadership growth strategies surfaced from the in-depth interviews.
The findings affirmed that women’s voices and lived experiences are a rich source of strategies for institutional growth, with the potential to transform a TVET institution into a launchpad for leadership learning and personal agency. Participants advocated a shift from an exclusively technical model to one that is holistic and humancentered, preparing students to not only gain employment but to lead with capability in service industries. Their experiences translate into ten strategic imperatives for TVET: (1) modelling human-centered educator traits; (2) instilling trust through relational intelligence and communicative competence; (3) personalizing mentorship to support reflective and resilient growth especially during the transition from TVET to workplace; (4) embedding ethical leadership through time-tested, dignity-affirming practices; and (5) integrating leadership development into training and apprenticeship programs. With a robust set of leadership development strategies embedded in the TVET curriculum, skilled women could influence decisions and policies in favor of better and more equitable working conditions that support their wellbeing and family flourishing. The study calls for a continual and systematic cultivation of women’s skills by providing leadership development opportunities during and after TVET, thus fostering an attitude of lifelong learning so vital for women to become leaders in service industries. Further research may be undertaken to investigate how leadership literacy may be introduced in basic education, how leadership components may be included in the basic curriculum, and how blended models that pair local institutions with overseas immersion and portfolio-based assessment may be designed. This research seeks to contribute to the TESDA Modernization Act of 2025 by reframing Philippine TVET from being an employment pipeline to an empowering incubator of Filipina leadership in the service industry.

Filipino women, technical and vocational education and training (TVET), leadership development, lived experiences, service industry

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