Economic equality is advancing, but not fast enough. There gender discrimination continuing over timeAlthough they have improved in recent years, they are still moats affecting the majority of the female workforce. Sometimes it is invisible. Reaching senior management positions in a company is a career full of obstacles in some industries, and even more difficult for those who dare to take the reins after the age of 50. The professional path also becomes complicated if they have to divert some of their attention to the care of their family; This is something that doesn’t usually happen in men’s business lives. And a final gap, the wage gap, destroys women in silence. None of these inequalities are known but remain open.
According to the ClosinGap 2024 report by PwC, while women in Spain will represent 51.4% of the working-age population in 2022, they will contribute only 42.3% of the country’s GDP (0.4% more than in the previous year ). HE opportunity cost of closing the gap for the Spanish economy amounting to 213.013 million eurosThis is equivalent to a 15.8% increase in 2022 GDP and 2.9 million full-time female jobs. It is useful to take a look at the figures regarding the presence of women in the workplace. As a general rule, smaller companies in Spain employ (the majority) a lower proportion of women. According to the “Role of Women in Spanish Companies” report prepared by the College of Registrars of Spain, female employment is at 32.6 percent in small businesses, 37.4 percent in micro SMEs and 36.9 percent in medium-sized companies. .
Salary gap is the biggest taboo
Unlike other countries such as the United States where there is salary transparency, in Spain knowing how much your colleagues around you are earning is still an impossible task. This is one of the problems that makes it difficult to close the wage gap, one of the most widespread gender inequalities. Three in four women (72%) still believe there is a pay gap They work in positions where they carry out the same responsibilities as their colleagues, and half of them consider it as a result of the promotion of remote working or a hybrid model, according to the III Barometer on women’s leadership, equality and reconciliation policies of the Spanish Federation of Female Executives, Managers, Professionals and Businesswomen (FEDEPE) has not been minimized.
With the data available, Ministry of Finance Technicians (Gestha) guarantee that: It will take 25 years for the pay gap to endAs long as the rate of progress continues between 1999 and 2022. Women still earn €5,000 less than men and need to increase their salaries by 24.8% to make them equal to those of their colleagues. The largest wage gaps are concentrated in the Community of Madrid, with a difference of 31.5%, followed by Asturias (31%) and Aragon (27.9%), especially in the primary sector (51.3%), followed by financial and insurance organizations (42%). ) is followed. %) and commercial services (41.2%).
According to Gestha, these differences are due to “precarity and the glass ceiling” because “more than 3.9 million women would not receive the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI) amount for the year, or 42.5% of the total.” At the same time, they also emphasize that as the wage level of jobs increases, female employment decreases: A quarter of positions worth more than 105,000 euros are occupied by women.
half working day
One of the biggest challenges women must overcome throughout their careers combine the working day with care. The main reasons why the gender gap cannot be closed include “motherhood, care duties and the pay gap between jobs that allow compromise and ‘greedy jobs’.” [los que penalizan en mayor medida cualquier interrupción]” According to the study “Why does the gender gap persist in the workplace? Reaction of the late Nobel Prize winner in Economics” by Laura Hospido and Manuel Rojo.
As a result of time spent caring for children and the elderly, 20 percent of women in Spain opted for part-time contracts compared to 3.6% of men. According to the “Part-time work: job insecurity and gender gap” report prepared by İSEAK, 95 percent of part-time workers working for care work with women. “Women who work part-time in care are between 30 and 50 years old and in many cases are overeducated for their jobs.” At the same time, permanent contracts predominate and they work mainly in the private sector and in small companies.
And this is not a matter of volunteering. More than half of women working part-time for care hire a professional This would be taken over if the state financed it. Of those, 69% would return to full-time work. The document also includes that 45 percent of women who work part-time due to care work declare that they take responsibility instead of their husbands because they earn less. “These results suggest that achieving greater pay equality between women and men could help close the gap in care biases,” explain researchers Lucía Gorjón and Sara de la Rica.
concrete roof
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If the presence of women in some sectors is already complicated, their rise to the top is no less so. 75 percent of Spanish companies do not have women in their management bodiesAccording to the Spanish College of Registrars. Its presence is concentrated in tertiary sector activities such as education (28.2%) or health (27.2%). Only in Ibex 35 is the clearance reduced. presence of women According to the Ibex 35 and VII Continuous Market Radiography XII Report on Women in Boards of Directors, this proportion corresponds to 39.82% in Spanish elective boards; This rate represents an increase of 2.35 percentage points last year. Prepared by Atrevia and IESE. They have only one manager left to reach the 40% rate recommended by the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV). Only four women head a company at the senior management level (Inditex, Santander, Cellnex and Bankinter), and female presence in senior management rises to 21.83%. Apart from the listed companies, there are also positive cases, such as Heineken Spain, where the female presence in the management committee has already exceeded 44%, or Vueling, where this figure has already reached 40%.
But when we talk about women who are doing this at the age of 50, in addition to being at the forefront of the company, discrimination prevails. 76% of the participants in the FEDEPE survey said that the current economic environment This situation is even more unfair, especially when it comes to “senior” women over the age of 45.. For example, Ana Botín, president of Santander, is 63 years old, while her counterpart at Inditex, Marta Ortega, is 38 years old.