WHY SUPPORTING BRANDS LED BY WOMEN?

Hi bienhechas! In the first article I wrote for you I told you about the importance of making a responsible consumption and about the serious consequences that caused for the fast fashion clothing industry in the planet.

Today I want to tell you about a new subject that is very linked to this, but that it has its own peculiarities. The time has come to talk about gender perspective, also in the business area.

It's not a secret that big companies and the market in general terms starring men that are not only executives or senior official, but they are also owners of corporations. This reality is not a product of chance, but it’s due to a long tradition of perpetuating gender roles that put the man outside and the women at home. In this sense, domestic and care works have been women’s responsibility, while productive paid tasks have been reserved for men.

We all know this story, and far from wanting to look for “guilty ones”, what I want is to see the consequences so we can become aware and fight together to avoid it.

The continuation of the model causes that, following the logic of the capitalist neoliberal system that tends to the accumulation of wealth in few hands, these hands are almost exclusively male.

Luckily, this tradition is changing in many world’s countries, where we can find the specific case of Spain. However, even if women nowadays can work and undertake, we still have to face big difficulties that point the path to total equality that we still need to go across.

The concept “glass ceiling” sounds familiar to you? I bet you do, but otherwise I summarize it here: it’s the invisible obstacle that limits the professional progress of women in companies.

Regarding many reports (some of them you can find below) women are still far from reach parity in senior positions.

As you may imagine, this is not due to a lack of preparation by women, given that college women exceed half of the total amounts of students. And also, regarding statistics we can see how their way through university is excellent.

However, in spite of showing in a meritorious way that women are amply capable of developing any activity, the truth is that we find a step that is almost impossible to move up to.

If that were not enough, in addition to have socially vetoed senior positions both in companies and politics, we’re also in an alarming level of discriminations in wages. Even in careers related to health sciences, where women represent 70% of graduate, we earn 1400 euros less on average.

Once we know all of this, we just need to wonder why and what we can do to avoid it.

Why is this happening?

This question is difficult to answer given that meets sociocultural beliefs rooted in our country (and in the world in general), even if maternity also plays an important role, unequal distribution of responsibilities related to the care and unpaid domestic work area. Added to this is the lack of visibility of female models that allow us to legitimize that vetoing women from senior positions is not only unfair, but also completely absurd and irrational.

We need more visible women in the fields where we’ve been traditionally silenced, first of all for a social justice matter and, secondly, because the world needs to grow also from a broader and more representative view of society.

What can we do in this regard?

This answer is much easier. We need to support largely initiatives led by women. From education to commerce, everything is important, and our role is essential to build a more egalitarian society.

Face of this reality, currently women have to be brave to undertake and fight for a business idea or model knowing that we’ll find more obstacles in the way inevitably. We know it well.

At Labienhecha we’ve fought a lot (and we still do it)to rise a project as wonderful and hard like this one. Making things well, listening to economic, social and environmental sustainability parameters it’s not an easy task, but it’s what we’ve chosen. Honestly, we believe that this is the only way. We couldn’t do it if everyone in tam wouldn’t believe in this, but we trust in what we build and we work hard to improve every day.

That’s why, it’s in our hands to reward these projects by showing our recognition and support. And only this way, only by strengthening this side of the balance, we’ll reach a fairer world.

Sample data to summarize:

• In Spain, only 27% of women take senior positions.

• Women only represents 25% of members of companies’ management boards that go public in the European Union.

• The salary gap between genders is 14,9% and, depending on degree, it reaches 20% for the benefit of men.

• In 2017, only 23,5% of national parliaments’ members were women.

• College women represents 55% of students, passing 82%of credits in average.

• In 2018, women only represented 40% of teaching and research staff.

• Of every 100 professors, only 20 are women and of every 76 rector there are 11 women. Only 8% of public universities are led by women in Spain.

• Regarding participation in politic. According to WomenUN data, even if 39% of countries in the whole world have used some quota system to increase women representation in politic, parity is far from begin a reality: in 2017, only 23,4% of national parliaments’ members were women.

• In careers related to health sciences, where women represent 70% of graduates, we earn 6% less in average.