The women who went out to demonstrate on March 19, 1911 to demand “the right to vote, better working conditions and the possibility of holding public office”, according to the UN, could not believe that today, 100 years later, they still do not We have not managed to equalize men in positions of responsibility in companies, nor to equalize our salaries.
Today, International Women’s Day, we cannot forget the effort of the women who fought to reduce the distances with men, and we must follow the example of that million women who, to this day, would still not see their dreams come true.
In Spain, the Women’s Institute reports that the female employment rate reaches 41.7%, compared to 54.2% for men. But the thing does not stop there, but in relation to wages, the average income for women is 15% less than that of men, and can reach 25% less in the private sector.
On an annual average, according to a report made public by the Special Body for Public Treasury Management (GESTHA), Spanish women earn 5,300 euros less than men, which highlights the wage gap between the genders.
Where you can see even greater discrimination is in managerial positions. Of the 504 directors who work in Ibex 35 companies, there are only 54 women, and there are six work centers that do not have any employee in charge.
Likewise, women who live in the most impoverished countries do not have better conditions, rather, according to the World Bank, 7 out of 10 of them live on the poverty line, and with respect to education, of the 774 million illiterate people, and 64% are women. Therefore, education is the basis for changing this situation, and for this reason the UN commemorates this day under the slogan ‘Equal access to education, training and science and technology: The path to decent work for women’.
Family prevents women from becoming entrepreneurial entrepreneurs
The responsibility that women create for themselves in order to start a family is very different from the one that a man creates for himself. It is only necessary to see that, in the European Union, only 3% of the companies are directed by a woman and of the 63 million registered unemployed between 25 and 64 years of age, two thirds are women. These data are related to the fact that women need to reconcile their working life with their family life, and to do so they do without high-level positions.
From the age of 35 the situation of women worsens drastically, since they have children and must take care of the house, and since they are aware that it is their childbearing age (first-time mothers from the age of 31, according to the INE) and they to having to ask for redundancies, they assume that their salary must be lower and they do not fight for equality.
And if it is difficult to work and have a family, it is even more difficult if women want to create their own business. The hours and salaries make this option almost impossible, although it is true that women are more academically prepared to form a workplace, and they are the favorites to be bosses, but they are still not giving us the opportunity we deserve.
