The modern Spanish businesswoman is making rapid inroads in a once macho society, reports Sarah Morris
In an episode of Cuéntame Cómo Pasó – a popular Spanish TV series set during dictator Franco’s reign – one of the lead characters crashes a car. The reason for the accident? The otherwise kindly Antonio can’t stomach the fact that his driving instructor in the late 1960s is a woman.
Some 40 years later, the scene provokes only laughs in today’s economically thriving Spain where more and more women work in all sectors.
Last year, around 42% of Spanish women were working, compared to only a third in 1998.
There are more female soldiers (around 14%) than in any other European country. Half the current socialist government is female and 36% of MPs are women.
However, attitudes like Antonio’s haven’t disappeared. “This can still be a macho society,” says Carol García Tomás, a 34-year-old architect based in Almería after several years working in Valencia. “Some men still find it difficult to accept being managed by a woman. A friend of mine recently told me the men working at her textile factory found it hard to accept the daughter of the owner taking over.”
When Spanish financial magazine Actualidad Económica surveyed female directors and entrepreneurs on whether discrimination existed in Spanish companies, almost 90% said they believed it did. More than one in three said they had experienced it in person.
Though Tomás has never suffered discrimination in her career so far, experience has made it clear she is working in a male-dominated sector. “Very few of the women belonging to my school of architecture are now practising architects,” she says.
“I remember a male colleague of mine saying if he found it difficult it would be harder for me. He said in all the deals he had made the builders had talked of nothing but whores. That’s a part of the construction world – people with a lot of money and very few scruples – to which I wouldn’t even have access. People wouldn’t feel comfortable with a woman.”
Happily, in setting up her own architecture studio, Tomás has won over Spaniards belonging to an older generation. “One of my clients is an older man who was quite surprised to find himself dealing with so many female architects. He said to me, ‘I didn’t expect all these women, but you work well’.”
“Spain has probably achieved in the last 30 or 40 years what some other countries have taken 60 years to change,” says Isla Ramos, the 36-year-old managing director of Spanish and Portuguese operations for Chinese IT company Lenovo.
“Because we’ve been so quick it’s understandable that we’ve left something along the way.”
Ramos, who grew up in Granada and was partly educated in England, thinks there is no general discrimination in Spain but says some sectors are proving slower to incorporate women.
“There is more work flexibility in the service industry, which has helped women, but the situation is still different in other sectors – especially in the industrial sector,” she says.
“In local companies and small-to-medium-sized enterprises you can probably still notice the difference from the Anglo-Saxon culture, but when it comes to a larger company or professions such as law, I don’t think you see discrimination.”
She describes her own sector as “advanced”, and it certainly seems to offer lessons to other industries, with women not only working in it in significant numbers, but also reaching top positions. The managing director of eBay Spain (María Calvo) is a woman, as is the head of Panda Software Spain and the vice-chairman of Hewlett-Packard Spain (Helena Herrero), among others.
“The technology sector has seen that women have a value and talent which companies can’t do without,” says Ramos.
According to her, the arrival of multinational companies in Spain has helped drive change, and it has nurtured a growing generation of female business executives. Many of these companies have invested in flexible working methods such as using laptops and teleconferencing to let employees work from home.
The Spanish government wants to see more companies implement flexible hours and methods. It passed a Law of Equality this year which requires companies to draw up equality programmes, and it wants to see up to 40% of women on the boards of publicly listed companies within the next four years.
It’s an ambitious law, designed to boost numbers of women at the top of companies in a country where women make up 3% of the board members in the blue-chip Ibex 35. It is also designed to help women lower down the pyramid.
But many working women are sceptical about it, arguing quotas could damage the way women are seen as professionals and pointing to a need for better nursery provision and a change in attitudes in Spanish homes so that men share more in childcare and domestic chores.
“The nursery situation is scandalous,” says Margarita Jimenez, the 54-year-old production head at the Zarzuela Theatre in Madrid who has two grown-up children.
Working women cobble together childcare arrangements using nursery facilities, nannies and grandmothers to accommodate finishing times which can be as late as 7.30pm in an ordinary office, or up to 11pm in the retail sector.
“This is madness,” says Jimenez. “I don’t think we’ll ever shut the country down at 6pm like in some countries, but bit by bit hours will change.”
According to Spanish newspaper El País, in 2004 a total of 379,500 women left work because of the difficulty of juggling home and professional life, compared to 14,500 men, while only 25% of the population had nursery access.
Jimenez thinks Spanish women’s continued progression in the labour market will be hampered for a long time to come because employers assume – usually correctly – that women will have more home commitments than men.
However, she admits that the situation is improving: “I see men doing the shopping on Saturdays with their children while calling their wives at home. In my generation, men ‘accompanied’ you; the most they did was put the bags in the car.”
“I have two colleagues who have had a baby. She took maternity leave before the birth and now he is taking paternity leave to look after the baby. Before, that was unthinkable.”
Droit devant
La femme moderne espagnole se fraie rapidement un chemin dans une société longtemps considérée comme machiste.
L’année dernière, environ 42% des Espagnoles travaillaient, en comparaison d’un tiers seulement en 1998. On ne niera pas toutefois que “certains hommes acceptent difficilement d’être dirigés par une femme,” confie l’architecte Carol García Tomás.
Elles sont près de 90% de directeurs et d’entrepreneurs femmes à constater qu’il existe une discrimination dans les sociétés en Espagne. Une femme sur trois confirme en avoir fait personnellement l’expérience.
Mais l’arrivée de compagnies multinationales a façonné une toute nouvelle génération de business executives du sexe féminin. Le directeur général d’eBay Espagne (Maria Calvo) est une femmme, tout comme la vice-présidente de Hewlett-Packard Espagne (Helena Herrero).
“Dans le secteur des technologies, on s’est rapidement aperçu de la valeur des femmes, et aujourd’hui on ne peut plus se passer de leurs qualités,” affirme Isla Ramos, MD de la société IT Lenovo.
Le gouvernement espagnol a exprimé sa volonté de voir plus de 40% de femmes dans les conseils d’administration des entreprises publiques au cours de ces quatre prochaines années. De nombreuses femmes ne cachent cependant pas leur scepticisme, pointant le besoin criant de crèches et la nécessité d’un changement d’attitudes dans la vie domestique, afin que les hommes partagent plus les tâches liées à la garde des enfants et à la tenue du ménage.
“La situation de la garde des enfants est scandaleuse,” explique Margarita Jimenez, chef de production au Théâtre
Zarzuela à Madrid. Selon le quotidien espagnol El País, 379 500 femmes ont quitté leur travail en 2004, et seules 25% avaient accès à des services de crèches.
D’après Margarita, la situation évolue vers un mieux: “Deux de mes collègues ont eu un enfant. Le père a pris un congé de paternité pour pouvoir s’occuper du bébé. Il y a peu, cela aurait été impensable.”
Vrouwen aan de top
De moderne Spaanse vrouw klimt snel op in een maatschappij die ooit gedomineerd werd door mannen.
Vorig jaar had ongeveer 42 % van alle Spaanse vrouwen werk. In 1998 was dat nog een derde. “Toch hebben sommige mannen het moeilijk met een vrouw als baas,” zegt architecte Carol García Tomás.
Bijna 90 % van alle vrouwelijke directeurs en ondernemers gelooft dat er in Spaanse bedrijven discriminatie heerst. Eén op drie heeft het zelfs al persoonlijk ondervonden.
De komst van multinationals in Spanje leidde tot een nieuwe generatie vrouwelijke business executives. Zo is de managing director van eBay Spanje (Maria Calvo) een vrouw, net als de vicevoorzitter van Hewlett-Packard Spanje (Helena Herrero).
“De technologiesector beseft dat vrouwen nodig zijn,” vertelt Isla Ramos, MD van het IT-bedrijf Lenovo.
De Spaanse regering wil dat binnen vier jaar de raden van openbare bedrijven voor 40 % uit vrouwen bestaan. Maar veel werkende vrouwen hebben hier hun twijfels over. Volgens hen is er nood aan betere kinderopvang en moeten mannen actiever deelnemen aan het huishouden en de opvoeding van de kinderen.
“De situatie rond kinderopvang schiet tekort”, zegt Margarita Jimenez, productieverantwoordelijk bij het Zarzuela-theater in Madrid. Volgens de krant El País waren er in 2004 379.500 vrouwen aan het werk, van wie slechts 25 % toegang had tot kinderopvang.
Maar volgens Margarita is er verbetering op komst. “Twee collega’s van mij zijn zopas bevallen. De vaders gaan vaderschapsverlof nemen om voor de baby te zorgen. Dat was vroeger ondenkbaar!”
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