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With the stated aim of promoting vocations in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM subjects), Endesa has launched, in collaboration with the Business-University Foundation (FUE) the "She tells you" campaign directed at 1st to the 4th year ESO students. The programme will start initially in about 400 schools in the Community of Madrid and more than 1,000 schools throughout Andalusia.
The objective of this campaign is to promote STEM careers among female students through 20 webinars in which Endesa employees with a technology and engineering related career explain first-hand what led them to choose a STEM career.
This is the case of Esther Domínguez, a 26-year-old engineer from Huelva with a degree in electrical engineering who has been working at Endesa since October while completing a master's degree in occupational risk prevention and continuing her training. "To girls studying in the last school years of ESO I would tell them not to be afraid to choose what they really want, engineering is within the reach of anyone who really wants it, it is not a question of gender."
"It has been proven that diverse teams are more efficient, more innovative and obtain better results, so diversity is a business issue, if we want to be a competitive and sustainable company over time", explains Marta Cotrina, head of the culture area and Endesa's diversity plan, who recalls that “people are all different, and we add value thanks to those differences, diversity is a matter for everyone, and the company has to favour conditions that guarantee inclusion with regard to equal opportunities".
The programme, which starts on 22 February and lasts until 26 March, will take place during school hours. More information at "She tells you" webpage.
Tomorrow, #International Day of Women and Girls
In order to achieve full and equitable access and participation in science for women and girls, and also to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, the United Nations General Assembly decided to proclaim tomorrow, 11 February, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. And to achieve this goal, it is necessary to change and challenge stereotypes.
Diversity at Endesa
Endesa has a diversity and inclusion policy and action plan that establishes objectives and lines of action in four areas (gender, age, nationality and disability) in order to spread a culture that pays attention to diversity as an element of value generation.
In the area of gender diversity, the Company works to achieve three clear objectives: increase the number of women at Endesa, increase their presence in positions of responsibility, and reduce the salary gap. In relation to the first two objectives, the Company is taking great steps to achieve these aspects of equality, but there is still much to do in a company considered “technical” in which more women are gradually being taken on.
For this reason, one of the focal points of action is concentrating on educational centres, from where the professionals of the future will emerge. Given the scarcity of technical profiles in the marketplace, since 2019 Endesa has been working with educational centres throughout Spain to promote STEM careers. That year, in collaboration with the Community of Madrid Department of Education, 6 coeducation workshops were held in classrooms, with primary school students, parents and teachers, in collaboration with psychologists specialised in gender stereotypes. These workshops, in addition to promoting technological vocations, served to address stereotypes from an evolutionary perspective to tear them down right from childhood.
In 2020, due to COVID, instead of being physically face-to-face, the initiative was digitised and these educational videos have been developed for students, teachers and families, thus allowing the workshops to reach more schools, expanding the programme from Madrid to Andalusia.
These are not the only Endesa initiatives to promote equality between men and women in the Company. The participation of women in selection processes is being promoted, at the same time, greater visibility is being given to women within Endesa by promoting their participation in internal/external forums, especially women with a technical profile who can inspire other women.
To achieve such empowerment of female leadership, Endesa has launched initiatives such as Women Mentoring, because it has been shown that only a small percentage of women compared to men request promotion or a salary increase, or that there are fewer women who apply for vacancies if they do not exhaustively meet all the requirements.
And finally, measures to balance family life with working life are being promoted (more than 60 measures in agreements and, above all, the fostering of co-responsibility). Especially in the current situation where people are teleworking, Endesa also wants to guarantee equality and that family responsibilities do not fall solely on women, so that women can perform optimally under the same conditions, and when they return to face-to-face work also guarantee diversity so that a majority of men do not join “voluntarily” while women work from home and become “invisible”.