Women do not stop fighting to close the gender gap that was accentuated in two years of the pandemic

After two decades of successful career Gina Castagneto She is the first female CEO of Golden Arches Ecuadorpart of the world’s largest McDonald’s franchise that operates in 20 markets in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Her appointment is no coincidence, in recent years women have gained presence in high business positions.

In 2021, Dolores Prado was the first woman to be executive president of Holcim Ecuador, a company in the construction sector, the one with the least female labor participation, with just 4%, according to an analysis by the Adecco Group of the situation of the female labor market in Ecuador post-COVID-19on the occasion of the commemoration of the International Women’s Day.

Holcim Ecuador, a century-old company with strong foundations in gender equality

Meanwhile, the sectors in which a greater number of female personnel are concentrated are: services (62%), commercial activities, restaurants and hotels (48%) and the financial sector (46%).

That 48%, which includes restaurants, is reflected in Castagneto, who in her 20 years at Arcos Dorados was head of training, operations and training manager; and she has collaborated in several projects to promote gender equity as a leader in Ecuador of the Golden Arches Women Networka group that seeks to create spaces for joint work between women and men.

It stands out that currently, of the more than 1,600 collaborators What does the company have in Ecuador? 52% are women and 48% are men. Likewise, in the management teams, 50% are women and 50% are men.

“These figures position McDonald’s not only as one of the largest employers of young people in the region, but also as a company that works on the development of policies that go far beyond the mere hiring of women”, mentions the general director of Arcos Dorados Ecuador, which also heads the ranking of the best companies to work for in Ecuador 2021followed by Banco Guayaquil, Eurofish, Banco Solidario, among others.

However, despite the specific advances, the situation of inequality between men and women in the business context, which was already evident before the pandemic, after two years of it, has made the panorama of the female labor market more challenging.

In Ecuador women continue to earn less than men

Adecco’s report shows that the 64% of these strategic positions are still held by men and that as of the last quarter of 2021, the unemployment rate for women is almost two % higher than in men, according to official figures.

The situation is not unique to Ecuador. According to International Labor Organization (ILO), Of the 23.6 million jobs for women that were lost in the region at the worst moment of the crisis in the second quarter of 2020, at the end of 2021 some 4.2 million were still to be recovered. In the case of men, on the other hand, the 26 million jobs lost had already been almost completely recovered.

Ana María Pesantes, co-founder and executive director of the Organization for the Promotion of the Violet Economy (OPEV), indicates that at a global level this economic recession is called Shecession (their recession). “The COVID-19 pandemic has erased years of economic gains for women globally and is poised to leave lasting economic scars in our region,” said Pesantes.

Gender gaps are also reflected in socioeconomic factors. A study published this month by the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) reveals that in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, 33% of women say they make financial decisions on their own, compared to 48% of men. the men.

Diana Mejía, Senior Specialist in Financial Inclusion at CAF, ensures that it is necessary to create systems of gender indicators to design public policies that reduce inequalities and encourage greater participation of women in the economy of their countries.

Viviana Rodríguez, Director of Operations of Adecco Ecuador, highlights some public and private initiatives adopted. The firm, for example, has the #TalentoSinEtiquetas program, created with the aim of having inclusive hiring processes.

Forum collected eight proposals to reduce the gender gap and promote female employment

Likewise, it points out that the Government has created initiatives and policies such as the ‘Safe Institutions Free of Violence against Women’ certification that is delivered to those public institutions that guarantee reliable spaces for their workers, the ‘Protocol for the Prevention and Attention of of discrimination, workplace harassment and all forms of violence in the workplace’, created by the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion or the launch of phase II of the Initiative for Fair Recruitment of the ILO in which the Ministry of Job.

However, Pesantes believes that the country still does not have public policies or a bill that promotes concrete actions to promote; parental co-responsibility, the increase in the participation of women in STEM careers (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), the increase in female employability in jobs of the future, among other aspects.

However, it highlights initiatives such as the first Policy Report launched in August 2021 together with the Superintendence of Companies called Gender Perspective in Management Positions of Ecuadorian Companies, which concluded that on average, from 2013 to 2018, the participation of women in management positions only increased by 2 percentage points.

As a result of this report, comments Pesantes, the 30% Club Ecuador was launched, a campaign led by Mastercard worldwide, which is already in 19 countries and the Ecuador chapter was launched on October 22, 2021 with the aim of increasing in at least 30% of women on boards of directors and C-Suites in the 100 largest companies in the country until 2030.

Some companies are already members of the 30% Club Ecuador; What Banco Guayaquil, DHL, La Fabril, Phillip Morris, CitiBank, Veris and Latam Airlines. In addition, OPEV will launch at the end of this month its first management program with a gender perspective called Women 4 Boards, focused on having an updated database of women prepared in management skills.