A study by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has determined that only 20.3% of management positions in Canarian companies with international activity are held by women.
In addition, the research promoted by the Ministry of Employment of the Government of the Canary Islands, through Proexca, and presented by the coordinator of the working group and professor of its Department of Economics and Business Administration, Antonia Mercedes García Cabrera, concluded that the distribution of women throughout the workforce is very uneven.
Only one in five managers is a woman
Specifically, in all companies registered in the Mercantile Registry with some international activity, 60.2% do not have any women on their board of directors.
Only one in five managers is a woman, with slight differences depending on their activity. Thus, in exporting companies the percentage is 20.3%, while in non-exporting companies the percentage rises slightly, to 21.6%.
After presenting these results at the "Women and Internationalization" Conference, the Minister of the area, Elena Máñez, highlighted "the importance of having scientific evidence that allows us to make visible the scarce presence of women in management positions, despite having women trained in our universities with sufficient capacity to make the necessary decisions for the progress of their businesses and achieve excellence."
The Minister was referring to the data contained in the latest report of the Canarian Employment Observatory on the situation of women in the labor market. According to that document, in the general context of the Canary Islands, women do not reach 36% of management positions.
In addition, in terms of internationalization decision-making, women make them in 64.3% of cases in the manufacturing industry, in 40% in the agricultural sector and in 39.3% of cases in the services sector.
The wage gap and its representativeness in the workforce
The larger the company, the more representativeness women lose, which translates into men working to a greater extent in companies with a turnover of around 375,000 euros per year, while in the case of women it is around 250,000.
By sectors, real estate activity stands out, where 53.3% are women, compared to construction or professional activities, where their representativeness is around 11%.
"If we add to this that the wage gap is only 2.4% in those positions, but it shoots up above 24% in the lowest paid positions, we see the enormous social impact of the underrepresentation of half of the population in the best paid positions," adds Máñez.
It should be noted that this research has consulted 1,590 exporting or importing companies that appear in the Mercantile Registry of the Canary Islands and a more specific questionnaire to 153 internationalized companies or with the potential to do so.
The coordinator of the work, Antonia García, concluded that "the different representativeness by sex is evident, so it is advisable to do even greater and more continuous monitoring, to locate and examine the factors that condition female performance in business internationalization, to promote their participation."
Initiatives to stimulate the participation of women
In order to improve the figures in this specific sector, Proexca presented during the conference the different initiatives that it has launched during the last three years, to stimulate the participation of women in the internationalization of the Canarian economy.
For her part, the director of the Training and Talent area, Carla Velayos, highlighted the "Internationalize Women Canary Islands" program, which offers them a Technical assistance and support service in their internationalization processes, offers numerous training webinars and makes available to them a wide range of resources, which allow them to accelerate their incorporation into decision-making processes in this area.
Velayos indicated that the program started in 2020, and "we have already trained 236 women in matters related to internationalization and 137 have learned and successfully completed the self-diagnosis of their projects."
In addition, two editions of the Woman Impact Summit have been held, an international meeting to analyze the impact of women on the global economy, which has the motto "Building social innovation, through digital talent, digital transformation and the entrepreneurial spirit", which accumulates 3,047 registrations of participants from 112 different countries and the presentation of 60 entrepreneurship projects.
For this year 2022, the third editions of both programs are already being prepared, several working tables on women and internationalization, the acceleration program for female talent-Mentor Day and the realization of several female internationalization plans.
