On the occasion of International Women’s Day, Banco Santander Spain has extended its Women with S mentoring program to the national level. This initiative, which seeks to strengthen women’s leadership, has held several regional editions since 2018, in Extremadura, Murcia, Basque Country, Catalonia or the Balearic Islands.
Mujeres con S seeks to provide the necessary resources and tools to those women who want to rise to a management position in their organization, undertake their own project or develop within their sector. To do this, the bank puts them in contact with high-level professionals -mainly women-, with managerial or entrepreneurial experience and a wide network of contacts, so that they can define their leadership style and draw up a well-founded plan to achieve their goals. .
At the end of the program, the mentors will have received training and qualifications approved by the Mentoring Network of Spain and the mentees, the necessary accompaniment to advance on their path. To date and after five regional editions, Women with S has accompanied and trained more than 1,000 participants. More information in: .
The program, which lasts for five months, is part of the Santander Generación 81 strategy, the bank’s project that promotes the visibility of female reference models, education, employment and entrepreneurship on equality. The name of Generation 81, which also includes an offer of specific financial products, refers to the year in which the recognition of equality in the management of finances between men and women in our country was completed.
To date and after five regional editions, ‘Mujeres con S’ has accompanied and trained more than 1,000 participants
Celebrated by the United Nations since 1975 and proclaimed by the Assembly in 1977, it finds its origins in the demonstrations of women who, especially in Europe, demanded at the beginning of the 20th century the right to vote, better working conditions and equality between the sexes.
In Spain, the advent of democracy and the approval of the 1978 Constitution led to the promulgation, in May and July 1981, of two historic laws on filiation, parental authority and the economic regime of marriage that cemented full legal equality between men and women. women.
Diversity as wealth
This principle is at the base of the strategic approach that recognizes social diversity as a value in itself. The entity aspires not only to attract, develop and retain the best professionals, but as something essential to better understand the needs of a constantly changing world and, consequently, provide a better service to society as a whole.
The main way to channel this diversity – be it visible or invisible, of gender or race, or of values and beliefs – is through inclusion and equal opportunities as a “strategic priority”. In this context, the group promotes different initiatives to guarantee gender equality, the results of which are already reflected in figures. Thus, 54% of the group’s workforce are women, as are 40% of the members of its board of directors. The bank had promised that, by 2025, between 40% and 60% of its directors would be women.
54% of the group’s workforce are women, as are 40% of the members of its board of directors
Santander’s commitments also include reaching 30% of women in leadership positions before 2025 (today it is 23.7%); gender pay equity by that date and continue adopting measures of flexibility and reconciliation of personal and work life.
The bank was a pioneer in the implementation, in 2015, of what it calls flexiworking, which allows employees to combine personal and professional life, a way of working that improves efficiency and productivity, based on autonomy and responsibility, and that evaluates the work based on objectives and results. It consists of a series of measures, both formal and informal, regarding where, when and how much work is done. Where you incorporate elements like . When do you consider the continuous working day, flexible entry, exit and rest times and alternative schedules. How much refers to part-time work, special permits, flexible vacations and shared work, among others. The objective is to promote practical time management, as well as to use technologies that help to better organize work and maintain the right to .
More specifically, in the field of reconciliation, Santander introduced at the beginning of 2020 a minimum standard of paternity and maternity for all group workers worldwide, which improves local legislation in several of the countries in which it operates. This and other efforts have been recognized by different international publications, such as the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index, or Euromoney magazine, which considers Santander the best bank for diversity and inclusion in 2020.
The bank is also committed to extending these corporate values to all of society. In this task, one of the main levers is , which it has been developing through Santander Universities for 25 years and which distinguishes it from other financial institutions in the world. The entity has allocated a total of more than 2,000 million euros and has awarded more than 630,000 scholarships since its launch.
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