Equality plans that do change things

Many companies boast of having an equality plan. But in the day to day, it changes almost nothing: promotions continue to benefit the same profiles and wage gaps continue to exist.

The problem is not to have or not to have plan. What is important is whether this plan really changes how people are contracted, paid, evacuated and promoted in the company.

Why does this happen? Because many planes are designed as a catalogue of good intentions, but the rules of the game do not change: whoever gets more, who gets more and who gets the power.

They include training in equality, protocols against the body or measures to reconcile work and family life. All this helps, but nothing improves if the decisions on promotions and salaries remain the same.

A plan of equality works when it passes from paper to reality. When it forces to measure with data very specific questions:

• What a percentage of women and men rises at every level
•  if equivalents are matched by the same wages
• who first accedes to a post with persons to charge
• to whom the key projects are assigned and who gains visibility before the management

For example, Carrefour has taken his plan to the operational field: blind curriculum in certain selection processes, wage audits, priority promotion for the least represented sex and protection of variable wages so that a low or a permit – which affects women more – does not reduce income.

CaixaBank publishes objectives and results. The data allow us to check if your equality plan works: from 39.9% of women managers in 2021 to 43.4% in 2024, a level of representation reached one year before the planned. By 2027, the financial group has set a target of 45%. To achieve this, its Wengage program incorporates ternas with candidates in internal promotion processes, mentoring programs for women and periodic monitoring of the swinging of women managers.

In Inditex, according to its Annual Report 2022, 75% of the internal promotions that year were for women and 80% of the management positions were occupied by them. The company also declares absence of gender pay gap. They are figures that reflect what really matters: that promotions and wages depend on merit, not sex.

In gender equality, good intentions are not enough: they only count the results.