Sodena hosted the second regional meeting of the Interreg Europe ‘DEBUTING’ project (Developing Business Through Inclusiveness and Gender Awareness – New Cluster Competences) on Friday 9 June, where it presented everything it had learned during its visit to Värmland (Sweden), a leader and benchmark in this project.
At the meeting, the participating regional entities delved into the different lines of work to orientate gender equality as a factor of competitiveness in Navarre. The Directorate General of Labour of the Government of Navarra, the Navarra Institute for Equality, SNE, AMEDNA, CEN, AEDIPE, the Functional Print cluster, the Directorate General of Vocational Training and Sodena will join forces with the aim of proposing improvements in public instruments to improve gender equality in Navarre’s industry.
Thanks to the sharing and learning of policies and good practices, the definition of different themes to be tackled to achieve gender equality was defined, with six key axes, areas or points to work on at both a business and a structural or general level:
- Recruitment of talent.
- External and internal company communication.
- Corporate culture and structure.
- Innovation through the user.
- Business models.
- Sustainable development.
In this way, the initiative focuses on the vision of gender equality as a competitive and differential factor for companies and the productive fabric linked to the strategic areas established by the S4; we see how gender equality impacts on business competitiveness in all its phases.
Finally, stakeholders propose as an objective the reduction of the wage gap in the industry as a base point to also influence other implicit factors such as equal permits or the “glass ceiling”, so that Navarre can position itself as a benchmark in gender equality. It is therefore important to promote a “change of image”, or an increase in the representation of women in companies and the productive fabric, verifying that there has been an evolution in the image projected and incorporating gender equality as a factor for improving competitiveness.
