CaixaBank, Spain’s leading retail bank, has launched the third edition of its Women in Business Award, recognising the professional and business excellence of women who maintain a renowned leadership background in the Spanish business environment.
The award has been endorsed nationwide for its boost to diversity and its contribution to promoting gender equality in the Spanish society. In this sense, the award aims to increase the visibility, credibility, social acceptance and respect for woman in business, helping to create social consensus on women's large role in the current economic and social landscape.
The winner of the CaixaBank Women in Business Award 2019 will be one of the two Spanish representatives at the IWEC awards, within the framework of the 12th International Women's Entrepreneurial Challenge (IWEC). This conference brings together the worldwide network of leading businesswomen and will be held this year in New Delhi from 10 to 13 November. The second candidate will be selected by the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, a driving force behind these international awards.
The Women in Business Award 2019 is part of the CaixaBank Wengage Programme, launched in 2017 to develop and promote the value of diversity inside and outside the company. The Women in Business Award panel is made up of the CaixaBank Diversity committee, featuring senior members of the managerial committee and leaders from the diversity projects. The panel is responsible for monitoring the strategy and the results.
The candidates must fulfill the conditions established by IWEC, including, being majority shareholders of their company and being actively involved in the daily operations of the business. Furthermore, the company must be at least three years old, have a minimum annual earnings equivalent to 1.5 million dollars and show a commitment to honesty, equity, objectivity and accountability.
The deadline to submit candidacies for the third edition is 22 May. The businesswomen who fulfill these conditions can submit their candidacy in person at a CaixaBank branch.
During the first phase, 3 candidates will be selected from each of the 14 CaixaBank regional management offices. Next, a finalist will be chosen from each region. Lastly, from these 14 finalists, the national winner will be selected for the third edition. She will follow Inés Juste, Chairwoman of the Juste Group, and Rocío Hervella, Founder and CEO of Prosol, the winners of the first and second editions of the CaixaBank Women in Business Award, respectively.
Both found the experience to be very positive. For Inés Juste, “being Woman in Business of the year was a source of pride for me and highlighted the work of the country's business community, which contributes so much to economic and social development”. Her experience at IWEC gave her “a greater world view from a business perspective and the opportunity join a network of women of extraordinary value, both professionally and personally”.
Rocío Hervella affirms that the award brought her major personal and professional encouragement; and emphasises the importance of these kinds of initiatives as “very necessary and beneficial, as they provide unprecedented visibility to the female role models of many women who still have a long road ahead of them”.
CaixaBank’s Wengage programme
CaixaBank, with Jordi Gual as Chairman and Gonzalo Gortázar as CEO, is one of the pioneering companies in diversity management in Spain. Its specialised team develops cross-cutting projects for the entire organisation with multiple dimensions: cultural diversity, gender diversity, functional diversity and generational diversity.
Within its Diversity Plan, CaixaBank has implemented the Wengage programme to promote its commitment to diversity and gender equality. The initiative has two aspects to it: internal, with a series of actions aimed at increasing the visibility and proportion of women in management positions in the company and promoting talent and professional development; and external, with activities directed at the general public to raise awareness about equal opportunities and the value of diversity.
In the internal setting, CaixaBank features 40.1% of women in management positions as of the close of March 2019, one of the highest rates in the sector, and has a Equality Plan to contribute to real equality between men and women.
Similarly, in 2018, the company presented its “Guide to egalitarian communication: the interpersonal relationships challenge”, a document designed to undo stereotypes and promote egalitarian and non-discriminatory behaviours in the workplace.
In the external setting, CaixaBank promotes awards and conferences to increase the visibility of women in multiple areas of responsability. This is precisely the goal of the Women in Business Award, which recognises the journey of women in the business world; or the WONNOW awards, in collaboration with Microsoft, which recognise the best students in the STEM fields (Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). In addition, in 2018, CaixaBank promoted 70 conferences in Spain to raise awareness on the value of diversity; and 11 Diversity Talks in the bank's international network.
The Wengage programme is framed within the CaixaBank model of socially responsible banking, characterised by its commitment to the environment and social vocation and its contribution to the development of people and society as a whole.
CaixaBank is part of the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index 2019, which highlights companies who show a commitment to transparency in their reports on gender and the promotion of the equality in the workplace.
The IWEC Awards
The International Women’s Entrepreneurial Challenge (IWEC) is a worldwide network of female business leaders who nurture company ownership and cooperate on a global level with the goal of creating and distributing wealth in the business world.
Every year, within the framework of its Conference, IWEC hands out prestigious awards in recognition and support of businesswomen all over the world. Among others aspects, the IWEC awards aim to increase the visibility, credibility and responsibility of businesswomen, so that they can represent a major and decisive element in the development of the 21st century global economy.
The first edition of these awards took place in Barcelona in February 2007; subsequently, they were held in New York (2008), New Delhi (2009), Cape Town (2010), New York (2011), Barcelona (2012), Lima (2013), Stockholm (2014), Istanbul (2015), Brussels (2016), Seattle (2017) and Shanghái (2018).
In 2018, this international award ceremony recognised the trajectory of 48 businesswomen from 20 countries. The companies run by these women record a global turnover above 1.7 billion dollars and employ more than 48,000 people.
IWEC is an initiative of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, started in 2007 in collaboration with the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce and the FICCI/FLO (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) and with the support of Cape Town Chamber of Commerce in South Africa.
