We support International Women’s Day

It’s International Women’s Day and we would like to celebrate by taking a look back at the steps we’ve taken make equality a company-wide mainstay.

Last year, we approved the NEIKER Equality Assessment, the Second NEIKER Gender Equality Plan and the NEIKER Sexual Harassment, Gender Harassment, Sexual Orientation Harassment, and Gender Identity and Expression Harassment Prevention and Action Protocol. Another milestone from last year is that we created the Confidential Advisory Service, which is responsible for managing claims, complaints and allegations of sexual harassment and gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity and expression harassment.

We are also working to guarantee people management best practices. We created a list of average staff salaries, bonuses, and non-wage payments disaggregated by gender and divided into professional groups and update it annually. According to the salary audit of compensation between September 2019 and October 2020, the wage gap at the company had women making 6% more than men.

Training is a fundamental pillar to raising awareness on gender perspectives and that’s why we are implementing specific equality training plans. On the one hand, this training will train those directly responsible for leading the measures set out in our second plan. On the other, it will raise awareness about this issue for all NEIKER employees. In the latter case, there will be training sessions to help raise awareness about the mechanisms of unconscious gender discrimination in the workplace and in research.

We are also working to increase the level of shared responsibility between men and women at NEIKER with regard to the corporate structure. To do that, we are enhancing the work-life balance measures given to all NEIKER new hires in our Onboarding Handbook and sharing them periodically in internal communications.

In 2020, we also carried out the tasks necessary to request Collaborator in Equality status and the corresponding entry into the Emakunde Bai-SAREA Network. This is a public recognition of the work we’ve done and of NEIKER’s political and technical commitment to equality policies.

In 2021, NEIKER will continue to work in these areas, which need bolstering, and will notably internally disseminate the NEIKER Inclusive Language Handbook prepared by the Equality Committee. Since language is one of the key determining factors for cultural and social attitudes, gender-inclusive language is paramount to promoting gender equality and fighting gender bias.