The Basque Institute for Women, EMAKUNDE, has recently awarded NEIKER the recognition of ‘Collaborating Entity for the Equality of Women and Men’ for our actions to encourage and promote greater equality between women and men. To grant this recognition, EMAKUNDE has valued, among others, the diagnosis carried out in October 2022, our III action plan on equality and the specific measures to prevent and deal with sexual harassment and for reasons of sex that we have in place.

This recognition would not have been possible without the involvement of the entire NEIKER team. In the words of Leire Barañano, the centre’s general manager, “our commitment to equality goes back a long way and has become a transversal axis of our strategy thanks to the participation of the whole team”.

Long-standing commitment to equality

In addition to the involvement of people, NEIKER’s experience in equality matters has been another of the factors that have enabled EMAKUNDE’s mention. Thus, we are committed to a management model that incorporates equality as a strategic axis and proof of this is that we have had equality policies in place since 2011 and that even then we drew up a first diagnostic report focused on the analysis of the quantitative data of the workforce.

In 2018 we decided to take a qualitative leap forward in our trajectory in terms of equality policies with the support of specialised consultants approved by EMAKUNDE and with the training of the people involved in the preparation and monitoring of the 2nd Equality Plan.

Furthermore, with a view to the approval of this third plan, in 2022 an Equality Negotiating Committee was set up with representation from the company and from the workers’ representatives with the aim of drawing up and approving the Diagnosis and the Third Equality Plan (2023-2026).

Our third plan is currently in force, which incorporates 4 axes of work: good governance, empowerment of women, transformation of economies and social organisation and, finally, support for a life free of violence against women.

And, within these axes, some of the specific objectives we highlight are:

• To ensure an inclusive use of communication as a tool to generate equality, for which we have a ‘Manual of Inclusive Language’ in both Spanish and Basque.
• Promote the empowerment of women in the organisation, encouraging the participation of women in presentations at internal and external events.
• To disseminate co-responsibility in care through awareness-raising actions.
• Guarantee an environment free of violence against women and sexual harassment and gender-based harassment, for which we have a protocol for sexual harassment based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, and confidential counselling.