The first edition of TBS’ Equal.ID begins in Barcelona

On Monday the presentation of the first edition of Equal ID Mentoring Program took place in TBS in Barcelona. This is a voluntary program that aims to train and support female students in their final year of our Bachelor in Management in the field of gender. During this first meeting, the students met their mentors, who will guide them throughout the course. This is the first edition of Equal Id on the Barcelona campus, although it has been held in Toulouse since 2016, where more than 300 students have already participated in the project. Delphine Arnau, Head of Business Relations and Career Services at TBS Education, welcomed the participants, and Isabelle Assassi, Professor of Marketing and Coordinator of Equal.ID presented the project. Afterwards, the students had the first contact with their mentors.

To access management positions, women invest four years more on average than men.

Isabelle Assassi

Isabelle Assassi explained that, apart from being a program to promote equality in enterprises, “Equal.ID is also a program to fight against gender stereotypes, something that concerns both men and women.” That is why the project offers activities for both, while for women it is a mentoring program, for men, there are also several activities related to awareness-raising and sensitisation. “Real parity will only be achieved if men are also committed,” she added. Assassi also highlighted the wage gap between young women and men and the difficulties they have in accessing positions of responsibility, “to access management positions, women invest four years more on average than men.”

The presentation ended with a talk by Eva Vila-Massanas, Professor of Marketing at TBS, co-founder of WERock Capital, and Director of We Equal, who spoke about her professional experience as a woman and the importance of projects like this one. “I am so sensitive to these issues precisely because I have suffered attacks on my own skin for being a woman throughout my career,” precisely because of this she is now an active member in many groups and associations. Vila-Massanas dedicated the presentation to demonstrating with numbers and data that there is still much to be done on gender issues to put men and women on an equal footing. “There is no equality when we talk about power, that is, money.”

There is no equality when we talk about power, that is, money.

Eva Vila-Massanas

She highlighted the absence of women in positions of power, as in large Spanish companies their presence is around 6% in senior positions. “This used to be associated with education, years ago it was justified by saying that there were not enough qualified women. It turns out that, according to data, when we find a woman in a position of responsibility in a large company, she is usually more qualified than her male colleagues,” she denounced.

Among the issues she discussed, she also talked about the Pay Gap, the difference in salary between men and women who have the same skills, the same level of education, and the same responsibility in the company. This Pay Gap in many companies is as high as 30%.

“Some people attribute it to the old corporate world, they believe that things are changing, that everything is more open and democratic now, but the reality is that, when we talk about money and power, we are still far from equal. He also stressed that when a recession occurs and companies restructure their board of directors, instead of putting more women on it, they put more men on it. “I have numbers that indicate that a board with diversity is more likely to have better results and less likely to commit fraud, something that is often accentuated during a recession.

She ended by sending a message of optimism and encouraging the participants to turn the situation around with the help of their new mentors.