Our guests are Ana Inés Álvarez, Director of Fundación Avon para la Mujer, and Gabriela Ferreiro, Co-director of Libertate. They are both conscious leaders of organisations that promote gender equality and inclusion. They are actively working to incorporate policies, practices, and initiatives that expand the rights of women and other minorities.
We discuss the importance of talking about gender and diversity in work contexts. We talk about the good practices that are being implemented and, above all, the necessary steps to make sure that inclusion and diversity are primary practices in a company.
Gabriela:
“80% of people with disabilities (who are of an economically active age) are excluded from the labour market, they are unemployed, and this figure is much higher among women with disabilities”.
This fact intersects with what we also know about domestic work in Argentina, where 76% of care and domestic tasks are carried out by women. This directly impacts women with disabilities, who are excluded from any other task, whether in the workplace or in social, recreational, educational, etc. activities.
So it becomes increasingly important to highlight the double barrier faced by women with disabilities in our country at the moment -a problem that is not unique to Argentina but that persists in all of Latin America -.
Ana:
“I think that the figures that are most striking, thinking about companies, is the lack of women in management positions”.
Why don’t they get there? And something that never seemed to make sense to me was the different analyses of why they didn’t get there, how the analysis of meritocracy was applied in this context.
“The idea of meritocracy overlooks diversities – the unique journeys that have been undertaken to reach each stage – . This does not only apply to the individual but also to the very culture that does not allow for equal opportunities”.
These issues will not simply resolve themselves naturally or magically. These barriers mean that these people are constantly on the outside looking in are not even afforded the opportunity to imagine themselves in certain positions. Ana: The issue is being taken more seriously because it was raised that “it was an issue that had to be taken up” and in the last 10 years it has become much clearer why.
“Why keep talking about this issue? Because we are not really in a position of equality”.
When we have equality, we benefit from more fluid relationships and suffer from less violence. Ten years ago, the questions started. Over the years, it’s started to change from “we have to do it because it’s the right thing to do”, without questioning ourselves too much, to giving ourselves space and really asking: ‘why do we have to do it’?
Gabriela:
“Violence and violation began to be named, to be put into words. Before, because they could not be named, we continued to perpetuate them”.
We have begun to debate concepts that women and other minorities are beginning to occupy roles that in the past they were never granted access to. We have broken many silences, which means that they are being echoed in state institutions, and also in companies. And little by little laws have been put in place.
We have a normative framework that is more than 10 years old, such as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which was incorporated into the Constitution much earlier. Also in 2010, just 10 years ago, the Law on Comprehensive Protection to Prevent, Punish and Eradicate Violence against Women was passed, and these laws began to be put into action.
We also have more mechanisms of action that translate these laws into actions within the organisations. For us, this has been extremely beneficial, because it allows for the possibility of creating new policies and practices within the institutions.
Initiatives such as the SDG5, on gender equality, have also been implemented, which help to ensure that this can continue to be promoted and is on the agenda of more and more organisations.
Even today, the ‘Glass Ceiling’ continues to exist, as well as multiple discriminations and violence that persist in the professional spheres for women and other minorities. Here I would like to emphasise this question, which I think we still have to ask today, and hopefully we will be able to answer within the next 10 years : Where are women with disabilities?
“We should start to take an intersectional look at the multiple inequalities that exist and the rights that are violated, above all by not segregating the group of persons with disabilities and especially women with disabilities”.
Gabriela: In terms of practices within the organisations that we know of, we now have:
“Quota policies in management positions for women and for people with disabilities, extended maternity and paternity leave, which allows for the redistribution of care tasks”.
And many organisations have also embarked on a path of in-depth training in gender and diversity. We think this is essential to promote a long-term and sustained cultural change. One that is not just a fashionable practice, but a change that leaves policies within companies in terms of gender and diversity.
“Many organisations are committed to long-term change, modifying the bylaws and promoting targets based on gender and diversity and, in particular, disability”.
Finally, the last actions we have been supporting are internal and external campaigns in companies to make diversities visible and also to recognise ourselves within these diversities. Because, otherwise, we continue to speak from the perspective of otherness in organisations which only prolongs the processes of achieving diversity, from a rights and quality perspective.
“We should talk about diversity and recognise all participants and all organisations within these diversities”.
Ana: I think that everything that’s happening and that has been happening recently has to do with emerging issues that needed to be addressed within the organisations. I think very few organisations actually started a plan because it was necessary to start it up, to rethink, to rethink the structures.
Fundación Avon started working on the issue of violence even before Law 26485 was passed. We asked ourselves: What are we doing about it? We set out to create procedures to communicate to all women that if they were ever to experience violence within the organisation, they would be accompanied, they would be listened to and that at no time would their job security be called into question.
“It often happens that women who experience violence don’t dare to talk about it at work because it is seen as their problem – and not society’s – and they end up being dismissed”.
I believe that we are coming from a stage of very important affirmative actions, but that they have to start to be built on a much higher level, which starts to permeate all areas of organisations.
In many organisations, the conversations came about because of protocols on violence against women, or as a result of protocols on domestic violence and in some cases in order to reconcile work and family life. Ana: Look for tools that exist for self-diagnosis companies, but at the same time seek to network with organisations that are having these conversations. Often you need to know what other people are doing in order to be able to think about your own situation – and not simply copy.
Gabriela: In every organisation, whether you are starting out or to be part of this continuous tide that is changing, it is necessary to have spaces to change the perspective and to be able to look at other realities, other issues and to continually train internally. We must have spaces in the work teams to manage these debates and these training sessions. Also it is vital that we share good practices between organisations on an ongoing basis.
“There must be long-term objectives, but above all a budget and a team that is involved in gender and diversity issues”.
