Theramex is a global speciality pharmaceutical company solely committed to supporting the health needs of women through every stage of life.

Theramex's Ana Vidal Cairo, Director of Marketing for Spain & Portugal [pictured below] spoke at The reality of Female Leadership, a key business forum hosted by Spanish media El Economista in collaboration with the Women Economic Forum.

The conference was sponsored by Theramex Spain, among other companies. El Economista is a Spanish newspaper focusing on economical, financial and business affairs.

Employer committed to empowering women

Gender diversity in the world of work is a hot topic, as well as the associated issues, such as the glass ceiling, the presence of women in management teams or the growth of companies with women at the helm.

Decision-making carried out from different and diverse profiles provides economic value to companies and, therefore, diversity must be implemented in all companies to achieve greater productivity. This is the conclusion reached by the participants of the second round table of the forum The reality in female leadership.

Ana explained that Theramex has reached 40 per cent of women managers compared to 29 per cent of the pharmaceutical sector, and is therefore one of the best positioned in terms of female participation.

"The pharmaceutical industry is one of the few sectors where it can be said that the glass ceiling has been broken," she said. Ana points out  however, that it is not the reality in the rest of the economic areas. Like her colleagues, she stressed the idea that diverse opinions offer a more creative way to find solutions and therefore better productivity. "Networking among men is more common and many times important decisions are made at that time; these decisions must be made during working hours where there are men and women, since we can all contribute with our point of view," explained Ana.

The fight for equality

The participants stressed the need for men to be an active part in the search for equality within the company as well as making them visible within this fight.

Ana called for an "effective management of diversity"; that is, that there is a variety of profiles in decision-making.

Balancing work and family life

Another hot topic that was discussed in depth throughout the forum was the reconciliation between work and family life, and how this can be an obstacle for women when it comes to progressing in their careers.

Ana called for more conciliation policies to be promoted and explained what is known as "broken stairs", that is, women with professional careers but have not reached high positions because they have to stop due to motherhood.

Empowerment and education are necessary tools

The participants spoke about the different strategies that can be carried out to break the glass ceiling.

"The glass ceiling is not a real barrier. We have to believe that we are capable of breaking it, that we have a different perspective than men. We have to empower ourselves," said Ana. She explained the importance of managing soft skills, carrying out training courses on equality, having resilience, and knowing how to establish the limits of each one. She also shared the importance of mentoring to help each other among women themselves.

The speakers concluded that training and educating children from a young age is vital to achieve full equality.

Ana also discussed why there must be Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for external and internal communication, saying that the measures of the companies "are useless if the employees do not know them. Externally they give voice to the cause through the media and social networks, and internally by involving workers."

The highly informative and well-attended event was hugely successful overall.

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