Our first Gender Equality Plan is now a reality

The right to equal treatment and opportunities is a fundamental right that is included in article 14 of the Spanish Constitution. However, the difficulty in making this right effective has led to the development of multiple specific regulations on equality. However, all these norms coincide in the objective of putting an end to all forms of discrimination against women, eliminating violence against them, promoting co-responsibility and ensuring the full and effective participation of women and equal opportunities for leadership.

This gender equality is also one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to be achieved within the 2030 Agenda, specifically SDG 5. This goal is a key part of our DNA at Bioazul as we include it transversally in all activities that we carry out in the company, promoting the equality and the empowerment of women in research, development and innovation activities, and betting on the representation of women in management positions and in decision-making teams.

It is for this reason that at Bioazul we wanted to go a step further and decided to prepare our first Gender Equality Plan, something that is voluntary for SMEs with less than 50 workers, as is our case. Our main motivation in the face of this challenge has been to guarantee effective equality between the women and men who make up Bioazul, in addition to raising awareness and promoting it in our community.

After a first diagnostic phase to detect our strengths and weaknesses in terms of equality, we drew up our first Gender Equality Plan based on different areas of action. The objectives we have defined for each of these areas are:

• Area of selection and hiring: Maintain an equal and equitable selection and hiring process between women and men.
• Area of professional training: Maintain a training plan for the entire workforce.
• Area of work conditions: Ensuring optimal and equitable working conditions for the entire workforce.
• Area of remuneration: Ensure balanced, equitable and equal remuneration for the entire workforce regardless of gender and job position.
• Are of work-life balance and co-responsibility: Achieve real and effective conciliation for male and female workers.
• Area of prevention of sexual and gender-based harassment: Achieve respectful and non-sexist treatment in the company between women and men.
• Area of inclusive communication and language: Maintain inclusive communication in the company.

To carry out this plan we have designed a calendar of actions with specific measures to achieve the objectives of the different areas. Our plan was registered in REGCON (Registry of Contracts and Collective Agreements) on July 19, 2022 with an end date of 2026. Therefore, four years in which we will continue working to ensure and promote equality inside and outside Bioazul .

In order to verify the correct implementation of this equality plan, we are carrying out an intermediate evaluation of the achievements and difficulties that we are encountering during the execution of the plan, and a final evaluation that we will carry out when the Equality Plan expires and prior to its renewal.

In addition, we are carrying out a quarterly monitoring report when implementing each block of measures and with which we obtain a concrete vision of the results obtained to know the degree of compliance with each action.

At Bioazul we are very happy and excited to promote and ensure equality among our workers and raise awareness in our community so that equality becomes a reality.