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At the head of the Spanish Government since 2018, Pedro Sanchez recently decided to take strong actions to ensure his PSOE (Social Labour Spanish Party) a certain stability. In the middle of a controversial amnesty he’s discussing with the Catalan Independentist Party, the Spanish President is willing to show his country that he still moves forward on the social, and economical questions that are burning people’s lips. One of them tends to be a really hot topic, as it was one of Sanchez’s electoral promises: bringing more parity between men, and women at work by the end of his mandate.
Following the European Council’s recent directives in 2022, Pedro Sanchez has in reality no other choices. He now has to force publicly traded companies' hands to balance the number of men and women active in Executive Boards. Promising that if this reform will be progressively put in place from June 2024, parity will be achieved only two years later, in June 2026.
But to measure how tricky this challenge could be, two facts are to be precisely looked at: in 2023, 32% of Execution Boards positions were occupied by women in the Ibex 35 companies. But, in fact, only 22% of them are top executives.
Facing an important issue, Sanchez then proposes to extend his reform. He particularly wants to focus on manager positions within companies counting more than 250 employees all around the country. Adding he would encourage the ones which appear to overtake a 50 million euro turnover to realize the same effort.
When elected in 2018, Sanchez strikes hard, his first government is composed of 11 women for only 6 men. A true revelation of his ambitions to equilibrate power inside power.
But this time, Pedro Sanchez’s strong words really resonated throughout the country when he approved an unprecedented law about men, and women parity within the Spanish public life, last year. "If women represent half of our society, then half of the political and economic power has to be in their hands". He then reclaimed that every party needed to elaborate equal electoral lists, European, local or national, to let women have more chances to be elected.
As a reminder, only 4 women are at the head of a European member state; Zuzana Čaputová (President of Slovakia since 2019), Ekateríni Sakellaropoúlou (President of Greece since 2020), Katalin Novák (President of Hungary since 2022), and Nataša Pirc Musar (President of Slovenia since 2022).
Maybe Pedro Sanchez then has an idea in mind: opening the way for women to be elected as the next Spanish Prime Minister. That would be a first, as it never happened in Spanish political history.
