Gender Im(pact)

Goodbye, goodbye, thank you, very good job, we continue!

Exit. Click. Silence.

Quarterly Zoom meetings with 20 outstanding women, executives from all fields of activity to support and propose initiatives for gender equality from our professional positions.

I have been a member of the Board of Advisors of the Women, Business and Economy Observatory (ODEE) of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce since April 2020 and also of the 50a50 Association, with more than 100 professional women, entities chaired, respectively, by Roser Xalabarder and Anna Mercadé.

Specifically, the ODEE is a "forum for reflection, study and proposals to highlight the professional, entrepreneurial and business woman in today's economic world." And the objective of 50a50 "is to achieve 50% female representation in decision-making positions in institutions, organizations and companies and to give visibility to female talent (...)."

Both, aligned with United Nations SDG Goal number 5: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

Click. Silence.

At the end of each Zoom, two hours of meeting, silence, admiration and awareness, impacted by the long journey still, towards gender equality.

How can we be agents of that change? How to draw attention to these issues beyond the media noise, with no more resources than our time and our desire?

My expertise is the strategic management of brands from communication and marketing. Corporate brand, personal brand and for the last five years also place branding, as head of Marca Barcelona at the Barcelona City Council.

Sensible voices say that brands reside in people's minds. They are the perception that each of us has of everything around us, be it people, women and men, companies or places.

Roser asked me one day: And if you had to manage the woman brand, how would you do it?

Silence.

What is the perception of women in our country? How does language help that perception?

Today I was searching on Google Search for doctors and nurses, which we have heard so many times, due to Covid-19. From March 16, 2020, to date, there have been 51,800 mentions of doctors and nurses through digital media. In Catalan, metges i infermeres appears 1,190 times in the same period. For me, doctors and nurses takes me back to a certain antiquity, like when Doctor Caparrós appeared on TV, remember? According to the 2020 annual report, 53.1% of the professionals at the Barcelona Medical Association are women, they are doctors.

Later I go into Linkedin, and following a post I uploaded, I read that x "people with the title of founder, university professional, marketing expert, PR expert, executive director, project manager, school teacher, human resources expert, buyer, operations expert... have seen your publication".

Language conditions the way we relate to the world. Dr. Bengoechea, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Alcalá de Henares, explains it very well: "Language reflects and, very especially, helps to construct our conception of the world and reality. That is, the terms, phrases, and language that people use to describe reality, things, and people, organize our interpretive structure of them."

Is language, through the generic masculine, a reflection of these gender stereotypes?

I find the answer in the intervention of Eulàlia Lledó, doctor in Romance Philology from the University of Barcelona at the Conference Visibilizar o marcar? Repensar el género en la lengua catalana (To make visible or to mark? Rethinking gender in the Catalan language), in 2010. It says: "If changes in women's way of being in the world configure changes in the use of language, it is also possible that some changes in the use of language help to change ---and to broaden--- women's places and perception in this same world."

"60% of graduates are women, but only 4.5% are senior executives," remarks Anna Mercadé, director of the ODEE and president of 50a50.

How to break the gender stereotypes we live with, still unconsciously?

Each one with their craft: people in marketing sometimes talk about impact marketing or guerrilla marketing. These are campaigns associated with an impactful action, to connect the brand with its audiences through a surprising and shared experience. Actions with little budget and a lot of enthusiasm.

What if for just one day we read everything in the feminine?

As a result of these and other reflections, the initiative Un día en femenino (A Day in Feminine) emerged, aiming to show for one day the things that happen in the world from the feminine as a generic, instead of the masculine.

With this action, the Women, Business, and Economy Observatory of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and the 50a50 Association, with the collaboration of the College of Journalists of Catalonia and all the media outlets that have joined, want to invite you to reflect on the invisibility of women through language, on the occasion of International Women's Day. Not to impose the generic feminine, which would be the same from the other side, but to think together about new paths towards equality.

And I conclude with this suggestion from Mar Gaya's book Igualant: "Assume the normalization of non-sexist language as a value and not as a cost."

With a gender pact, I would add, working hand in hand towards the equality of all people, women and men.

Thanks Neus Jordi, coordinator of 50a50. Thanks Gemma Bercial, Noelia Valencia and Laura Llinàs from the ODEE and the Chamber. Thanks Juliana Vilert, Director of Organization and People at FGC and Mar Gaya, gender equality consultant. Thanks Roser Xalabarder, president of the ODEE. Thanks Anna Mercadé, president of 50 a 50 and director of the ODEE. Thanks to the counselors, to the partners.

Thanks to the College of Journalists of Catalonia and to all the media outlets that have joined.

And to so many people and entities that work to change the perception of the brand woman. On March 8th and the rest of the year.

Very good work! Let's continue.

Click. Silence.

PS: Ukraine in my mind.