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Business English: Spanish court deals blow to macho culture

At present, Spain has the longest working hours (and one of the lowest productivity rates) in Europe. von Leslie Crawford (Madrid)

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Spanish court deals blow to macho culture

A Barcelona judge struck a blow for sexual equality last week by ruling that El Corte Inglés, Spain's largest retailer, discriminated against women at work. The ruling against El Corte Inglés comes only six months after Spain's Socialist government approved a far-reaching new gender equality law that aims to sweep away all relics of discrimination in macho Spain. El Corte Inglés, with 105,000 employees and annual sales of €17bn, was found guilty of failing to promote women in a civil suit brought against the department store chain by trade unions and Catalonia's labour inspectorate. The company, which is run by Isidoro Alvarez, a 72-year-old patriarch who only recently allowed his female employees to wear trousers at work, said it would appeal. "We promote fewer women because our hours are long and many women, particularly mothers, do not want the extra responsibility and longer hours because they have to look after their children," said El Corte Inglés. "We are a very large company and reflect society in this respect." At present, Spain has the longest working hours (and one of the lowest productivity rates) in Europe. Two to three-hour lunch breaks are common, and office hours often stretch past 8pm. As a result, a high proportion of women drop out of the workforce after they have children, or take dead-end, part-time jobs in supermarkets and department stores. Female participation in the workforce is at 62 per cent, compared with more than 75 per cent in northern Europe. Female unemployment, at 11.4 per cent, is almost double the rate for Spanish men. The new law aims to change all that. It mandates equal work for equal pay and requires companies that employ more than 250 workers to implement "equality plans" for the recruitment, training and promotion of women. It introduces 13 days of paternity leave and obliges companies to become more "family friendly". More controversially, the law requires listed companies to "seek a balanced representation of men and women" at boardroom level, and gives companies eight years to achieve this. At present, 63 per cent of listed companies have no women on their boards, according to the National Stock Market Commission's annual report on corporate governance. In 2005, Spain's listed companies had appointed only 95 female directors - less than 6 per cent of the total. Lawyers say the wording of the law lets companies off the hook. "Parity at boardroom level is not legally binding," said Ignacio García Perrote at Uría Menéndez, a law firm. Gabriel Masfurroll, executive chairman of USP Hospitales, a private healthcare company based in Barcelona, told the Financial Times: "I broke my balls to build my company, and I didn't do it by dropping everything at 5pm to look after my family. Being an entrepreneur is incompatible with a good work-family balance." According to Paloma Rodríguez, a lawyer at Garrigues, Spain's biggest law firm, much of the resistance is cultural. "We have gone from having nothing on the statute books to having a very progressive law that aims to have a big impact on all spheres of public and private life - not just employment," she said.

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