Arania: “If we did not focus on equality, we would be less diverse and less competitive”

Vizcaya company Arania, a leading exponent in southern Europe of precision cold-rolled high/low carbon steel, and high-yield strength alloyed and micro-alloyed steels, boasts virtual equality between men and women in its most technical departments. “Diversity enhances any team and any project. It broadens perspectives and visions, and eliminates bias. If we did not focus on equality, we would be less diverse and less competitive”, says company managing director Juan Ramis.

It is one of almost 500 businesses which took part in the survey on the Impact of women on industrial competitiveness conducted by the SPRI Group in 2023, emerging with one of the best scores in terms of the equality index and also of competitiveness.

At Arania women account for 30% of the Management Committee, when 10 years ago the figure was 10%. “Even though we are still at quite a distance from parity, we believe this is an interesting statistic for a Committee where new arrivals are not an everyday occurrence. During the same period (10 years), new arrivals at the company were 50/50 in terms of gender”. Another feature they are proud of, indicating the progress made by the company in terms of equality, is that members of the management body over 50 years old total five men and one woman, and those under 50 include two women and two men.

Arania clearly pinpoints the creation of the Equality Committee as an awakening for the entire organisation. The first step taken by both the representatives of the company and the workforce was to spread awareness to help them identify areas with room for improvement, and situations of unconscious discrimination. “The process was an eye-opener with surprises, but no controversy”, claims Leire Barayazarra, who heads up Management Systems.

When the Equality Committee had been created and the Equality Plan drawn up, the objectives and the action plan were mapped out, and here, among other issues, training in equality is an essential feature, particularly in the more traditional departments such as the production plant.

Where the average proportion of women in the workforce in the industrial sector is 19%, the figure at Arania is 15% (group total 29%). This figure is brought down by the scarcity of women at the production plant, where they account for only 1% of the workforce. This is one of the main challenges facing the company at the present time.

Aware of the difficulties involved in bringing in women to the production plant, a project has been launched to boost the ergonomics of industrial machinery. This initiative aims to enable machinery to be used by anyone, regardless of age, gender or strength. This also seeks to help eliminate the association between industry and strength, and break down one of the main barriers preventing women from gaining access to the industrial sector.

There is a clear emphasis on parity and diversity to boost the numbers of women working in the company’s other departments. An effort is made to ensure that all departments have balanced representations of gender. “In selection processes where the department has a masculinised tendency, one of the criteria to be appraised is for the person selected to be a woman, and vice-versa if the department is feminised. It is one more ingredient in the cocktail shaker which we may not have taken into account previously”, says Leire Barayazarra.

They also believe that making a plant such as Arania attractive is part of their job. To this end they are working on a number of strategies, including an update of their family/work measures, the addition of inclusive language to their communications, and the utilisation of photographs showing the diversity of the company on Internet and social media in order to portray a more modern reality. They are also aware of how important it is to have key women at the company, and to bring it to the attention of schools and training centres. In this regard, they are involved in the INDUSTRIA ERRONKA initiative which enables them to bring industry to the attention of younger girls, and in which they also strive to showcase women working at the company.