The staff of our Technological Centre is made up of 64% women, most of whom hold positions of high responsibility.

Currently, some sectors, such as water treatment, energy storage or digital, continue to have more men than women, although this is beginning to change.

This Sunday, 11th February, we celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, an opportunity to promote access and participation of women and girls in research, development and innovation. It is also an important date for CETIM Technological Centre, which currently has 64% of female chemists, engineers, biologists, etc. in our staff.

Women, and the human team in general that makes up CETIM, are part of our great asset due to their multidisciplinary nature and high qualifications. In our Technological Centre we research in three main areas (Advanced Materials, ECO BIO Technologies and Digital Industry) and all three are led by women. This is the case of Rosalía Noguerol, Advanced Materials Manager, who encourages all women to “develop their careers in R&D, regardless of the sector”.

The gender gap by sector

In the labour market, the presence of men and women is conditioned by the sector. While women have a greater presence in branches such as health, education or retail trade, the male presence is greater in extractive industries, supply of electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning, according to data collected by the National Institute of Statistics in the year 2022.

An example of this can be found in the digital world and in the development of new technologies, where only 17.8% of the employed population with STEM training are women, according to the report ‘Digital Gender Gap‘, prepared by the National Observatory of Technology and Society. Elena Hidalgo, Head of the Digital Industry area at CETIM, confirms that in the world of new technologies the female presence is negligible and that the situation worsens depending on the speciality, “although this is not a factor that is true at CETIM, as there is a greater female presence in practically all areas of the Centre”.

Yolanda López, who specialises in blockchain, also works in our Digital Industry area. She says that, at university, there were “three or four women per class”, “although that didn’t matter to me and it was always clear to me that I wanted to develop my career in the digital world”, Yolanda explains.

Another sector marked by the gender gap is Water and Air Treatment, where CETIM researcher Xuefei Yang works. “I like R&D because it always gives us results, good or bad, and every scientific breakthrough is relevant,” she says. Xuefei also stresses that “science does not understand gender, you can develop your career regardless of whether you are a man or a woman”.

This opinion coincides with that of Alicia Bañón, researcher in our Energy Storage Materials line, who assures that “At CETIM, your biological condition is neither a limiting nor a relevant factor and, for this reason, there are more and more women in the scientific sector”.

Although the reality is changing and many of the sectors, such as those mentioned above, are improving their female presence figures, we are still far from achieving full equality. That is why, for the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, from CETIM Tecnological Centre we are calling on all talent, regardless of gender, to contribute value to the industrial fabric and the scientific sector. You can consult all our job offers here.

Get to know the story of some of our women scientists in this video: