Last update: 12/03/2021

A company with a gender-diverse workforce is one of society’s most valuable assets. However, dated stereotypes about gender are still common in the tech world. To challenge them, Santander created the Women In Tech (WIT) initiative. 

The tech, where women account for only 17% of all workers, is one of least gender-diverse industries due to dated social stereotypes. To make a difference, Santander started Women In Tech, an initiative in our Be Tech! with Santander recruitment plan, with several projects to empower women in the field of technology. 

WIT highlights the value of diversity, inclusion and equal opportunity by championing women leaders at the workplace to reduce the gender gap in tech. For some years, this has been a top priority at Santander, earning us recognition by Euromoney magazine as the World’s Best Bank for Diversity and Inclusion 2020. 

Equality in tech

What is WIT’s mission? It’s equal opportunity in the tech industry. How? By tackling gender gap, promoting women managers, and challenging gender barriers and prejudice on all our teams. 

WIT is helps improve Santander’s brand as a tech employer. Lending crucial support to this initiative are Cristina Álvarez (Global CTO); Elisabet Pinilla (IT Delivery & Transformation); Charo Vacas (executive vice-president of T&O); Mercedes Climent (head of HR at Santander. 

How is Women In Tech run? 

The various initiatives run by Women In Tech include:

• Diversity diagnosis in Grupo Santander’s T&O area through in-depth interviews with an external specialist.
  
  
• Insightful discussions with women role models from Banco Santander on the technology in a series called Conversaciones para hackear estereotipos (“Conversations to hack stereotypes”). 
  
  
• A study on gender with participants and representatives from Grupo Santander’s T&O area. What did it find? Overall, employees see a real change in our culture and progress made in diversity and inclusion; however, they also stressed a need for greater awareness, a common discourse for all employees and more collaboration from men.
  
  
• Inspiring talks with IMMUNE, like the one on the cloud held in November, with  Global CTO Cristina Álvarez and Nazandy Pérez, Cloud Enterprise Architech at Santander Global Tech, or on cybersecurity held in January with CISO Hazel Diez, and Carmen Torrano, Senior Researcher at Eleven Paths. We will be talking about Data with Soraya Jiménez López, head of Artificial Intelligence/ML and Data Delivery at Grupo Santander, and with Macarena Estévez Muñoz from the Deloitte’s data team on 16 February; and about Agile with Elisabet Pinilla, head of Agile Technological Transformation at Grupo Santander on 16 March. You can sign up via IMMUNE or the LinkedIn pages of Banco Santander and Santander Global Tech.

International Women's Day

To mark International Women's Day, WIT came together with Telefónica's #MujeresHacker on "La tecnología no entiende de género" (Technology knows no gender bounds), an online event with four guest speakers who have truly broken the mould: Ana Dávila, expert in Exadata and complex, high availability systems from Santander Global Tech; Cristina del Carmen Arroyo, expert in cyber security and regulatory compliance from Telefónica Cibersecurity & Cloud Tech (ElevenPaths); Amparo Marín, telecommunications engineer and Banco Santander employee; and Laura Castela, Director of 42 Madrid (Fundación Telefónica), spoke about their experiences and the importance of these initiatives to give exposure to women in STEM careers.

Actions for equal opportunity

WIT events always give insightful testimonies about teamwork making things better that are inspiring women to demand more visibility, equality and horizontal organization. Women tech workers, in particular, are stressing the need for a better work-life balance for men and women, more career development resources and more accommodating “flexiworking” measures. 

At Santander, our work to make this a reality continues. Women In Tech motivates us to live up to our reputation as the most important contributor to diversity worldwide and a responsible bank in core social values, building on gender equality in technology.