Spain’s female executives earn 16% less than their male counterparts
Eurostat analysis on eve of International Women’s Day shows that Spain ranks better than EU average
In Latvia, there are more women than men at the helm of companies. And in Romania women executives earn practically the same amount as men. But these two countries are the exception: only one European manager out of three is female, and these women earn almost 25% less on average than men, according to data released on Tuesday by Eurostat, the European Union statistics agency, on the eve of International Women’s Day.
Spain ranks relatively well in the survey, which is based on the reference year 2014. The percentage of women in managerial positions is 37%, two points above the EU average, for a total of slightly more than 76,000 female managers in a pool of around 208,000 executive positions in Spain. And Spanish male managers earn 16.2% more than their female counterparts, against an EU average salary gap of 23.4%.
In Romania, that earnings divide is just 5% while at the other end of the scale, male managers earn 33% more in Hungary and Italy.
Ana Patricia Botín presides over Spain’s largest bank, Santander
While there are more women than ever in the job market, both in Spain and in Europe as a whole, “there are still barriers to gender equality,” notes the White Book on the future of the EU.
In Spain, there are a few women in very prominent positions. Ana Patricia Botín presides over Spain’s largest bank, Santander, where she earned €9.9 million last year including salary and pension payments.
But this is far from the norm: a study released in November 2015 by the Spanish Finance Ministry showed that the overwhelming majority of Spain’s highest earners are male. Although men only represent 54% of all salary earners, they take up 82% of positions where salaries are more than 10 times the minimum wage.
English version by Susana Urra.
