Women’s leadership, key element in UCAM’s management positions
UCAM Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia, that participates in the campaign “I am the Generation of Equality: For women’s rights”, is one of the few Spanish universities that has a female chancellor. It also has women in other academic positions, such as vice-chancellorships and deaneries and in the management of various administration and services departments
The chancellor Josefina García, the vice-chancellors Estrella Núñez (Research) and Belén López (Online Teaching) are the spearhead of the great prominence of women in UCAM's management positions. Furthermore, various degrees are managed by women: Business Administration and Management, Labour Relations, Tourism, Audiovisual Communication, Journalism, Psychology, Pre-school and Primary Education, Pharmacy, Nursing, Dance and IT Engineering. In the field of chairs, the International Women’s, Company and Sports Chair stands out; it carries our numerous activities and training courses throughout the year by focusing its objectives on promoting employment and entrepreneurship among women.
Crue Universidades Españolas (Conference of Chancellors of Spanish Universities) sent a notification offering the current picture of the Spanish university field, thus showing the need to keep moving forward so that women can have a more decisive role in management positions: “During the last decades, we have succeeded in making our classes composed of women and man in a balanced way. The teaching staff as well has made a lot of progress in this sense, and female teachers are already above the 40% barrier. However, this was not achieved at the highest levels of the academic and scientific career, where that glass ceiling that only allows 24% of them to reach the highest academic positions still exists. And in the case of deans, vice-chancellors and chancellors, that percentage is even lower”.
One of the driving forces of UCAM, sport, is a key element when it comes to highlight the need to reach equality. Athletes like Mireia Belmonte, Lydia Valentín, Maialen Chourraut, María Pérez, Ana Carrasco or Laura Gil, all of which are linked to UCAM, serve as inspiration for thousands of little and young girls who dream of becoming great sport stars but, through their sporting success, they also make the rest of society more aware of the need to keep working to take down the still existing walls and achieve full equality between man and women.