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Gender Mainstreaming in Spain: The Case of the 'Lidera Project' in the Autonomous Region of Madrid

Women continue to be under-represented in senior positions. The disparity is widest at the very top, where only 3% of companies have a woman directing their highest decision-making bodies (Iversen and Frances, 2010). In this paper, we present a "best practice" implemented by public agents as key actors for gender mainstreaming. Gender mainstreaming as a strategy is meant to actively counteract this gender bias and to use policymakers' standing mandate to promote more equitable relations between women and men (Verloo, 2000: 13). The rationale for pursuing gender mainstreaming via the Structural Funds is as much about promoting economic efficiency as it is about promoting equity. In this paper, we analyze a specific case launched three years ago by the government of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, the "Lidera Project". The main objectives pursued by this initiative are to enhance women's professional opportunities and facilitate their access to leadership positions in companies. We focus our study on the impact of the Lidera Scholarships initiative, which consists of granting scholarships for management study programs at the top business schools in Madrid. Now that several years have passed since implementation of the Lidera project, it is time to analyze its impact and effectiveness, that is, to assess the overall effectiveness of the gender mainstreaming effort through the Lidera project. We analyze the impact at the macro level of analysis and at the individual level through five constructs: Professional Improvement; Working Conditions; Labor Market Perception; Management Training; and Work and Family Balance. We can conclude that at the individual level the LIDERA EFFECT exists and that it has a positive and differential impact on three of the five constructs. At a macro level, there is some impact on female unemployment and the level of competitiveness of the Autonomous Community of Madrid. We can therefore assume that government efforts to assign structural funds to improve management education for women have exponential results. This case shows the evidence for the particular case of Madrid, but the positive results of this initiative carried out by political actors could be a best practice applicable also to Latin American countries.