Gender bias in the financial sector: "The glass ceiling is not an explicit thing"

We have met Sandra Castañeda at the Residencia de Señoritas. The choice of this scenario to interview a woman who works in a traditionally masculinized world such as the financial sector is not by chance. From its foundation in 1915 until its closure in 1939, this place was the female equivalent of the Residencia de Estudiantes. Just as there was the breeding ground that made geniuses of the stature of Buñuel, Dalí or García Lorca grow, the building on Fortuny street welcomed the most advanced and intellectually valuable young women of the time. Under the direction of María de Maeztu, the cast of teachers and collaborators is impressive: María Zambrano, María Goyri, Zenobia Camprubí, Maruja Mallo, Clara Campoamor, María Lejárraga, Gabriela Mistral...

Sandra Castañeda, pleasant and close, awaits us in the garden of the building, where the Ortega y Gasset Foundation is located today. He wears a pantsuit and sports shoes that he changes into shoes for the interview. Sandra is Director of Corporate Development at Triodos Bank, an ethical bank. Banking in Europe, like other large companies, still has very few women on its management bodies.

-Why did you feel a vocation for this profession?

-It really wasn't for this profession. What I was looking for was what I have been looking for all my professional life: what were the keys to change the world that I didn't like. I started in cooperation for development, I studied Law, I am a lawyer by studies, but I have not really practiced. In cooperation, I realized that what we were doing in impoverished countries was something hypocritical. We were fighting for that 0.7% when 99.3% of the budget was going to policies of exploitation, abuse, destruction.

It seemed to me a world that was not one of the keys that I was looking for. There I found almost by chance the seed of Triodos Bank in Spain and it was a discovery. It was a way of using money to change the world, to improve the lives of people in this western world that we live in. That's where I started and I got hooked and then I got unhooked and then I got hooked again, with which something powerful will have to do with the conscious use of money to improve the world.

-Why did you unhook?

-Because there came a point where I was burned out, I was working more than I could. The truth is that I have also been very lucky because in my working life I have been given opportunities that go beyond what I thought I could do. At that time, I was also very young. My first stage in the bank was between 2001 and 2005, when the bank was started in Spain and I was in charge of legal issues and I was also in charge of communication and marketing issues. We were in a "startup". We all did everything, what we knew how to do and what we didn't know how to do as well. It was an impressive moment at a professional level of learning a lot of things, but without knowing how to manage the pressures well, the limits that I had at that moment. I saw that I couldn't take it anymore. The bank also needed new people, people who were more specialized, more professional than I was at the time to continue in the next phase.

-What is solidarity banking?

-Ethical banking, with values, the one we practice tries to promote the investment policy, the policy we use is not aimed at any sector, but rather it is aimed at specific sectors: social, environmental and cultural sectors. For example, we finance energy, but only renewable energy, we finance agriculture, but only organic farming. That is the heart of ethical banking. Then obviously these principles are distributed and exercised throughout the bank's activity. At the template level we work without bonuses, something quite strange in the sector. We don't believe in them. Also in the way we work with our clients, with maximum transparency. Our clients know where the money is invested.

-The financial world, beyond ethical banking, why is it a universe where there are so few women?

-I think it is a traditionally masculinized world, which is changing little by little, it is changing at the rate at which other sectors in society are changing. Just these days I was listening to an interview, a conversation between Christine Lagarde, who is president of the European Central Bank, and Ursula Von der Leyen, who is the President of the European Commission, and they were talking about what had pushed them to make professional decisions that had taken. T talked about the importance that the love of their children, their partners, their relatives had for them and I wondered: At what other time has it been seen that two men with that power talk to each other about love in their lives ? And these two women were doing it, which I think indicates a change in that women are occupying positions of power and they are also changing the sector, they are changing the rules of how business is done and how it is done. politics.

-Have you noticed that there is a glass ceiling?

-I, personally, have not noticed it in an explicit and strict sense. I consider that I have been very lucky in how I have been raised, in the family in which I was born. My parents are civil servants by vocation, with public service, and that is what they have instilled in me, they have educated me in a lot of training possibilities, just like my brother. And then I have also had people around me, colleagues, in my professional work who have given me many opportunities, provoking me to go further than I thought I could. I think specifically not, but, for example, I have decided not to have children, so I ask myself: What is this decision due to? Is it strictly my decision? As my decision...is it influenced by the context, by society, by culture? Well, possibly yes. It is not something that I regret, but I am aware that the glass ceiling is not an explicit thing, that someone tells you not at a given moment, but that it also comes from stereotypes, from the unconscious biases that still they live in society and in the financial sector as well.

-Have you experienced situations of machismo in your work?

-(Sighs) Not that I remember clearly. I also believe that having dedicated myself to sectors linked to sustainability and values, in social organizations, I believe that this can also influence how men and women treat each other. We must also take into account the relational culture that exists in these organizations, the schedules that we apply. Issues that go beyond glass ceilings and favor equitable treatment between men and women. If we think of companies with a social purpose, there are 4,000 worldwide, and they have a ratio of 63% of women in management, and this exceeds other ratios in conventional companies.

-Are there gender biases when granting credit to people?

I believe that biases at the stereotype level, at the conscious or unconscious level, work. We, for example, have a policy of equal treatment for women and men who come to ask us for loans. However, we know that there are more male entrepreneurs than female entrepreneurs. We get more requests from initiatives led by men than from initiatives led by women. I want to think that our credit analysts do not operate by stereotypes, but they can operate stereotypes, they can operate biases and I think that is one of the aspects in which we have to continue working.

-In Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus said that he gave his microloans to women who he knew would do anything to repay the money.

-It is true. There are studies that show that women, even when they are in worse conditions than men, return the credits.