Margarita Delgado: A trail-blazer at the pinnacle of the Spanish financial system

Speech by Ms Margarita Delgado, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Spain, at the "Diversity and Enterprise" conference, organized by the Federación Asturiana de Empresarios, 28 October 2020.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Good morning,

I feel very honoured to have been invited here today by the Business Equality Committee of the Federación Asturiana de Empresarios (FADE), one of Spain's first employers' associations to approve a plan establishing equality as a strategic priority in its corporate and human resources policies.

Initiatives that bolster and give visibility to female leadership, such as those implemented by FADE with the support of the Committee, are key to ensuring diversity. Gender balance must be a priority at all organisations, both public and private. Rest assured that we at the Banco de España embrace this commitment, and I think it is fair to say that we have made significant headway in recent years.

In fact, early this year the Gender Balance Index 2020, produced by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), ranked the Banco de España first for gender equality among the world's central banks (scoring 91.67 out of 100).

In 2019 we achieved near-parity between men and women in our workforce, and in the last three years we have increased the participation of women in management positions.