Adding our voice in support of women in STEM

Seeing women strongly contribute to the success of our company is one of the things I am proud of in leading Holcim Philippines. Despite our company belonging in industries dominated by men, our female colleagues regularly show that they can shine as well. More than a quarter of our Executive Committee and Leadership Team are women. Two of the six winners of our top employee awards in the last six years are also women. And of the 74 women across the Holcim Group that joined the February campaign on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, five came from Holcim Philippines, proudly sharing our company’s support in their professional journeys.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise since the Philippines has long distinguished itself for providing an even playing field for women. In the World Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Gender Gap Report , the Philippines was ranked 17th out of 156 countries and second best in Asia Pacific after New Zealand. While this is certainly worth celebrating, there remains areas for improvement particularly in encouraging girls and women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics or (STEM).

This is important as STEM-related fields can unlock important innovations that greatly contribute to advancing development and improving quality of life . We can see this clearly in many countries that benefit from their heavy investments in STEM in terms of better quality infrastructures to more advanced medical sciences.

However, latest data from the government shows that much needs to be done. Just two in seven engineering students are female. Filipinas account for a little over 40% of students in information technology courses and enrollees in STEM disciplines.

Improving the participation of women in these fields is important as it widens and diversifies the pool of talent available which is a key for sparking innovation. By having people from different backgrounds, there is a higher chance of people proposing new ideas that improve how things are done or trying fresh approaches to overcome challenges

Advocates for more women in STEM have highlighted the importance of providing young women with role models who demonstrate that it is possible to succeed in these fields. At Holcim Philippines, we are doing our part by regularly showcasing in internal and external platforms our successful female STEM professionals during the annual celebrations for women. We also engage our female employees in conversations to learn how to make our company more welcoming to them beyond compliance to the government’s gender equality policies.

By shining a spotlight on our female colleagues, cheering their achievements, and giving them a voice, we are hopeful that more women will see that they are very much welcome in our company. We also hope that our advocacy for women will also encourage our peers in the construction and industrial industries to be more open to increasing the number of women in their ranks.

We are committed to diversity and inclusion not only because this is the right thing to do. These are also a great catalyst of innovation, which allow us to become more competitive and meet our commitments to make our operations more respectful of the environment and have a bigger difference in the country. We have experienced this first hand. In 2020, one of the winners of our employee of the year award is a female chemist, who played a key role in pushing initiatives that improved product quality and operational efficiency.

Currently, 20% of our workforce are women. We are working towards steadily increasing this figure to make our company more gender diverse. Aside from showcasing our high-performing female colleagues, we have also made it a policy to include a female candidate for open positions in our company.

In time, we believe that more women will be part of our company and are excited to have them with us in driving innovation to drive our success and help build progress in the Philippines.