Women, welcome to the front seat!

March is traditionally a month dedicated to celebrating women. But even though International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day are behind us, gender equality and empowering women to reach their full potential should remain at the center of our conversations. At Lek, we foster an inclusive culture, ensuring everyone feels respected, valued and heard. Our focus is to build a diverse workforce and create equity across the board. In this newsletter, we want to shed some light on biases many women experience in the workplace, so we asked our male colleagues to answer the questions usually reserved for women. It sparked an interesting debate on gender equality, the current role of women in the pharmaceutical industry, and men’s contribution to promoting gender equality.

Although a humorous take on the issue, it prompted a broader reflection among our three interviewees, Haris Malko? , Tadej Magajna and Simon Re?nik , on gender equality in the industry and at Lek. They agreed that a celebration of women and their achievements is vital, as it encourages and empowers future generations of women to pursue their dreams and reach their full potential.

“Gender equality and inclusion in organizations and society, is a key factor for successfully dealing with the challenges we face now and in the future,” said Simon Re?nik, Site Head Solids and Member of the Lek d.d. Board of Management.

Women in the industry

Our interviewees agreed that the position women have in the pharmaceutical industry is a reflection of their position in our society. Slovenia is one of the countries where the gender gap in employment is smaller than the EU average. Moreover, we are above average in terms of the share of women completing tertiary education (source: EIGE), and are also considered to have one of the more generous paternity leave systems in the EU, which is an important step in promoting equality in the workplace. But unfortunately, women still face all kinds of limitations and obstacles. In many cases, they carry tremendous responsibilities and shoulder considerable burdens in terms of caring for family members and children. They are not often properly rewarded for their contributions, and are the victims of bias at every step of their careers.

That is why at Lek we pay particular attention to the inclusion of women in our workforce. We are proud that in many of our production and development units, more than half of our employees are women. Similar trends are also seen across management teams. “Wherever this is the case, we see excellent performance results,” Simon observes.

Haris Malko?, QC Specialist III, has had a similar experience working in an all-women team: “The overall representation of women in the pharmaceutical industry is relatively good, but challenges still remain in technical sciences. That is why I believe we must make the most of the current momentum and work toward full gender equality.”

One area where gender inequality plays a role is artificial intelligence. Our third interviewee, Tadej Magajna, Global Associate Director, Data, Analytics, DS&AI Solutions, offers an example: “Language models, which are typically trained with publicly available data, are often a representation of gender inequality in our society. As experts, we try to mitigate such biases with engineering approaches, but for us they are constant reminders that such problems persist in our society.”

How can men contribute to gender equality??????

Our colleagues all have their own ways of contributing to raising awareness of gender equality at Lek. As an AI expert, Tadej recognizes that language and its use play an important role in gender equality: “Our role is to set an example through spoken and written words. This can be achieved by using gender neutral word forms, using both masculine and feminine forms of address, and using matching adjectives instead of non-matching noun adjectives.” Haris and Simon agree that supporting open dialog and being aware of our own unconscious biases is also a step toward gender equality, as does striving to increase the number of women in the highest ranks of the company and in the most senior positions. “This is something that brings exceptional added value,” explains Simon.

Women, welcome to Lek!???

At Lek we believe in supporting and promoting equal opportunities for women in the pharmaceutical industry. But what else can we do to encourage more women to choose a career at Lek or in our industry? All our interviewees suggest the championing of the industry's most successful women, as well as celebrating the achievements of women colleagues, running programs that empower young women, and facilitating a good work-life balance.

“We must provide an inclusive work environment that allows younger colleagues to seamlessly balance private life and work, especially young mothers. I'm proud of our modern, hybrid way of managing working hours and attendance, as it frequently makes life simpler. We must also continue to raise public awareness of what an inclusive work environment should be, where women make their best possible contribution to the organization and society,” concludes Simon, adding: “We understand that achieving gender equality is a marathon, not a sprint.”