- Could you please tell us about the corporate history of Santa Farma İlaç and the role of women in this history?
Founded as a small laboratory in 1944, Santa Farma has become a large company with an annual capacity of 150 million boxes. The company lives on the founding values for 77 years. The common denominator of all management systems is based on those values which are reflected on the corporate structure. The systems are designed for all professionals without any distinction as to male and female employees. They are not based on gender discrimination.
- How does your company shape employment policies in terms of gender equality?
The position of women in social life has been debated for ages. This debate continues even today. Women joined workforce through agricultural industry and continued to work in factories after industrial revolution. The subsequent automation and digital transformations have reduced the importance of physical strength for business success, underlining the importance of knowledge and brain power instead. As a result of those developments, women have gradually begun to achieve an important position in business world.
Women in highly educated societies have acquired professional skills and penetrated into the business world easier and faster than women in other societies. For example, women’s participation in employment ranges from 55% to 70+ in the EU states and especially Scandinavian countries. This is around 31% in Turkey. According to TURKSTAT data, around 17% of executive positions are held by women in our country. This is around 30% in Europe. When it comes to Santa Farma, 55% of our head office employees are women while 40% of managers and above are comprised of women. We have achieved those results thanks to the effective recruitment and career planning systems which are not based on gender discrimination.
- How do you think digitalization, robotics and artificial intelligence in manufacturing and service processes will affect employment of women? What is your corporate strategy?
The entire world goes through Industry 4.0 now. Robotics and artificial intelligence are products of digitalization. Before the pandemic, global actors used to believe in the importance of niche production methods and indispensability of innovation for different products. The pandemic deeply changed those assumptions. People changed their lifestyles, customer preferences got simplified, product ranges were reduced and signals of mass production became prominent. Globalization was replaced with nationalization while global digitalization trends were maintained. Naturally, all those changes had an impact on the required job skills and employee profiles.
The demand for STEM (science, technical, engineering, mathematics) professionals increased and it is anticipated to further increase in the future. According to a study conducted in 41 OECD and EU countries, 24% of students of STEM are female while this rate is 37% in Turkey. On the other hand, 17.5% of the STEM professionals were comprised of women in those countries in comparison with 10% in Turkey. Another interesting point is that the wages of female STEM professionals turn out to be 14.7% less than those of male staff while this difference is 3% in Turkey. Hence, we may infer that women choose to study STEM at school but drop out of business life due to the traditional role ascribed to women in society. Yet, we need those professionals without any discrimination as to gender in our digitalized business world. Our primary goal must be to keep female STEM professionals to remain in business life in this age of 4th industrial revolution.
- What sort of gender equality principles and goals will the company adopt in response to the new normal arising from the pandemic?
I do not think the pandemic will give rise to any change in our principles.
Santa Farma has always believed that knowledge has no gender and organized its systems in line with this principle. This will continue in the future.
- Anything you would like to add…
As we all know, all individuals, regardless of gender, are expected to join workforce for a sustainable economic development. This makes it necessary to eliminate the traditional obstacles to participation of women in workforce. Governmental authorities, public and private industries, NGOs and families have an important role to play in that respect. That is because professionals will soon direct artificial intelligence and robots without gender. As I said right now, knowledge and expertise has no gender in this new age. And I would like to congratulate 8 March International Women’s Day.