The Plan promotes actions to introduce the gender perspective in all areas of the Health Service, as established by the Equality Act.

The Health Service presented the Plan for Equality between Women and Men (2022-2026) at a conference organised by the Balearic School of Public Administration (EBAP) and held in the auditorium of the Parc Bit in Palma. The Plan aims to introduce the gender perspective in all areas of the Health Service and transform this vision into policies of gender equality, training, information and awareness-raising. Along the same lines, it aims to apply protocols and procedures against gender violence and sexual harassment.

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The Health Service’s Plan for Equality between Women and Men

The Regional Minister of Health and Consumer Affairs, Patricia Gómez, attended the Pla’s presentation. She was accompanied by the Director General of the Health Service, Manuel Palomino; the head of the Projects and Modernisation Service, María de Carmen Lliteras, and the Director of the Balearic Institute of Women (IBdona), Maria Duran.

The health sector is a good example of the feminisation of the profession. In fact, the jobs performed mainly by women tend to be related to caring for people. In this respect, the Health Service is no exception: 73.5% of the workforce is made up of women and 26.5% of men. Despite this, there is still a long way to go to achieve full equality between men and women.

The Equality Plan began to take shape at the end of 2021 and has now crystallised with its presentation. A negotiating committee made up of representatives of the Administration and trade union organisations was set up to establish an appropriate space for dialogue in order to design and draw up the Plan. The objectives set are the following:

To promote and implement the gender perspective in the management of human resources in the Health Service.
To favour equal access to training, and also to inform, raise awareness and inform on gender equality.
Promote, encourage and raise awareness of co-responsibility and reconciliation of personal and/or family life and working life.
Determine and implement the necessary measures with a gender perspective to guarantee the occupational health of all workers.
Define and implement appropriate procedures to deal with special protection situations, such as violence against women or sexual and gender-based harassment.
Consolidate the gender perspective in a transversal manner throughout the Health Service.
In order to implement these objectives, six axes have been established around which different action measures have been designed:

Working conditions and personal growth: measures are established such as, for example, achieving a balanced representation in jobs, determining whether there is a gender pay gap or favouring systems for professional promotion and development.
Awareness-raising and training: measures are established, such as guaranteeing access to training actions under equal conditions, improving and extending the range of training on equality between women and men or improving and extending the range of training on violence against women.
Reconciliation and co-responsibility: measures are established such as promoting the reconciliation of personal and/or family life and working life for all Health Service staff, facilitating organisational flexibility in work, ensuring that it does not affect reconciliation rights or have a negative impact on the development and promotion of professional careers, or publicising the importance of co-responsibility to encourage more men to take advantage of reconciliation measures.
Occupational health: measures are established such as promoting the gender perspective in occupational health and in the evaluation of occupational risks and complying with the Integral Plan for the Prevention of Aggression in the Public Health Sphere of the Balearic Islands.
Situations of special protection: actions are established such as adopting the necessary measures to ensure a working environment free of sexual harassment or harassment based on sex, raising awareness, detection, prevention and protection of female workers who are victims of gender-based violence, and improving and promoting the Autonomous Coordination of Health and Gender.

Culture of equality and organisational measures: actions are established such as promoting the use of non-sexist communication, promoting the resources for equality between women and men offered by the Health Service, improving the systematisation of the information available so that it can be shared between the different work centres and taking into consideration the particularities of each work centre in terms of equality between women and men in order to cover specific needs.
The Plan aims to fulfil the mandate of Law 11/2016, of 28 July, on equality between men and women, which has become a transversal axis of the policies of the Government of the Balearic Islands.