- The Port Authority of València (PAV) has organised an open talk on the presence of women in the logistics sector with prominent leaders of the sector: Álvaro Rodriguez Dapena, president of Puertos del Estado; Belén Carratalá, CEO Nava Forwarding; Lorena Ballester, CEO of the Chema Ballester Group and vice-president of FVET-Puerto; and Juan Carlos Arocas, CEO of Transitalia
- The speakers gave their views on the challenges of transport from a female perspective and tackled different tools to overcome the invisible barriers that limit the professional advancement of women in the sector, emphasising education, conciliation and the need to make female references visible
- The debate moderated by Nuria Lacaci, general secretary of ACE and Melyt, and Mar Chao, president of the PAV and Melyt, focused on the formulas that are being successfully implemented -both in the public and private spheres- to attract and retain women in the logistics sector
València, 6 March 2025.- Attracting and retaining women in the transport, logistics and maritime sectors is the challenge addressed by the round table discussion organised by the Port Authority of València on the occasion of the commemoration of International Women’s Day: ‘The Incorporation of Women in Transport, a Shared Challenge’.
With the aim of contributing to the implementation of formulas that promote the presence of women in these sectors, Valenciaport has brought together professionals and leaders of the port community who have addressed the updated map of the presence of women in the professions related to logistics and transport: Álvaro Rodriguez Dapena, president of Puertos del Estado; Belén Carratalá, CEO Nava Forwarding; Lorena Ballester, CEO of the Chema Ballester Group and vice-president of FVET-Puerto; and Juan Carlos Arocas, CEO of Transitalia.
The talk was moderated by Mar Chao, president of the Port Authority of València and Melyt, and Nuria Lacaci, general secretary of ACE and Melyt. Over the course of an hour, speakers and moderators discussed the challenges facing women in a sector traditionally dominated by men and debated the changes necessary for women to join a productive sector that is essential to the Spanish economy in a natural way. They also discussed the role of women in positions of responsibility and how their visibility is helping to break ‘glass ceilings’.
In her speech, Dapena stressed ‘the need to develop and implement specific actions to make the sector attractive to women. We need to redouble our efforts and carry out campaigns to disseminate what is being done in the sector in all its dimensions. In addition, we need to make an impact on the educational aspect. In the strategy of Puertos de Estado, this objective is already a goal, it has been included in the Equality Plan and we have proposed a very strict implementation’.
Along the same lines, Carratalá pointed out the need to ‘eliminate stereotypes. It all starts in education: the feeling of guilt for absence, the toy lorry that is not only for the child… Women themselves put up barriers so that they do not grow and think that management positions will not allow them to reconcile and, in the more technical positions, the sector is characterised by being fast-paced and active, with shifts that change and do not allow for prior organisation. We need to work on work-life balance’.
For her part, Lorena Ballester extended the spectrum of work to young people as well: ‘The road transport sector is not attractive either for women or for young people. A lot of work needs to be done to attract them. There is a shortage of between 15,000 and 20,000 drivers, it is a sector that generates employment, but we have to think about what we can do to attract and make people want to work in this sector’. She added that ‘we women who work in this sector must become benchmarks while at the same time encouraging and promoting changes in a sector traditionally led by men in which female representation barely reaches 22%’.
In her turn to speak, Arocas emphasised ‘the lack of knowledge of the sector, society in general thinks that it is something very closed, but this is not the case, you can access it, there are no obstacles. Things have changed and there is a lack of visibility for the profession, and this is much more evident in the case of women’. She also stated that the presence of women is more common in certain departments, such as administration, and that ‘encouraging internal and interdepartmental promotion can be a useful tool that generates possibilities for change’.
The round table concluded that it is necessary to ‘continue working on promotion, education, visibility and conciliation as key aspects to incorporate women in the professions that give life to this sector’, said Lacaci. The application of quotas in selection processes is not the solution, but requesting ‘certain qualities and attributes’ for vacant positions can guarantee that they will be filled by women.
Chao closed the debate by calling for ‘no more sticks in the wheel. Positive discrimination is not the solution, so we must work on making the sector attractive to women, because their presence is necessary. We have to attract female talent, because there is female talent. If we open the doors, women will enter’. But, in addition, she added, ‘we have to take action in certain careers that are linked to this sector to promote the presence of women and to give visibility to those who are the reference points, and here in València we have many of them: in Customs, in the Port Authority, in the PAV on the technical side and in the commercial team, which are clearly female’.
Exhibition on the occasion of International Women’s Day
In parallel to yesterday’s event, Valenciaport pays tribute to the female references of the port sector on the occasion of International Women’s Day (celebrated tomorrow, 8 March) and has opened to the public a new exhibition in the Clock Building that makes visible the women who have managed to reach the top of the institutions and companies for which they work ‘breaking glass ceilings’.
The exhibition will remain open to the public free of charge until 9 March from 11:00 to 19:00 in the exhibition area located in the lower part of the iconic building.
The exhibition consists of a series of panels that talk about the invisible barriers that hinder women’s access to positions of responsibility. This exhibition, as well as addressing the challenges facing women in the sector, puts figures on the representation of women in the Spanish port system by giving a voice to those women who have managed to reach positions of responsibility in the sector.
Through their reflections, Elena (Maritime Captain), Rosana (president of WISTA), Pilar (corporate director of Puertos del Estado), Cristina (head of containers of the PAV), Lorena (general manager of the Chema Ballester Group), Cristina (president of the Business Association of Camp de Morvedre – Asecam), Carolina (Valencia Branch Manager of MSC Spain), Manuela (deputy director of Infrastructures, Installations and Conservation of the PAV), Marta (regional head of Customs and IIEE of Valencia), Carmen (head of the Technical Office of the PAV), Rosana (head of Operations of Navarro y Boronat), Icíar (head of Contracting of the PAV), María José (administrator of Aduana Marítima Valencia) and Nuria (general secretary of Melyt) propose different formulas to successfully incorporate women into this sector.