- Female leaders: In November 2023, 180 female scientists and technology experts, who stand out for their potential to help achieve the SDGs, will travel to the South Pole
ACCIONA and Homeward Bound, an international organization dedicated to promoting the visibility of female talent, will resume in 2023 the expeditions of female scientists and technology experts to Antarctica, which were interrupted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This scientific expedition is the culmination of an annual training and knowledge exchange program, with the involvement of women from scientific and technological professions worldwide, chosen for their potential to lead the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), of which four are specific priorities: SDG Nº5 (gender equality), SDG Nº7 (access to affordable and clean energy for all), SDG Nº10 (reduction of inequality) and SDG Nº13 (climate action), among others.
The program includes interdisciplinary networking sessions and training workshops on leadership, strategy and communication. Furthermore, the participants will have mentors, such as the important personalities present in past editions, which have featured Christiana Figueres, the architect of the Paris Agreement and current member of ACCIONA and ACCIONA Energía’s boards of directors; the primatologist Jane Goodall; and Musimbi Kanyoro, president of the Global Fund for Women.
The expeditions for the fifth and sixth editions of this program (HB5 and HB6) will take place in November 2023 and will involve a total of 180 women from all over the world, who will visit several scientific bases on the Antarctic Peninsula over 20 days to gather information in situ on the impact of climate change on the White Continent.
The first expedition will start on 3 November in Puerto Madryn (Argentina) with 80 women, and the second on 2 November in Ushuaia (Argentina) with a hundred women on board.
Homeward Bound’s goal is to create an international network of 10,000 female professionals from STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) disciplines in fourteen years, for collaboration on projects in diverse scientific and geographic fields, thus making women more visible in science, for them to be the influential and decisive leaders in solving challenges such as the climate emergency.
Homeward Bound is a global leadership initiative, with Antarctica as its backdrop, which aims to increase the influence and impact of women in the decision-making that shapes our planet. Its four strategic principles are: women’s empowerment, “we are stronger together”, actions with purposeful impact and leadership for the common good.
ACCIONA has been collaborating with Homeward Bound since 2018, sharing the goal of supporting female talent in key STEMM disciplines to address the planet's major challenges, such as climate change mitigation.
ACCIONA promotes the full inclusion of women in the traditionally male-dominated sectors in which it operates, such as Construction and Energy, for which it develops specific programs, such as "Sostenibl@s 50:50". Some of the milestones of this program include Line 6 of the Sao Paulo subway in Brazil, where the voussoir factory for the project is operated by a team with over 50% of women, and the Marga Marga Hospital in Chile, whose nursery has been built entirely by women. In the field of energy, the ‘Women in the Isthmus’ project in Oaxaca (Mexico) stands out, as it promotes the recruitment and personal development of female wind energy engineers.
The company is part of the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, which includes the companies that have demonstrated the greatest transparency and the best performance in the world in terms of gender equality in the previous fiscal year.
Learn more about some of the "Sustainable 50:50" programs: Energy of the Istmo y Excellence has no gender, and the construction industry is no exception