On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which is celebrated worldwide every year on November 25, the Communication and CSR Department of Globalvia Madrid has organized an internal session with the Adecco Foundation to welcome Paralympic athlete Carmen Giménez to our offices.

During this extraordinary session, Carmen shared her story, marked by resilience and courage after, in 2010, she suffered an episode of gender violence that caused a spinal cord injury. Despite the adversities she has gone through in her life, Carmen’s story is a story of overcoming, of looking to the future with optimism, and in which sport has played and plays a fundamental role, being one of her great supports and through which it seeks to promote a more inclusive and diverse society.

Through this session we want to give visibility to the serious problem that violence against women represents in our country and against which it is necessary for us all to act. At Globalvia, we collaborate with different entities, such as the Adecco Foundation, to support the most vulnerable groups in our society. Specifically, in January 2023,  we began to support the Adecco Foundation’s Women’s Employment Program, which seeks to facilitate access to employment for women in vulnerable situations. Among them are women like Carmen, who have been, or are, victims of gender violence and for whom getting a job is the starting point towards a new life by breaking the economic dependence that often ties them to their abusers.

And it is that employment turns into the instrument par excellence for the autonomy, independence, and normalization of the lives of women victims.

The data collected in the latest Gender Violence and Employment Report prepared by the Adecco Foundation, with the support of collaborating companies such as Globalvia, demonstrate this reality. According to this report, gender violence keeps 7 out of 10 female victims from employment; 65% of them declare that they do not feel they have enough self-esteem to look for work, 35% claim to have left their job due to pressure from the aggressor, and 97% of unemployed victims of gender violence report difficulty making ends meet.

The end of violence against women requires education, awareness, and joint action by all social actors. We thank the Adecco Foundation for the great work they do on this matter, and specially to Carmen Giménez for sharing with us her courage and example.