- STEMM: A total of 188 women from all over the world working in science, technology, engineering, medicine and mathematics will take part in two expeditions
- LEADERSHIP: The participants have already completed a virtual twelve-month program with the aim of improving their potential to lead the achievement of the SDGs
- COLLABORATION: The voyages’ goals are to bear witness to global warming’s effects, to collect data and to share knowledge
ACCIONA and Homeward Bound, the international leadership program for women in STEMM professions (science, technology, engineering, medicine and mathematics), will start two new women's expeditions to Antarctica in November, an unprecedented milestone since the launch of the global program in 2016, which aims to support and train female experts so that they can contribute knowledge to tackle the planet's major challenges, such as the fight against climate change, plastic pollution, deforestation and biodiversity loss.
On this occasion, the challenge will allow a total of 188 women from 25 countries to embark on the largest expedition to Antarctica ever undertaken by Homeward Bound and gain three weeks of collaborative leadership team-building experience during the two scheduled voyages.
The expeditions aboard the Usuahia Voyage and the Island Sky Voyage ships, which had been postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis, crown an annual training and knowledge-sharing program focused on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). After completing this program, participants are empowered to rewrite the global leadership narrative, bear witness to the critical state of the planet and collaborate to address the world's most pressing challenge: climate change.
The first expedition will start on November 3rd in Ushuaia (Argentina) and will include 80 women, while the second one will depart on November 12th from Puerto Madryn (Argentina) with 100 women on board.
These two editions include the participation of seven Spanish women: Hilde Pérez García (León, mechanical engineer), Judit Jiménez Sainz (La Rioja, biochemist and geneticist), Marga López Rivas (Almería, researcher), Zaida Ortega Diago (Palencia, ecologist), Anna Ferré-Mateu (Barcelona, astrophysicist), Gurutzeta Guillera Arroita (Huesca, research scientist), and Sonia Castañeda Rial (Madrid, environmental lawyer).
With the support of 20 professors from around the world, participants will be guided through a leadership journey and will participate in workshops, conferences, collaborative initiatives and networking sessions that will empower them to influence decisions and collaborate to trigger change.
The goal of Homeward Bound is to create an international network of 10,000 professional women from STEMM disciplines to collaborate on projects in diverse scientific and geographic fields, thus giving visibility to women in science for them to be influential and decisive leaders in solving challenges such as the climate emergency.
ACCIONA promotes the full inclusion of women in the sectors in which it operates. The company is part of the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, which includes the companies in the world that have demonstrated greater transparency and better performance in terms of gender equality. It is also part of the UN Global Compact's Women's Empowerment Principles initiative to promote gender equality in the workplace. The company also has gender-focused recruitment programs that prioritize the detection of female talent.