WIA-E: The association promoting gender equality in aerospace

20 April 2021

To create a global network of women dedicated to the aerospace sector, highlighting their skills and talents to ensure gender equality and inclusion. These are the objectives promoted by Women in Aerospace in Europe (WIA-E) and embraced by Telespazio, which as from this year has become a gold member of the international association.

Telespazio Ibérica joins the admiration and gratitude towards this initiative, seeing it as an action of great weight to promote equal opportunities, one of the most valued pillars within our company. 
 
WIA-E (Women in Aerospace Europe) is a non-profit association -registered in the Netherlands- that promotes the visibility and leadership of women in the aerospace sector. It also aims to promote this sector in society and to show how exciting it is to the new generations so that they are encouraged to become part of it. WIA-E promotes a wide variety of initiatives to serve these objectives and several of them facilitate networking among members who are spread across a multitude of organizations and European countries.

Founded in 2009 at the behest of Simonetta di Pippo and Claudia Kessler, it is part of the international WIA network, present in the United States, where it was founded in 1985, as well as in Canada, Africa, Japan, Mexico and Costa Rica. 

The European association is present in 16 different cities where the continent's aerospace activity is concentrated. In cities such as Rome, Barcelona, Toulouse, Paris or Berlin, the various groups are committed to promoting events and projects in line with the objectives of the WIA-E community, in order to attract the best professionals in the aerospace sector, regardless of their gender. 

The Madrid local group has recently been created with the work of almost 50 participants. They are both women and men from several companies and institutions of the space sector with presence in our region. The diversity of experiences, ages and professional profiles (engineers, technicians, lawyers, financiers, marketing...) allows to put in common the different visions and points of view to face the challenges of the space sector and to propose initiatives that interest a large number of people.  

In addition to Telespazio, WIA-E is supported by more than 20 companies in the sector, as well as by the European Space Agency and several agencies of the member countries. WIA-E is also part of the important "Space for Women" project developed by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).

Telespazio's entry into WIA-E signifies an opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to offer its employees an increasingly inclusive and egalitarian workplace, promoting diversity and gender equality in line with Sustainable Development Goal 5 of the UN Agenda 2030. Telespazio, and the Leonardo Group as a whole, wholeheartedly adheres.