NEWS DIGEST
STUDY HIGHLIGHTS GENDER PAY GAP’S LACK OF PROGRESS
SCHOOL : EADA Business School, Spain
Female senior managers in Spain must work 47 additional days per year, on average, to match their male counterparts’ annual salary, according to a new report from EADA Business School and HR firm ICSA Grupo. The 20th edition of the Gender Pay Gap and Women’s Representation in Management Positions highlights the lack of progress in narrowing Spain’s gender pay gap across two decades. Drawing on more than 80,000 salary data points, the difference in pay commanded by men and women in senior management positions was found to be 13 per cent, which equates to the 47‑day figure in practical terms. This is wider than the 8.6 per cent gap found in the report’s inaugural edition in 2006. Female representation in senior management has increased moderately in the same 20-year timeframe, from 16.9 per cent to 18.6 per cent. “Some 20 years of measurement show that the system has progressed in terms of inclusion but has not fully transformed the criteria by which leadership is assessed and rewarded,” explained EADA professor Aline Masuda. “When female representation increases and the pay gap remains, we are facing a structural phenomenon. The challenge is no longer solely about access, but about how career paths are designed and how leadership is recognised within organisations.” Moreover, the new study underlines that the principal issue is not a lack of female talent. Female participation in EADA Business School’s executive education programmes hit 52 per cent in the 2025–2026 academic year. Meanwhile, it reached 59 per cent on the school’s global EMBA and 50 per cent on its international MBA. EB
WHERE SHAKESPEARE MEETS THE BUSINESS WORLD
SCHOOL : IEEM Escuela de Negocios Universidad de Montevideo, Uruguay
Four popular Shakespearean characters offer a handy manual to executive personas that continually crop up in case method class discussions, according to IEEM dean Joaquín Ramos. In a reflective piece written in memory of IESE professor Juan Carlos Vázquez-Dodero that appeared on the school’s website, Ramos emphasises how the cases of Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear support the teaching method’s means of helping students develop their decision-making. Hamlet, for example, puts off acting on the information that his uncle murdered his father and usurped the throne. In the boardroom, Ramos writes, this is the leader who constantly seeks more information where certainty is rare. Conversely, Othello kills his wife solely on the basis of circumstantial evidence and another man’s insinuations. “If everything is intuition, without robust analysis and data to back it up, it’s like a game of chance,” Ramos reasons. Meanwhile, Macbeth’s unerring belief in the witches’ prophecies is compared to Daniel Kahneman’s concept of “cognitive biases”. This leader reaches a conclusion and then constructs their analysis backwards to support it. Lastly, King Lear’s decision to disinherit the daughter who wouldn’t participate in a contest to publicly display her love for him is linked to leaders who consistently opt for proposals that align with their own interests and “surround themselves with flatterers who rarely question them”. When these common patterns of behaviour surface among case protagonists, Ramos notes, they help cultivate what Aristotle called phronesis , or practical prudence in the low-risk but real-tension environment of the business school classroom. TBD
Ambition • ISSUE 5 • 2026 9
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