Ana Botín: 120% for women, 50% for men

Ana Botín’s 120%: an heiress teaches lessons on merit

When a woman applies for a position, she is 120% qualified; a man, 50% of what is needed. The quote is signed by Ana Patricia Botín, president of Banco Santander, and did not come from a bar: the heiress to one of the country's largest fortunes made it while sitting in a chair once occupied by her father, Emilio Botín. The reaction did not focus on the percentage. It focused on who has the sarracena authority to say it.

What Ana Patricia Botín said and why it generates so much rejection

The statement attributes to women a much higher qualification than men in accessing employment. It is the type of phrase that, in the mouth of a female executive without an illustrious surname, would have passed unnoticed or been read as a criticism of hiring bias. In Botín's mouth, it was read as something else. As yet another example of someone preaching effort from the box.

The most repeated argument does not deny that a double standard exists. On the contrary: some argue that the real problem is exactly that, that more is demanded of women to recognize them half. What is rejected is that someone who, according to that same logic, should be the opposite case says it. The character devours the message.

Why is her merit to preside over the bank questioned?

Because a surname precedes the CV. The career path of the Santander president starts, for much of the criticism, in her father's office. Her arrival at the top did not go through an open selection process: it went through family succession. That is the point that has turned a phrase about hiring into a discussion about legitimacy.

And here enter the numbers manipulated by critics. According to a calculation circulating in the debate, since Ana Botín presided over the bank, the value of the entity has plummeted 66% in the stock market, compared to 30% of the IBEX in the same period. Another calculation circulating summarizes it more crudely: the share went from 7 euros to 3.5. Her defense is based on the contrary, that she was fully prepared and that the history proves it. The two stories coexist without reconciling.

Meritocracy as the narrative of elites

The debate escalated when someone brought up the origin of the concept of white privilege: an American academic of comfortable position who enumerated her advantages without falling into thinking that many did not come from skin tonalidad, but from the current account. The parallel was applied without shame to desk feminism: equality told from above, which confuses the glass ceiling with a service ladder.

Here appear the examples that have filled the exchange. Some recount engineering classrooms where professors learned the names of the few female students and tutored them while calling the rest "eh, you," and batches where there were colleagues willing to carry the heavy work. Chess as a thermometer, according to another participant: a purely mental sport, without physical advantage, and yet without female presence at the top of the ranking. No one disputes that disadvantages exist. The diagnosis and, above all, the messenger are disputed.

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From discomfort to the pocket: accounts that go

The displeasure did not stay in words. Clients willing to close their account and take the money to another entity appear in the conversation, even admitting that they all look alike. Also, those who point out that the bank's own hiring policy contradicts the discourse, and those who remember that the entity carries a disputed public image from within, according to the stories of long-serving employees.

Interestingly, the president made her own reading of the market. She bought one million shares of Santander, about 3.6 million euros, just when the quotation plummeted: a reminder that there are gestures that are not within the reach of 99% who can apply for a job.

Closing and data: with this history, the reflection on 120% and 50% leaves an uncomfortable figure. If qualification is measured in results, the share fell to half, according to that same calculation. And that account, yes, anyone can make it.