Victoria has been starting early for years. She knows that at a quarter to nine in the morning, she has to have everything ready for the hundreds of customers that will come through the door of Xarcuteria Sicart, one of the emblematic shops in the Gran de Gràcia shopping district. She has spent the last 25 years behind the counter, but she is still as keen as the first day. “The best moment of the day is when we fill the display cases with freshly-made produce and we get ready to serve our customers”, she explains. On Carrer Gran de Sant Andreu, Carme is also an early riser. At nine on the dot, she lifts the shutter at Farmàcia Castellanos, founded in 1937. “We have always aimed to help the people in this neighbourhood”, says the woman running the business. Now, with Covid-19, everyone is going through hard, difficult times and we want them to feel that we are by their side”, she says forcefully. Meanwhile, at Luxciti, the hairdresser’s, Isabel is giving some advice to a young couple that she has known for some time; in Festuk, the clothes shop, Gemma is decorating the shop window with the new season’s models and, at the Santa Madrona mechanic’s workshop, Margarita is sitting in front of the computer, going over last month’s invoices.

There are thousands of women like them, bringing the city to life from behind their counters. During a series of sessions on feminine leadership, organised by the City Council, Montserrat Ballarín, the Councillor for Commerce, Markets, Consumer Affairs, Internal Regime and Taxation, recently explained: “In Barcelona, 58% of the 145,000 people working in the commerce sector are women”. They are also the life and soul of many municipal markets, they outnumber men in the training sessions organised by Barcelona Activa which focus on reinforcing local commerce, and they often win the prizes that recognise innovative and sustainable commerce ideas in the city. They also occupy posts of responsibility; 62% of the employees in the Directorate of Commerce, Catering and Consumer Affairs are women. “When you speak of commerce, you are speaking about women, and promoting commerce is fostering employment for women”, affirmed Ballarín during her speech.

However, although they outnumber men behind the counters, the statistics are reversed when we take a close look on who owns the businesses. In 2019, only 45.9% of shops were owned by women. Similarly, only 2 out of every 10 presidents of Barcelona’s shopping districts and retailer associations are women, while they have a much stronger presence over the counter. “These statistics need to be improved”, admitted the Councillor.

“Women aren’t meant to work”: experiences from behind the counter

Although data show that women employees outnumber men in the city’s shops, there are still people who are surprised to see them behind the counter, especially in businesses that are traditionally male-dominated. Every day, in Carrer Sepúlveda, one of the city’s streets with the largest concentration of shops selling IT equipment and electrical components, Ana María serves customers that come into Traxtore, the shop she has run for the last 10 years. She took over the shop on the day her mother retired, and since then, Traxtore has become one of the few computer shops in the area run by a woman. She admits to having had all kinds of experiences. “When my mother was still working in the shop, a customer, asked if he could speak to someone who could understand him, as soon as he put his foot inside the door”, she recalls. She has also had similar experiences. “When they are asking for advice, you often notice that they don’t go into details”, she said, as an example. “They give you a sound bite and then they seem to expect you to go and fetch the person who knows about it, when they are already standing in front of them,” she says.

Núria, who runs Ferreteria Porxas, on Carrer de Sants, has experienced similar scenes. “Sometimes, my daughter, who is in charge of the shop’s hardware section, tells me that she has had customers who address her with a certain amount of scepticism, as though she wouldn’t be capable of helping them find what they are looking for”, she explains. However, she says that this is short-lived. “They quickly see that we know what we’re talking about”, she explains. “And as a lot of our customers are from the neighbourhood, so they end up trusting our criteria”, she adds.

Mar works in Poble-sec, in the La Carbonera bookshop, a cooperative project she created in 2017, along with Carlota and Aitor, with the aim of creating a reading community in and for the neighbourhood that would expand and love reading, books and culture. “Carlota and I are often behind the counter, and we’ve seen all kinds of things”, she says. In fact, they listed some situations they had experienced in an article in their blog. “As we are also young, we’ve had to hear things like: A woman isn’t meant to work, or Can you manage that much weight ?”. she explains. “For example, some salespeople have also asked us if they can speak to the manager, when that is who we are”, she explains.

In 2021, in order to promote and encourage the presence of women in the commerce sector, Barcelona City Council is resuming a programme of specific training sessions from a gender perspective, aimed especially at women who galvanise shopping districts. But there is more. “We will also continue to work on indicators broken down by gender, in order to develop more effective public policies”, stressed Montserrat Ballarín, the Councillor for Commerce, Markets, Consumer Affairs, Internal Regime and Taxation at Barcelona City Council.