Gender Equality and Welfare at the Workplace: Perceptions of Employees in the Spanish Port System

Perceived wellness in the workplace relies on various factors among which are the formation received and the general working environment and the state of gender equality in particular. In this work, we analyzed the welfare in the workplace and its relationship with the workers’ training and with gender equality in the workplace, just as it the workers’ perception. The collective analyzed is the one of the people employed in the Spanish Port System. Our main objective is to analyze the wellbeing of people serving as employees in the main Spanish ports, those known as "ports of general interest" (a total of 28 port authorities), managed by the autonomous agency "Ports of the State" which attached to the Ministry of Public Works of the Government of Spain. The reason for choosing this network of involving large work centers is that they feature up an Equality Plan, approved by the Government of Spain. To carry out the work, we have relied on the European Survey on Working Conditions. We took the questionnaire used for that survey, and we prepared another questionnaire, suited to our research specific circumstances. Thereafter, we distribute it to 181 people, and we asked workers to fill it up. The study aims is to determine and quantify, if any, the relationship between perceived equality, the training received and the perceived satisfaction in the working environment. We conducted this research through the assessment of perceived job satisfaction, the perceived gender equality and the efforts aimed at job training. We collected data from 94 men and 87 women, workers in the 28 main Spanish ports. For treatment of the data it has been used the methodology of structural equations (SEM). This procedure is suitable to explain the causal relationships between latent variables and to explain causality between them. Thus, we have verified the existence of a causal relationship between perceived gender equality, training courses conducted and welfare at work.