Breaking paradigms in a world dominated by men, that is the goal of Zacua, a Mexican automotive company made up of 70 percent women, who hold management positions and are also in charge of hand-assembling the electric cars distributed by the company.
This is how the Zacua electric car began to be produced in 2018 at an assembly plant in Puebla. Each vehicle is assembled by hand, so its production could be considered handmade.
In 2020, during the XXXI Edition of the International Energy Congress, Nazareth Black, brand director of the company, assured that the company’s business model is disruptive and digital, since it is a craft and design brand, with innovation and Mexican development that seeks the inclusion of women in a sector that has been dominated mostly by men. As an example we have the automobile company Ford, which in its Engineering Center only has a 17 percent female participation.
“We do not treat the issue of hiring women as if it were a rivalry, but rather it is part of the company’s philosophy, it is an issue of inclusion of giving space to women and an issue of equality, in which women they can aspire to the same jobs, that they have a safe work environment, without having to give or do something in return to get the job or get a promotion,” Black said in an interview for El Heraldo.
Currently in Zacua there are 25 women working in its Engineering Center, they also work on the design of prototypes and also develop projects, also participating in the assembly of parts.
“Zacua is the first Mexican brand of electric cars, designed exclusively for the city. We seek to positively support society by contributing to making the country a greener place by producing automotive technologies that reduce our impact on the environment. The cars are zero emissions, which means that they do not emit CO2, Greenhouse Gases or any other polluting particle in the air, which contributes to caring for the environment, since charging the car with electricity is less polluting than burning gasoline”, refers the company on its official portal.
Women engineers in Mexico
The foregoing shows that in Mexico, little by little, women have been incorporated into a sector that was previously “exclusive of men”; however, one of the factors that prevents participation figures from increasing even more is the low number of engineering graduates.
For example, the latest data released by the National Association of Universities and Higher Education Institutions (ANUIES) reveals that, of the more than 924,000 students enrolled in engineering careers at universities in Mexico (both public and private), only 291 thousand are women.
For its part, the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), indicates that 3 out of 10 professionals in engineering areas are women. These figures reveal that there are still stereotypes to break so that more women, adolescents and girls occupy spaces that the patriarchal society has told them do not belong to them.
