Gender Equality Plan 2025–2030

Executive commitment

Pangeanic adopts this Gender Equality Plan for the 2026–2030 period as a formal, public and executive-level commitment to promote gender equality across the organization. The plan applies to Pangeanic’s research, engineering, linguistic, data production, project management, commercial, administrative and leadership activities. It also applies, where appropriate, to external contributors, contractors, linguistic experts, annotators, evaluators and collaborators who participate in Pangeanic-led projects or work under Pangeanic’s operational supervision.

The purpose of this plan is to create a working environment in which talent can develop without discrimination, structural disadvantage or bias, and to ensure that Pangeanic’s AI, language technology and data operations reflect the highest standards of fairness, accountability and social responsibility. Equality is treated as both a human resources commitment and a responsible AI requirement. In multilingual AI, speech data, natural language processing, anonymization, data governance and sovereign AI deployments, the diversity and fairness of teams, datasets and decision-making processes directly influence quality, trust and social impact.

Executive management is responsible for ensuring that the plan is implemented with adequate resources, visible accountability and periodic review. The plan is approved by Pangeanic’s Chief Executive Officer, Manuel Herranz, and is published at https://pangeanic.com/gender-equality-plan/ together with a signed PDF version. This public page serves as the accessible HTML version for evaluators, project partners, staff, applicants and stakeholders who need to verify Pangeanic’s institutional commitment.

Governance, dedicated resources and accountability

Pangeanic appoints a designated Gender Equality Officer with a mandate to coordinate implementation, collect monitoring data, propose corrective actions and report progress to executive management. The Gender Equality Officer works with HR, project management, technical leadership, linguistic operations, data governance teams and senior management to ensure that the plan is embedded into day-to-day decisions rather than treated as a separate compliance exercise.

Dedicated resources are allocated annually to support implementation. These resources may include internal working time, training costs, inclusive recruitment actions, consultation with external advisors, legal or compliance review where necessary, and independent support for grievance handling or monitoring. The plan also recognizes that gender equality in an AI and data company requires expertise beyond conventional HR processes. Pangeanic may therefore involve external specialists in diversity, labor practices, data ethics, media representation, algorithmic fairness or workplace safety when specific projects or risks require additional expertise.

Responsibility for implementation is shared. Executive management provides sponsorship, approves the annual review and ensures that resources are available. The Gender Equality Officer coordinates the plan and prepares the annual monitoring summary. Managers and team leads are responsible for applying the plan in recruitment, promotion, scheduling, project staffing, workplace conduct and technical decision-making. Employees, collaborators and project contributors are expected to respect Pangeanic’s equality, non-discrimination and anti-harassment standards in all professional interactions.

The plan will be reviewed annually and formally reassessed at mid-term in Q1 2028. The mid-term review will evaluate whether targets remain appropriate, whether corrective measures are needed and whether Pangeanic’s business, project portfolio or regulatory environment requires additional commitments. Where appropriate, Pangeanic may involve an external advisor, staff representative or independent reviewer to strengthen the credibility of the review process.

Baseline assessment and starting point

Pangeanic will maintain a baseline assessment of gender equality across the organization as the reference point for this plan. The baseline will document the distribution of staff and regular collaborators by sex or gender where legally and ethically appropriate, role type, seniority, contract type, department and participation in leadership or project decision-making bodies. Particular attention will be paid to the distinction between technical, linguistic, administrative, commercial and management roles, because gender patterns can differ significantly between engineering, AI research, language operations and corporate functions.

The baseline assessment will also review available information on recruitment, promotions, pay equity, retention, training participation, flexible working arrangements and participation in project leadership. The objective is not to publish sensitive personal information, but to ensure that targets are grounded in evidence and that progress can be assessed over time. Aggregated indicators may be made public where they are meaningful, proportionate and compatible with privacy and labor obligations.

This baseline will be used to identify gaps, prioritize actions and assess whether measures are having the intended effect. If monitoring reveals unexplained disparities in hiring, promotion, pay, leadership participation or access to high-visibility projects, Pangeanic will review the relevant processes and define corrective actions. Corrective actions may include changes to job descriptions, interview panels, evaluation criteria, mentoring, internal mobility, training, workload allocation, career development opportunities or decision-making procedures.

Data collection, monitoring and indicators

Pangeanic will collect and review gender-related data annually in order to monitor implementation of this plan. Data collection will be proportionate, privacy-conscious and focused on institutional improvement. The monitoring process will include sex- or gender-disaggregated workforce data across role categories such as engineering, research, linguistic operations, data annotation and evaluation, project management, administration, commercial roles and senior management.

The company will also monitor gender distribution in leadership and project decision-making. This includes participation in internal steering committees, research boards, project selection panels, principal investigator or technical lead roles, senior engineering roles, and key positions in AI data production or quality assurance. In addition, Pangeanic will review recruitment shortlists, hiring outcomes, promotion patterns, access to training, participation in mentoring, use of flexible working arrangements and available pay-equity indicators for comparable roles.

Monitoring will also extend to Pangeanic’s AI and language data activities. Where projects involve speech datasets, translation datasets, multilingual evaluation data, human feedback, data annotation, linguistic validation, media analysis or model evaluation, teams will document how the gender dimension has been considered. This includes considering whether datasets, evaluation tasks, speaker pools, annotator groups, prompt collections or linguistic resources risk reproducing stereotypes, demographic imbalance, underrepresentation or performance disparities.

Public reporting will be aggregated to avoid exposing personal data or identifying individuals in small teams. More detailed information may be maintained internally for management and compliance purposes.

Training, awareness and capacity building

Pangeanic will provide training and awareness activities to ensure that equality commitments translate into practical behavior. All staff and regular collaborators will receive basic awareness information on equal treatment, respectful conduct, non-discrimination and reporting channels as part of onboarding or periodic internal communication. Managers, hiring teams, department heads, project decision-makers and evaluation committees will receive more focused training on unconscious bias, inclusive recruitment, fair assessment and objective decision-making.

Because Pangeanic operates in AI, language technologies and multilingual data, training will also cover the relationship between equality and technical quality. Teams involved in data collection, annotation, speech processing, machine translation, language model evaluation, human feedback, anonymization or dataset curation will be encouraged to consider how gender assumptions can enter datasets, prompts, labels, evaluation criteria, sampling strategies and quality assessments. Gender-aware data governance is therefore treated as part of responsible AI practice.

Project managers and technical directors will receive specific guidance on inclusive and safe working conditions during intensive project cycles, infrastructure deployments, model evaluation sprints and data production deadlines. The aim is to avoid unnecessary pressure patterns, ensure predictable communication wherever possible, support the right to disconnect, and protect staff and collaborators from retaliation or disadvantage when they raise concerns about workload, safety, or fairness.

Work-life balance and organizational culture

Pangeanic recognizes that technology, AI infrastructure, data production and international project work can create periods of pressure, irregular scheduling and urgent delivery cycles. The organization therefore commits to building a sustainable working culture in which operational intensity does not become a structural barrier to career progression, retention or participation in leadership. Work-life balance is treated as a management responsibility rather than solely as an individual employee’s ability to adapt.

Pangeanic will implement a Sustainable Engineering and Project Delivery approach that limits unnecessary mandatory overtime, promotes predictable scheduling for infrastructure deployment and project deadlines, and supports a right-to-disconnect culture outside core working hours, except where genuine operational emergencies require escalation. Managers are expected to plan workloads transparently, communicate deadlines early and avoid last-minute scheduling patterns that disproportionately affect people with caregiving responsibilities.

Flexible and remote-work arrangements will be supported where compatible with business needs, confidentiality, information security and project requirements. This is particularly relevant to computational linguistics, data processing, translation quality work, linguistic validation, administrative functions and certain AI evaluation tasks. Pangeanic will monitor work-life balance through staff feedback and will aim to reach a minimum 80% positive satisfaction score in internal work-life balance surveys within 24 months of the plan’s implementation.

Gender balance in leadership and decision-making

Pangeanic aims to ensure equitable representation in strategic, technical, research and operational decision-making. The company will work toward a minimum of 40% representation of the underrepresented gender in internal steering committees, research boards, project selection panels and other relevant decision-making bodies where the size and composition of the organization make this feasible. Where the target cannot be met immediately because of team size or available roles, the responsible manager will document the constraint and consider practical steps to improve representation over time.

The company will also promote fair access to visible and career-building opportunities. This includes participation in EU project leadership, proposal preparation, technical presentations, client-facing expert roles, research coordination, data governance initiatives and internal innovation projects. Gender balance in leadership is not limited to formal management titles; it also concerns who is invited to shape technical direction, represent the company externally, lead work packages, supervise quality standards and influence product or research priorities.

Pangeanic will maintain a structured mentorship approach for junior researchers, engineers, linguists, data specialists and project managers. The objective is to support career progression, technical confidence, leadership development and access to senior guidance. By 2028, Pangeanic will aim to reach at least 40% female or underrepresented gender representation in senior engineering lead and executive director roles, taking into account the company’s size, recruitment market and organizational structure.

Gender equality in recruitment and career progression

Pangeanic will promote fair, transparent and objective recruitment and career progression. Job descriptions will be written in gender-neutral language and will focus on essential competencies, relevant experience, technical skills, language expertise, research outputs or project requirements. Requirements that are not genuinely necessary for the role should be avoided, especially where they could discourage qualified applicants from underrepresented groups.

Recruitment processes for engineering, infrastructure, AI research, language technology, data governance and leadership roles will seek to include qualified candidates from underrepresented genders in shortlists where possible. Interview and selection criteria will be documented in advance, and hiring decisions should be based on objective evidence rather than informal assumptions about availability, leadership style, technical confidence, career continuity or caregiving responsibilities.

Career progression will be monitored through promotion outcomes, access to training, allocation of high-impact projects, pay-equity checks and retention data. Pangeanic will conduct an annual review to identify any unexplained wage gaps for equivalent roles and comparable levels of responsibility. If a disparity is identified, the company will assess whether it can be explained by objective factors such as role scope, seniority, experience or performance, and will define corrective actions where no objective explanation exists.

Integration of the gender dimension into AI, language data and research content

Pangeanic’s work in multilingual AI, NLP, machine translation, speech data, anonymization, language model evaluation, data collection and sovereign AI infrastructure makes the gender dimension especially important. Bias can enter AI systems not only through model architecture, but also through data sourcing, speaker selection, annotation guidelines, translation choices, evaluation benchmarks, prompts, metadata, quality criteria and the social assumptions embedded in language resources. This plan, therefore, extends beyond workforce equality and includes the integration of the gender dimension into relevant technical and research activities.

For projects involving speech processing, translation datasets, multilingual corpora, annotation workflows, AI evaluation, human feedback, synthetic data, linguistic validation or data-as-a-product pipelines, teams will document how they have considered gender representation and potential bias. This may include reviewing speaker balance where applicable, avoiding stereotypical task design, ensuring inclusive language guidelines, considering gendered linguistic forms across languages, testing model behavior across demographic groups, and documenting limitations where perfectly balanced data is not feasible.

Project teams will complete a gender-dimension compliance check for relevant AI data, media, research or evaluation tasks. The check will confirm whether the gender dimension is relevant, how it has been addressed, what data or methodological safeguards were used, and what limitations remain. Where a project has no meaningful gender dimension, the team should briefly explain why. Where the gender dimension is relevant, the team should demonstrate how the methodology supports fairness, representativeness and responsible use.

This approach is also aligned with Pangeanic’s broader positioning in responsible and sovereign AI. In public-sector, regulated-industry or multilingual deployments, trust depends not only on privacy, security and infrastructure control, but also on the ability to show that language technologies are developed and evaluated with appropriate attention to fairness, representativeness and social impact.

Measures against gender-based violence, harassment and retaliation

Pangeanic maintains a zero-tolerance approach to gender-based violence, sexual harassment, harassment, intimidation, discrimination and retaliation. This commitment applies to offices, remote collaboration spaces, business travel, project meetings, online communication channels, production environments, client interactions and any professional setting connected to Pangeanic’s work. It also applies to interactions involving employees, contractors, freelancers, consultants, external annotators, linguistic contributors and project partners where Pangeanic has responsibility or influence.

The company will maintain an Anti-Harassment Protocol that defines prohibited conduct, explains reporting options, sets out confidentiality safeguards and describes the process for initial assessment and investigation. The protocol will include clear reporting lines, an anonymous or confidential reporting mechanism where feasible, and the possibility of escalation to an external, neutral ombudsperson or advisor. Individuals who report concerns, participate in investigations or support affected persons will be protected from retaliation.

Reports will receive an initial assessment within a maximum of 15 calendar days. The initial assessment does not necessarily mean that the matter will be fully resolved within that period; it means that the report will be acknowledged, reviewed for immediate safety or protective measures, assigned to the appropriate handling channel and given a clear next step. Investigations will be conducted impartially, with respect for confidentiality, due process and the dignity of all parties involved.

All new staff and regular collaborators will receive information on the anti-harassment code of conduct and reporting channels during onboarding. Pangeanic will aim for 100% onboarding compliance and will periodically remind staff and collaborators of available reporting channels. Aggregated, anonymized information on training and protocol awareness may be included in internal monitoring reports.

Intersectional considerations

While this plan focuses on gender equality, Pangeanic recognizes that people may experience disadvantage or exclusion through overlapping factors such as age, disability, nationality, language, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, caregiving responsibilities, contract status or professional seniority. An intersectional lens is particularly relevant in a multilingual and international company, where teams and contributors may come from different linguistic, cultural and professional backgrounds.

Pangeanic will therefore interpret gender equality in a way that is attentive to other relevant dimensions of inclusion, while respecting privacy and avoiding unnecessary collection of sensitive personal data. In recruitment, project staffing, workplace conduct and AI data governance, managers should be alert to the possibility that apparently neutral practices can have different effects on different groups. The company will use staff feedback, management review and project experience to identify practical barriers and improve inclusion over time.

Revision, publication and contact

This Gender Equality Plan is published as a public document on Pangeanic’s website at https://pangeanic.com/gender-equality-plan/. The page should remain accessible from the About section and should also be linked from the website footer under Governance, Compliance, Responsible AI, Research & Innovation or a similar heading. Where Pangeanic participates in EU-funded research or innovation projects, the plan should also be referenced from relevant EU Projects, Research or Innovation pages so that evaluators, partners and stakeholders can verify it without navigation friction.

The plan will be monitored annually and formally reviewed at mid-term in Q1 2028. The review will examine progress against baseline indicators, assess the effectiveness of training and governance mechanisms, evaluate whether leadership and recruitment targets remain appropriate, and determine whether additional measures are needed. The plan may be updated earlier if there are significant changes in Pangeanic’s organizational structure, project portfolio, legal obligations or responsible AI governance practices.

Questions about this plan may be sent to rrhh@pangeanic.com. Concerns related to harassment, discrimination or retaliation should be reported through the Anti-Harassment Protocol or the designated reporting channel. Anonymous or confidential reporting options will be described in the internal protocol and may be supported by an external ombudsperson where appropriate.