Gender Balance, Women & Men who move the lines

During the recent Congress, PWN Paris launched a new initiative: “Mixte ton Entreprise”.

The origin of this initiative lays in the fact that despite all government actions and laws, the situation regarding Gender Balance in business remains highly unsatisfactory despite progress.

The Secretary of State in charge of Men-Women equality notes in its recent report that there are only 21% of women within companies’ executive committees.

For the SBF 120 (top 120 companies quoted on the stock market), only 10% of the companies are managed by a women CEO and only 7 women chair the boards of Directors.

Situation is similar for the CAC40 (top 40 companies in France) with only 17% of women in the executive committees and only one company with a woman as CEO.

Also, other deceiving indicator: there are only 26% women amongst the highest 100 jobs. This is a key indicator as it represents the internal female pipeline of talent, ready to join executive committees

At the current path of progress, 25 years will be needed to get to 40% of women in executives forums.

So what’s the issue?

Research pointing out the value of gender diversity, laws of even corporate actions and budgets are all going in the right direction.

Though all this does not drive rapid enough progress.

In fact gender diversity is facing 2 major issues:

• The weight of societal models, cultures and codes that have been historically instituted by men for men

• The difficulty for women to manage both family life and professional one, which by the way is not specific to women!

These are the levers on which to act and impulse change: companies should be the mirror of society.

This is the right moment to act: society is changing, new generations, both men and women want a more egalitarian society, more autonomy, more balanced life

At PWN Paris, we have the conviction that gender balance in business will only happen If men and women join forces and create favorable conditions for a more balanced life.

We started last year when we decided to welcome men in the network, a rupture move.

This was a first step.

With the initiative « Mix your company, the courage of acting together” (en français “mixte ton entreprise, le courage d’agir ensemble”) we want :

• Promote best practices improving gender diversity

• Encourage men to join PWN and be advocate with us of benefits of gender diversity.

The program will publicize role models, woman or man, who are implementing in their company best practices or action that will impact positively gender diversity such as:

• Rules of good living : flexible hours, no meeting early morning or late afternoon, no email on weekend…

• Parental leave taken by men

• Services that ease life for men and women (nursery services provided by companies, concierge…)

We’ll have the pleasure of inviting them to our event to present and discuss their action. We’ll also publish the initiative in media or social media using different expression of our slogan:

• Mix your ComEx

• Mix your team

• Mix your times

• Mix your audacity

• …

This is the start of the program.

We will keep you informed of the following actions.

You have understood, this program is for us, women and men of PWN.

In a nutshell, we are ambitious with this program.

We will be proud if within 2 years PWN is recognized as a source of inspiration and an actor of change.

We expect to have:

• More gender diversity at all levels in companies

• More women managers ready to climb the ladder

• New women career paths, more diverse, more mobile

• Audacious women expressing their ambition loudly

• Men confident in sharing their expectations in terms of life balance.

We hope that many of you will contribute to this program. You can do this differently: by sharing with us role models and their best practice, contributing to the organization of the program …

Cécile Bernheim - Advisory Board member, Past President of PWN Paris, President of S2E Partners

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilebernheim