Partner Club : Managing Parenting at work

We were delighted to welcome those of you who could join us online on Friday, 11 September for our Partner Club Meeting focused on “Managing Parenting at work” – a very timely topic as the French President had just officially announced the extension of paternal leave to 28 days - see the article (in French) from Le Monde. PWN Paris has been lobbying for a long time on this topic, which was recently emphasized again by PWN Paris Co-Presidents in a recent feature (in French) in L'Express.

Our meeting started with an introduction from Djazia Tiourtite, Partner at Bird & Bird who shared how much their organization was involved with gender balance and management of parenting, and how important this has been in her own career development; Bird & Bird is one of PWN Paris’s partners.

Then, Françoise Derolez, PWN Paris Co-President, reminded us how much PWN Paris worked on adapting its activities and continuing to support members during this very challenging time, which very significantly impacted, as we know, women professionals, while continuing our work with government representatives to promote work-life balance in order to have a better representation of women in corporate leadership.

Next, Corinne Albert, Lead of the program « Maternity@Work » and Founder of Mom to Mom, introduced very interesting data on maternity and parenting at work; her insights were followed by a presentation from Babilou on their corporate nursery concept, followed by testimonials from Parents@LinkedIn on their initiatives for families and from BNP Paribas on their worldwide scheme about parenting leave.

Below a few items we collected from the speakers:

• Maternity is a structuring element of personal AND professional parents’ life

• For women, maternity is often linked with career progression issues and the glass ceiling effect

• Companies which set good practices to manage parenting at work directly contribute to their Diversity & Inclusion initiatives

• To go further, companies must consider career management around parenting not only as the best way to motivate and retain their employees and Executives, but also as a true economic stake.

As a conclusion, Marie-Laetitia Gourdin, PWN Paris Co-President, reminded us the numerous and important works of each PWN Paris pillars around the topic of gender balance, as well as our programme « En avant la mixité » driven by Cécile Bernheim – all these items being also objectives from the current French Government.

Many thanks to all our speakers, including Delpine Cordel from Babilou, Emmanuelle Scelles from BNP Paribas and Elise Meijer from Parents@LinkedIn, and to our partners and friends who joined us.

We hope to meet you soon at our next events – please see full list of events here, and at our next meeting of Club des Partenairs early 2021.

Pierrette Doz-Perdrix, VP Partenariats PWN Paris

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