Women, Empowerment and Leadership
Joint EuropeanPWN/ESSEC Conference, June 11 at La Defense.
Women on boards, quotas, career levers, mentoring networking, reconciling work and family: this conference ran the full gamut of topics bearing on women’s empowerment. Hilary Ellis, EuropeanPWN-Paris President, and Junko Takagi, ESSEC Diversity & Performance Chair, opened the conference, followed by Celia de Anca, PhD, Instituto de Empresa in Madrid, Spain, who presented her findings regarding women on boards in Sweden. Thanks to the quota legislation, Swedish women are now well represented on Boards but there is no trickle down effect in Executive Committees. Ms de Anca sees several possible developments as a result of the quotas:
- The same few women will be seated on a large number of Boards, preventing the spread of Board experience;
- There will be an assessment of the impact of more women on boards and people will want to know if greater gender parity can avert the next dot.com bubble, housing bubble, or other global economic crisis? Quotas will be at the center of the debate.
Legislation introducing quotas for women on boards is anything but a panacea, yet it is absolutely necessary. History shows that the situation does not evolve by itself. But the quota system is not increasing the number of women at top levels of corporate management. Quotas are only a first step in the process.
Jo Dreyfus, Partner at Deloitte, presented the world-wide Deloitte approach to employee life cycle management. The aim is to improve the balance between personal and professional demands. Deloitte employees "program" their career tracks based on their evolving family situation. When a new baby arrives in the family, employees speed up or slow down the career pace using levers, a free-flowing dialogue between employees and management. There are official classifications to accommodate employees who needs to reduce travel or have other demands. Deloitte does not discriminate in favor of women; men, too, are free to speed up and slow down their careers in line with their personal objectives and they are strongly encouraged to do so.
Anna Thrap-Olsen, Director of Business Development TetraPak, led a workshop on training and coaching; Ines O'Donovan of the EuropeanPWN Mentoring Club and Networking hosted a Mentoring workshop; Valerie Rocoplan, CEO of Talentis, an international coaching company, led a mentoring workshop. The networking workshop focused on hands-on, real-time networking exercises stressing the importance of the first handshake, the first sentence and the first three minutes of conversation, which leave lasting impressions on both sides. Valérie Rocoplna gave important tips about how to "close" a networking discussion.
A roundtable discussion on women in leadership positions followed the workshops featuring Sophie Macquet, Group Diversity executive from Renault, Jean-Michel Monnot, Vice President, and Group Diversity & Inclusion, Sodexo and Anne Bouverot, Executive Vice President Personal LoB & Group Devices, Orange. Katrin Bennhold of the International Herald Tribune led the debate among the participants of the round table and the audience. Topics ranged from cultural differences in Germany, the UK, and France regarding career evolution to advice for start ups.
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