8th March: let us commit to advancing gender equality at all levels of our company

In 2018, I was personally involved in the He For She movement, the UN programme that urges men to take a strong stance at womens’ side to promote gender equality.

This commitment, far from being cosmetic, implied achieving tangible results.

Three years later, I take the symbolic opportunity of March 8th, International Women’s Day, to share our progress.

I am proud to write here that we have fulfilled our internal and public commitments, and that we have also acted beyond them.

The public commitment, chosen by UN Women, is for AgriFeD, an innovative programme that we support both technically and financially.

This now makes it possible to empower 15,000 women farmers in northern Senegal, a region particularly affected by climate change.

Internally, we have committed ourselves to advancing gender diversity at all levels of our enterprise, ensuring real equity between women and men and paying particular attention to certain professions, where gender diversity is not yet a reality.

In particular, we made significant progress and even exceeded the targets we had set ourselves in recruiting to these Global Market businesses, which were traditionally dominated by men, and Human Resources, in which men were on the contrary under represented.

More globally, month after month, we have pushed the feminisation of our enterprise to the highest levels.

2021 will be a pivotal year in this respect.

Beginning with our general meeting in May, Elena Goitini, Charlotte Dennery and Pauline Leclerc-Glorieux will join the Group's executive committee, thus bringing the proportion of women to one third.

There were none on the executive committee just 10 years ago. Granted, this is not yet the parity that we strive for.

But this proportion will continue to grow rapidly and will exceed 40% in 2025 for both our executive committee and the G100, which groups our 100 top managers.

Likewise, we will continue the feminisation of our governing bodies, and within three years, 1,000 women will also join our IT teams.

To you, who have brought this cause to the United Nations with determination, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Oulimata Sarr, we want you to know that this work will continue so long as what we share, women and men, is more powerful than what separates us!