Equality between women and men is a cultural battle!

In the beginning, mere chance decides. A random or near-random genetic event, selecting two X chromosomes. What follows is a life, one that will be quite different solely because of those two chromosomes. A life that gives life, that passes on knowledge to her children and her children’s children.

And that life will labor under severe constraints. Such as fitting three days of work into one, having your talents recognized as such and being accepted as equal to anyone, no matter where they live or what their culture or customs — dictated by family, ethnicity or religion — are.

The life of a woman is unique, and utterly unrecognizable from what it was half a century ago in our Western societies. Women have made professional and social strides to naturally and rightly become men’s equals.

With one crucial difference: women create life, which in turn creates challenges every society must address.

But the West has no monopoly on the changing social role and place of women.

In Africa, women are heading up their own businesses and seizing the opportunities offered by digital technology to create wealth. 

In emerging economies in Asia, more and more women are gaining access to education, pushing their societies toward development. Thirty years ago, in Bangladesh, they were the first to receive micro-loans, allowing them to create value in their immediate circle.

And everywhere women are fighting those who would keep them in a subservient position, through the gender pay gap or, unfortunately, violence, until such time as the world becomes aware of what should be a universal cause: protecting women and their freedom, which should reflect their own personal choices alone.

As the CEO of Total, I often deal with the issue of women’s underrepresentation, in both senior management and so-called technical fields.

We could tell ourselves that fewer of them are drawn to STEM subjects, and so more of them end up ignoring certain careers an industrial company such as ours can offer, and just leave it at that.

I don’t buy that argument, however. Nothing is preordained. Men have no monopoly on scientific achievement. The country that gave us Descartes also gave us Marie Curie and Fran?oise Barré-Sinoussi.

And although we’re proud that women now make up more than 40% of the board members of France’s leading companies, it took a law that imposed quotas to achieve that. Yes, even in a developed country like our own France, we still have a long way to go.

Being a woman in 2018 is a challenge. But it’s not solely a women’s challenge: it would be all too easy to put the entire responsibility for women’s advancement and empowerment on women alone.

It is a social, political, development, cultural, emancipation and freedom-of-thought issue.

How can our society really progress without the talents of half the people in it?

Fully including women isn’t doing them some kind of favor or granting a concession. It is first and foremost making the most of the differences they bring to the table.

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N.B.: This article is also available in French.

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