Survey Shows Companies Need to Design Comprehensive Programmes
Companies are not making more headway on gender balance because they have been focusing on a few, isolated actions, without designing a comprehensive programme to tackle the issue, say the GEF (Grandes Ecoles au Féminin), organisers of a new survey.

New Survey Shows Companies Need to Design Comprehensive Programme for Gender Balance

• GEF (Grandes Ecoles au Féminin), a network of alumnae from France’s most prestigious business and engineering schools, and the French market research institute IPSOS have published a detailed opinion survey regarding gender balance in the corporate environment in France.

• The study is based on interviews with decision makers in top French companies (including Air France, Air Liquide, L’Oreal, Societe Generale, Sodexo, and Schlumberger) and on an online survey of both male and female graduates of these top schools.

• The study revealed an interesting paradox in French business culture. On one hand, the survey showed that there is general consensus that better gender balance is important for companies today (86% total respondents, including 79% of male respondents and 94% of female respondents).

• However, on the other hand, survey participants indicated that companies have not been successful in making adequate progress on this issue, with the vast majority of respondents pointing to a significant difference between men and women’s access to top management positions and career opportunities. Most felt progress was too slow in coming, and were pessimistic that any significant changes would happen in the next 20 years. A significant 25% of the most pessimistic respondents thought gender balance in top leadership wouldn’t happen for another 50 years.

• The authors of the survey suggest that companies are not able to achieve better gender balance because they have been focusing on a few, isolated actions, without designing a comprehensive programme to tackle the issue.

• The main recommendation for companies is to design a programme around three main areas for improvement:

1. Promotion and training for women
2. Company culture and evaluation criteria
3. Definition and tracking of KPIs.