La Mondiale Europartner (LMEP) develops an internal environment conducive to women’s development and responsibilities within the company. According to Delphine Bath, Head of Human Resources, “diversity, especially in terms of gender equality is an asset, both regarding the way of working and also because increased gender diversity including at an executive committee level shows improved performance results compared to other structure types, hence the importance of raising our collaborators’ awareness on that topic up to the highest hierarchy level through the dissemination of best practices.”

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Sending the right signals facing visible obstacles

Pay gaps, overrepresentation of men at senior positions, maternity and associated “disengagement” risk on the career path… All clear expressions of women’s difficulties to pursue a career as equals with men. Obstacles that become particularly visible after the first years at work…

"At the beginning of the career in general I don’t see any particular discrimination. Originally girls do good, even better, than boys at school in a rather meritocratic school system – even if women remain underrepresented in certain scientific and digital sections. There is no visible impact on wages or functions during the first years within the company” Delphine Bath tells us. The first position will be remunerated the same for men and women. Pay gaps tend to settle down later, during promotion and recruitment of management positions. This is a visible face of gender inequalities at work and it is crucial to send the right signals by equitably positioning male and female profiles, assigning positions based on skills and guaranteeing the same salary level. “We are a predominantly female company, thus if we have more men than women for management and executive positions, we have to make sure that the selection has well been based on skills and not influenced by stereotypes or unconscious biases”.

As another visible obstacle, maternity often is a decisive turn in a woman’s professional development and too often stigmatized as such.

The HR processes within LMEP contribute to making sure that this life stage does not represent an obstacle to women’s career. Concretely, the women on maternity leave are entitled to their bonuses like the others; they are also supported when they return to their position to facilitate their inclusion and avoid the before/after baby break. Delphine Bath particularly insists on this point: “Maternity shouldn’t be a professional sanction because this is where we create payment backlogs and psychological gaps, as there is this stubborn stereotype which assumes that these persons are less available or less motivated. To promote gender equality, we need the right conditions for a work-life balance.” Overall, whether we want it or not, women generally handle more household tasks than men. We thus have to promote everything that can guarantee equity within the company. These measures cover part-time, telework, for men as well as for women, the incentive to take paternity leaves and have to permeate all levels of the company.

Awareness raising and individual support : overcoming invisible obstacles 

Beyond very obvious and concrete obstacles that block women’s progression within the company, there certainly are, even more rooted, all the mental representations that confine them to limiting roles.

In order to fight preconceived ideas that affect women in the professional world, awareness raising is the key word; it aims at both genders by the way. Men, and in particular those that have a decision-making power within the organisation, have to acknowledge that they are subject to unconscious biases of social reproduction. Delphine Bath explains this phenomenon: “I am a man living in a male system. I thus follow the rules that apply to men and I reproduce this system, so I judge women based on male rules. I thus seek social reproduction and am likely to promote men more without necessarily being aware of it. At LMEP, we address these topics in a permanent and imbedded way.” It seems indeed essential to raise men’s awareness to these situations, to make them recognise potential biases, to explain discriminating moments, to showcase the invisible obstacles and suggest other operating modes.

As for women that move to a new position, they can benefit from individual support to make sure that they have all the necessary means to succeed and do not self-censor themselves. It is the executive committee’s role to be a gender diversity sponsor, to encourage women that would like to take on responsibilities, to support them in finding their leadership style, recalls Delphine Bath. “Today there are two women within the executive committee and three deputy director women, one of which was promoted while she was pregnant. This in-draught provides other women with “role models” that inspire them to take on growing responsibilities within the company”.

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To be read also in the dossier "True to Women?": 

• So cliché!
• Raphaël Liogier: Descent to the Male's Core 
• The Power of Gender Stereotypes
• Meet Jana Messer, Head of Steelplant
• You Can't Be what you Can't See
• When companies raise awareness among their employees…and their future recruits