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Breakfast with Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, French Minister

Posted in WIL event reports
29 June 2010 - Paris

On June 29th, more than 50 France-based WIL members and friends, including the Club ITW, a high-level French group of women in IT, and the Women Equity (WE) network, had an extremely productive exchange of views with Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, French Secretary of State for Strategic Studies and the Development of the Digital Economy, regarding the differing means of breaking the glass ceiling. The inspiring testimonies of Sabine Bohnké, CEO Sapientis and author of "Parcours de femmes dans les nouvelles technologies" (Women's career paths in IT), and Dunya Bouhacene, CEO Women Equity, enhanced a lively discussion on achieving gender parity at all power levels.

BEST PRACTICES FOR BREAKING THE GLASS CEILING

Taking on the challengers’ role, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, French Secretary of State for Strategic Studies and the Development of the Digital Economy, questioned recurrent policies aiming to break the glass ceiling, and endorsed the alternatives brought upfront by two WIL members, during a breakfast with more than 50 WIL members and friends based in France. Dunya Bouhacene, president of one of the first European investment funds dedicated to women-led businesses, Women Equity (WE), and Sabine Bohnké, CEO of the IT company Sapientis, and author of the book “Parcours de femmes dans les nouvelles technologies” (Women’s career paths in IT), joined the panel along with Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. The members of Club ITW, a high-level French group of women in IT, as well as WE collaborators have notably highlighted best practices of women’s involvement in the IT and the finance sectors.

THE NEW ‘GAME RULES’

Sabine Bohnké’s book “Parcours de femmes..” recounts 18 testimonies of women with careers in the IT industry. Her aim is to vivify the raw statistics for women in science & research and to give young women a 360° perspective of their career options. She has observed that women recurrently avoid taking risks in a professional environment characterized by direct confrontations. The result is a career jam. Sabine Bohnké positively reflects on changing these “game rules” at two levels. Firstly, socially, by restructuring the cultural and educational frameworks and secondly, at an individual level, by supporting women to take risks and stand up either as business executives or as entrepreneurs.

Dunya Bouhacene’s private equity program focusing on women-led businesses runs on a similar logic. WE originated from the observation that women-led new companies received limited attention from private equity investors, while outperforming their peers on average. Facilitating access to capital for women led-businesses and supporting their growth has led to women accessing leadership roles in these organisations, and to promote female role models in society at large.

WOMEN IN (REAL) POWER

From another angle, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet warned about the side-effects of initiatives that are artificially promoting women in leadership. Arguing that maternity leave is not the main obstacle of women’s promotion in decision making positions, the Secretary of State referred to an analysis made by Prof. Florence Weber from Ecole Normale Supérieure about career evolutions within public institutions. She argued that both women and men tend to step up to top leadership positions at a later age than early parenthood. She highlighted the biases in the recruitment process, including the fact that it is predominantly realized through cooptation, a situation which determines the gender imbalance at the top of the hierarchies.

Moreover, the Secretary of State warned about the risk of promoting women to leadership positions as a result of the different skills of men and women. In politics, these arguments lead to nominate women for social, diversity or educational portfolios, which carry weak political powers in the long run. No matter the party, in today’s politics, winning seats are largely held by men, while women fill in the nomination seats for the hard-to-win circumscriptions. As a consequence, women rotate between power and opposition at a greater pace than men and risk stagnating in their political careers.

According to the WIL panellists, the change of view needs to be provoked at different levels, by political pressure and by raising awareness through the use of social media, new technologies and by enabling more networking opportunities for women. Those who expose and speak about their achievements or who set up their own businesses are actually the women who will be establishing the ‘game rules’ for a more gender balanced society.

In a nutshell, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, together with the panellists and attendees, came to the conclusion that women need to be more vigilant about the real authority they hold, particularly given the tendency to favour gender parity in executive boards rather than parity at lower scales. As a result, WIL is preparing a study to back the women with the potential to step up to leadership positions in the upcoming years across Europe’s public and private enterprises and be a watchdog!

Tags: Book Business Women, Gender diversity, Career development, Business networking organization, Networking Membership, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet

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