The Compendium of Gender-Related Best Practices - WIL’s initiative towards promoting a better female representation in companies - is a compilation of examples of programmes and initiatives supporting women in leadership. The document, which has been created by a joint effort of WIL Members, has been presented to Commissioner Reding during WIL's 4th Anniversary. WIL committed to continue with the initiative, counting on the members' contribution. If you would like to share a gender-related best practice case, please get in touch!

For the past four years, WIL has been bringing together female business representatives, entrepreneurs, members of the European Parliament, high civil servants and academics with the aim to meet and share ideas that help them broaden their horizons, and at the same time work together towards the advancement of women in leadership throughout the large range of represented sectors.

As we have been building the WIL network, we have been able to gather perspectives and experiences from members coming from companies and organizations of different identities and organizational cultures. Thanks to these exchanges, we are able to come up with new solutions for helping women in their path to leadership.

These past four years have taught us that more needs to be done to nourish the female talent pipeline in the long run. During several of our events on socio-economic topics, the “Women on Boards” discussion came up. Realising that this is only one side of the issue, our goal is to stir discussions on the various means of promoting female leadership. The WIL Compendium of Gender-related Best Practices is meant to inspire and offer companies and organizations acting in Europe several options to attain better gender balance.

WIL’s Women Talent Pool programme, supported by Microsoft, Orange and Qualcomm, is a step we chose to take to support women in mid-level management positions by helping them develop their potential to become the next generation of female leaders. WIL members felt the need to help less senior women in their career paths; by getting involved in the initiative as Role Models, they are going to connect with a pool of Emerging Leaders and share with them their experiences, offer advice and help them get on the right career tracks to fulfill their career aspirations. The idea of the Compendium initiative is to keep adding best case practices and we are hoping that during our next anniversaries, it will become even richer in great examples.