🇺🇸#34 Gender equality: the key role of managers in developing talent.
According to the Tissot and Payfit HR Barometer 2024, recruiting and retaining employees remain the top HR priorities. In 2023, 69% of HR respondents put recruiting talent at the top of their list of priorities and 67% expected to step up their efforts to retain existing employees, 11 points more than in 2022. In 2024, 64.5% of respondents expect retention to overtake recruitment as the top HR priority.
At Happy Men & Women Share More, we’re convinced that gender diversity is a key to meeting the challenge of retaining talent within companies, and that managers are on the front line, with a renewed vision of their mission. This podcast aims to shed some light on this subject in 3 stages:
-First we’ll look at the why: what is the link between gender diversity and talent retention, and why the manager’s role is so central.
-Then we’ll look at the how: what levers can managers use to help their teams’ talent flourish on a daily basis?
-Finally, we will see that this inclusive challenge creates new managerial demands for which managers are not always prepared. Indeed, a radical change in attitude is expected of them, both from their leaders and from their teams.
🇺🇸#33 Who really inspires us? Role models in companies that promote gender equality.
Imitation plays a fundamental role in the formation of the human person. It is one of the earliest modes of learning. From the very first days and throughout their development, children acquire a certain number of motor and cognitive abilities, and then relational abilities, through the experience of intersubjectivity. Through imitation, the individual gradually forges his or her identity: he or she assimilates an aspect, a property or an attribute of the other and transforms himself or herself wholly or partially on the model of the other. The personality is formed and differentiated by a series of identifications. This process takes place in a specific social and cultural context. It is in itself a process of cultural transmission.
Like any human society, companies also produce their own dynamics of imitation and identification. These are deep-rooted cultural processes which, often unconsciously, standardise types of behaviour and practices, as well as models of success and discriminatory processes.
Because they have a decisive impact on motivating men and women to project themselves in a certain professional direction, Happy Men & Women Share More is now looking at companies’ role models, i.e. its models of success and the way in which they are embodied.
– First, we will look at how traditional role models are being disowned by a growing number of employees, particularly women.
– We will then discuss the need to diversify success models in order to inspire more people.
– Finally, we will put forward ideas for concrete action to showcase diversified modes of success within companies.
🇺🇸#32 Men, women and science: why is the place of women in science more of a challenge than ever?
The great scientific inventions profoundly transform the material conditions of our existence and indirectly engender the cultural changes that mark our civilisation. So, because their impact is so tangible, many scientists are present, literally and figuratively, in the pantheon of those who have influenced our world, alongside politicians, soldiers, philosophers, writers and artists. But for so many researchers, doctors, physicists, chemists and mathematicians, how many are women? Women scientists have too often been forgotten by history.
Today, women play a much more visible role in the human scientific adventure, and are widely represented in a number of scientific disciplines: medical, biological, social, human and environmental sciences.
Happy Men & Women Share More aims to explore the place of women in science in 3 stages:
-First, I will take stock of the shortage of female talent at the heart of a powerful economic and social engine.
– I will then show how the so-called hard sciences are in fact a springboard to success for women
-Finally, a few pointers will be given to help women succeed in STEM fields.
🇺🇸#31 Gender equality: will salvation come from the younger generation?
During our work on gender equality, diagnostics, training courses, conferences, etc., we are often told the obvious: “but in any case, with the arrival of the younger generations, gender equality will no longer be an issue in the workplace”.
Is this really the case?
At Happy Men & Women Share More, we are of course aware that we are dealing with younger generations who are generally more egalitarian in their expectations and lifestyles, but we are not at all convinced that this is enough to meet the challenges of gender equality in the world of work.
3 steps to deciphering the situation:
– Younger generations: what specificities?
– Young generations: what power?
– Young generations and gender equality: the same challenge.
🇺🇸#30 Give me gender diversity and I’ll transform the world
For Happy Men & Women Share More, gender diversity is more than an end in itself, it is a means: it is a relevant compass for preparing companies to meet the expectations of younger generations and anchor their future performance. In this podcast, we’re going to widen the focus to take the measure of its transformative power beyond the workplace, on society as a whole.
1 – We will first recall why gender diversity can generally be considered as an issue of common good.
2 – We will then see that gender equality is a systemic change, involving all the main spheres of society: work, family, politics and individuals.
3 – Finally, we will see that gender equality is a global and cultural transformation that requires everyone to commit to changing their personal, family, professional and civic mindset.
🇺🇸#29 Is self-confidence a skill for success or a performance standard?
Who hasn’t felt illegitimate at least once in their career? Doubts about your skills, the feeling that you don’t deserve your place, the fear of being found out… it is estimated that 70% of the population is or has been confronted with a feeling of imposture, a malaise that is particularly prevalent in the world of work.
A specific variant of the lack of self-confidence, the feeling of imposture is one of the internal obstacles to a professional career, often mentioned to explain the differences in progression between men and women.
Individual coaching is the main response to this feeling of powerlessness, but Happy Men & Women Share More wants to look at the collective dimension of this supposed lack of self-confidence among women, in the belief that a truly inclusive organisation must be able to help neutralise this internal glass ceiling, for the good of all employees.
🇺🇸#28 Bringing out Inspirational Leaders: how can gender diversity inspire us?
In a world of work that is undergoing profound change and giving rise to new managerial expectations, particularly on the part of the younger generations, companies need to be able to rely on so-called “inspirational” leaders as a key to retaining talent and therefore boosting performance.
But what is an Inspirational Leader? Happy Men & Women Share More sets out to explore this concept, which is proving to be particularly critical in the context of gender diversity policies and women’s access to positions of responsibility. Indeed, over and above the day-to-day ability to get the best out of teams, what is at stake is also the ability to inspire those who have the skills and desire to take on management and executive responsibilities in their own right.
I will look at three dimensions of inspirational leadership in turn:
– The first, of course, is the leader’s personal qualities.
– The second, and this is a topical one, has to do with a certain relationship to work, culturally supported by the company.
– The third, which cannot be ignored, has to do with the aims of the collective effort
🇺🇸#27 Men, women and money: a universal theme to question, to amaze, to invent and act upon!
Ancestral, complex, cultural, personal, sometimes stressful and conflictual, money is a huge subject. Happy Men & Women Share More sets out to explore the subject through the prism of gender diversity.
I will do so in 3 stages:
– First of all, I’d like to remind you how vital, taboo and symbolic money is for men and women alike.
– We will then see that money is inevitably the subject of different representations, depending on whether you are a man or a woman.
– Lastly, we will look at how the focus on money helps to identify benchmarks for action in the context of diversity policies.
🇺🇸#26 – How psychological safety informs action to promote gender equality ?
Often associated with well-being in the workplace and the individual needs of employees, the notion of psychological safety can sometimes seem mawkish in the eyes of directors and managers who are themselves subject to demanding objectives and strong pressure from their own directors and shareholders.
For Happy Men & Women Share More, however, it is a key to building inclusive working environments, conducive to the fulfilment of the talents and ambitions of both men and women. Far from being an obstacle to performance, it encourages the release of energies in the face of the complex challenges companies have to deal with.
I suggest we explore this notion in three stages:
– We will begin by defining psychological safety and understanding how it is a performance driver for teams.
– We will then look at why it is particularly important in the context of ambitious gender diversity policies.
– Finally, we will share a few keys to help our corporate cultures evolve towards greater psychological safety.
🇺🇸#25 – Is the difficult access of women to power a fatality?
Today, women represent 49% of the working population, 42% of executives, 20% of senior managers, 22% of the Executive and management committees of the 120 largest French companies. 3 women in France are now CEOs of CAC 40 companies. The evaporation of women from the spheres of decision and power is a reality and the RIXAIN quotas in France voted at the end of 2021 pushed companies to the wall. How can we reach the objective set, i.e. 30% of the management bodies in 2027, 40% in 2030?
For Happy Men & Women Share More, the progress of gender diversity requires a profound revolution in practices and behaviors at all levels of the company, but the ultimate problem of access to power crystallizes a certain number of contradictions. Will the men and women in power today be able and willing to change the rules of the game that allowed them to conquer their own power?
To address this topic, I will proceed in 3 steps:
– We will first see how men and women are not objectively equal in conquering power.
– We will then see how an inclusive revolution is a key to fostering the emergence of female talent AND AMBITIONS.
– We will finally ask ourselves if this inclusive revolution can reach the spheres of power.
🇺🇸#24 – Gender mix and retirement: focus on two issues of work valuation specific to women
Recognition of work is a complex issue, especially in France, where work plays a greater role than elsewhere in individual and collective identities. Thus, in a study on the subject published in September 2022 by the Jean Jaurès Foundation, only 56% of French employees felt that their work was ‘recognised at its fair value’, whereas this proportion reached 72% in the United Kingdom and 75% in Germany.
In the news at the moment in France, the highly contested pension reform project crystallises these deep but often unsatisfied expectations of recognition, in a context where the salary issue, amplified by inflation, is becoming a major source of dissatisfaction with work.
🇺🇸#23 -Gender diversity: the truth about what motivates us
We all know that gender diversity is a complex change.
It is indeed an unknown subject, on which people can have very different points of view; it is a subject that arouses resistance. It is also a multi-dimensional change that implies questioning entrenched ways of working. And it is a change that must be carried out by leaders and future leaders who have been “bottle-fed” with these practices.
In this context, the question we are constantly asking ourselves, at Companieros, and through the Happy Men & Women Share More approach, is: “what pedagogy for a complex change?”, “how do we get the company’s employees moving on this type of subject?”
🇺🇸#22 – My time, my freedom : an issue at the heart of the gender equality challenge.
The question of how we use our time and the degree of freedom we have in relation to time is an essential determinant of the progress of gender equality at work but also of our personal and professional development.
The freedom of our time is the freedom we can have to meet our private life challenges alongside our work. It is also our freedom to organise our working time in such a way that this organisation best responds to our personal challenges. And we know how much these issues are at the heart of the difficulties that a certain number of women, and in particular mothers, may encounter at key stages of their professional career.
To explore the question “My time, my freedom”, I will proceed in three steps:
1-We will first see how corporate time is still deeply marked by a norm of availability, which weighs daily on the freedom of men and women.
2-We will then see how couples’ time is a key variable in harmonising each other’s professional ambitions.
3-Finally, we will see what room for manoeuvre we have to grow in freedom.
🇺🇸#21 – We must understand what sexism is if we want to protect a treasure: the quality of relations between men and women at work
We never work alone and human relations are the essence of our work.
We work for people: our boss, our manager, our clients, our customers, for society…
We work with people: our colleagues, our suppliers, our councils, state representatives…
We work thanks to people: thanks to our employees, thanks to the people who trained us, thanks to those who created our companies, invented the technologies we use, chartered our means of transport, but also thanks to those who take care of our children, who look after us, protect us, etc.
For Happy Men & Women Share More sexism is a delicate subject because it is often rooted in the unconscious. A non-polemical approach and angle of attack are therefore essential: in this way a fruitful dialogue can be established, rather than a wholesale rejection provoked by aggressiveness or accusation. We therefore seek to raise the necessary awareness, yes, but without anathemas, without setting men and women against each other, by cultivating an awareness of the very human complexity of relations between men and women, which is the source of our torments but also of our joys.
I will offer three lines of thought in this podcast:
1 – We will first take the measure of this new sensitivity to the subject of sexism, which feeds hypermediatized news, in a very often polemical way – with little nuance.
2 – We will then see that sexism is, in companies, a really serious, insidious, powerful destroyer of meaning at work for many women.
3 – Finally, we will understand that it is no longer possible to neglect the subject of sexism because it now involves the legal responsibility of the company and its directors and managers.
🇺🇸#20 – There is no magic wand for professional equality! From misconceptions to a confrontation with reality.
There is no magic wand for professional equality! From misconceptions to a confrontation with reality.
Professional equality is a complex subject because it involves our different personal, family, cultural and ideological frames of reference, our most deeply rooted work habits and a societal background that is not always peaceful.
Faced with this complexity, a number of operational responses have been developed to achieve professional equality in the company, often with the temptation to see them as the magic wand that would finally bring about significant progress.
But companies are the place par excellence for confronting reality. They constantly test these different responses. And when the results are insufficient or slow, they are led to explore new approaches in order to become increasingly anchored in a coherence, in realism and in neutrality and that will enable real progress to be made which will benefit everyone.
We can illustrate this with 4 misconceptions about professional equality that invite us to take the path of confrontation with reality:
1 -Change women
2 – Change men
3 – Destroy stereotypes
4 – Establish quotas
🇺🇸#19 – A new alliance between men and women to achieve professional equality!
The subject of professional equality between men and women has progressively imposed itself on companies, first as a legal issue, then as an image issue and today as an issue of attractiveness for the best talents in an increasingly competitive environment.
There is progress, even if many actors are just beginning to formalize their action plans. However, progress is often laborious, fragile and limited. There is still a lot of resistance to an issue that is still too often considered peripheral, ideological or simply unrealistic.
This situation is not really abnormal: the mistake we make is often to underestimate the complexity of the subject. It questions our representations of the feminine and the masculine, the freedom of our personal, family and professional choices, and our vision of individual and collective performance at work.
For Happy Men & Women Share More, progress in gender diversity and professional equality between men and women requires a respectful, honest and constructive dialogue, but “cards on the table”, on the conditions of professional success for men and women, especially when they are parents. It also requires clarifying how companies can meet their competitive challenges while responding to the aspirations of their employees, who are involved in couples where each person has real family responsibilities.
How can we enable today’s leaders to recognize that the conditions that allowed their own emergence as leaders are not necessarily, or at all, those that will allow the emergence of tomorrow’s leaders?
🇺🇸#18 – Progress in gender equality: a question of time, literally and figuratively!
Almost 15 million women work in France today, compared to 10 million 40 years ago.
This quantitative evolution is also social. It is middle-class and upper middle-class women who have massively entered the labour market over the last forty years: today, 2.2 million women are managers or equivalent, compared to 500,000 in 1982 in France. They account for 40% of managers and higher intellectual professions. A radically new situation: it is only since the beginning of the 21st century that it can be said that most couples work, whatever their background, and in the majority of cases as employees in organisations outside the family.
Happy Men Share More offers 3 complementary insights to understand these tensions:
– We will first discuss the general and unprecedented context of social acceleration which is profoundly transforming our ways of thinking and acting.
– At the heart of this permanent trepidation, we will talk about the challenge of an ecology of time for men, women … and couples
– Finally, we will see how the company’s responsibility is engaged to bring about working methods that allow today’s men and women to fulfil themselves professionally while respecting their essential private life issues: this is a key element, perhaps the most essential, of the Quality of Life at Work.
🇺🇸#17 – Freedom, trust, equality : why are these 3 words the implicit motto of excellent managers?
When we started working on the subject of professional equality between men and women, some fifteen years ago, we did not do so just for women, even though we noted the objective situations of inequality between men and women at work.
What captivated us was the immediate conviction that this subject had the potential of an Archimedean lever and that, thanks to it, we would be able to tell any company: “Give me gender diversity, and I will make your company a model of performance”.
A genuine commitment to more professional equality at work is a sure way to improve the quality of one’s management. To put it differently, the more inclusive leaders and managers are, the better they perform by maximising the expression and development of all the talents around them. This inclusion is first and foremost the result of a dynamic of freedom and trust that is anchored in a series of small internal shifts.
I am going to suggest two levers of managerial progress, directly generated by the issue of gender equality and linked to the conquest of more freedom and trust
🇺🇸#16 – Men’s and women’s careers: There is ambition and ambition…
Many managers, committed to advancing gender equality in their teams, experience recurrent setbacks from talented women whose career development they had personally wanted to support.
“She was offered a great job, but she refused “The job opened up, she didn’t even apply “She said she forgot to apply “She didn’t even apply”.
This puts a coin back into the stereotype machine: “women are less ambitious than men”, and so on and so forth”. Yes, but it must be admitted that this kind of attitude is less common among men! Ambition is a universal subject but it is subtly different from one individual to another, with objectively a certain number of recurrences depending on whether one is a man or a woman. It is a particularly interesting subject to shed light on, in order to better understand the issues involved in improving women’s access to the various levels of responsibility and power.
In order to do this, Happy Men Share More offers you in this podcast a journey in 3 steps:
– What is ambition? We will take the time to define the subject properly, in order to remove anything that might pollute the discussion.
– Then we will see how the company mobilises the ambition of each person and we will ask ourselves whether the models of success it proposes are equally suitable for all its employees, especially men and women.
– Finally, we will try to define some very concrete keys to specifically support women’s ambition
🇺🇸#15 – Motherhood and Career: Stop wasting mothers’ talents!
Motherhood is a key stage in the lives of women and men. What is at stake can’t even be compared to the most exciting professional challenges. The welcome of a new life, the emotion of vulnerability, the access to parental responsibility, the promise of happiness, the joy of loving… but also the anxiety, the fatigue, the laborious adaptation, the tensions within the couple, and sometimes the suffering.
From this perspective, the maternity leave is designed to allow women employees to experience the physical and emotional upheaval of birth outside the rationality of the company. The maternity leave is highly regulated by law and has long been established in practice. Its length seems to correspond to a balance between the needs of mothers and the constraints of professional life. However, it remains a stumbling block in women’s careers. Few companies manage to create a framework of trust that allows their employees to live serenely through the key stages of the maternity leave and the subsequent return to their professional responsibilities. For many women, maternity is a turning point in their professional commitment.
Happy men Share More offers you 3 keys to shed light on this great classic of the gender diversity landscape:
– 1st key: Accompanying the manager when faced with the reality of a disruption in the work group.
– 2nd key: Supporting pregnant women at a key stage in their personal and professional lives
– Finally, as a third key, I will invite you to enter into an inclusive vision of maternity, which can become an opportunity for the company to show a new approach to the needs of young mothers and fathers.
🇺🇸#14 – Skills, gender and power ! Skills have no gender, but does the taste for power have a gender?
The question of power, and specifically the quest for power, is a multifactorial reality, where nature and culture, the conscious and the unconscious are inextricably intertwined.
One thing is certain: the quotas provided for in the “Rixain” Law of the 24th December 2021 (named after the MP Marie-Pierre Rixain), a law aiming at accelerating economic and professional equality, are intended to respond to a factual difference in access, between men and women, to the highest levels of power in the economic world.
Questioning this difference in order to better understand the human and cultural complexity of the subject should make it possible to adjust gender equality action plans and the education that should be done. Happy Men Share more proposes to place this reflection within the very classic Nature/Culture duality, at the risk of stirring up some controversy. But in doing so we are faithful to Happy Men Share more’s editorial line of openness to the human complexity of the subject of professional equality between men and women.
🇺🇸#13 – Rixain” Quotas : Rather than being subjected to them, let’s IN-CLU-DE!
The Rixain law was promulgated on the 24th of December 2021. It is named after the French MP Marie-Pierre Rixain who is the author of the initial law proposal. It introduces a 40% quota of women in senior positions in large companies. 2022 should therefore be a turning point in terms of commitment to gender diversity.
The companies that will be really disturbed by this measure are those that will not have been able to build a sufficiently mixed talent pool to make appointments based solely on skills and aptitude, rather than on gender.
These companies risk being confronted with the two main perverse effects of quotas, namely discrimination against men prepared for these positions and doubt about the legitimacy of the women appointed under these conditions. This is a major risk of demobilization, discouragement, anger and injustice, which can break the pact of trust established between the company’s management and its employees, both men and women.
In order to avoid these risks, and whatever one thinks of the relevance or fairness of quotas, it is necessary to approach this new constraint in a constructive way: taken with intelligence, it can prove to be an astonishing lever of performance and meaning at work for all the employees, men and women. Happy Men Share More provides you with 3 essential keys to do so.
🇺🇸#12 – What do gender targets mean in the face of the great resignation?
In the United States, since the beginning of 2021, more than 25 million employees have left their jobs. And the trend, which crystallised with the COVID crisis, is only accelerating. This is not a fad, it is a revolution that is taking place in the American workplace, and which is coming to France. This phenomenon has a name: it is the #GreatResignation.
It raises questions about things as essential as the value of work (remuneration, social recognition), working conditions (hours, harshness, management), the balance between professional and private life and, more generally, the meaning and purpose of work.
Faced with this phenomenon, which involves the key resource of companies, the best and brightest talent, one might think that gender diversity does not carry much weight.
On the contrary, we believe that it is a compass for creating the conditions that will foster the development and retention of all talents.
🇺🇸#11 – What is gender equality: ‘equality in numbers’ or ‘equality of opportunity’?
Aiming for numerical gender equality in the workplace, or for equality of opportunity, changes the way equality is achieved. It is the question of indicators that is in fact raised: numerical objectives are generally necessary to initiate and measure progress, but what indicators are really legitimate for reporting on a reality that is rooted in such human and social complexity? Happy Men Share More proposes to shed light on this subject, without hiding its preference…
The numerical indicators implicitly refer, whether we like it or not, to an ideal of parity. In this logic, if there is inequality between men and women, it necessarily stems from discrimination, which is then an injustice. To repair these injustices, we must try to identify, and then eliminate, what generated them. When this is not possible, or not enough, or not fast enough, we can choose the hard way, quotas, also called positive discrimination. This approach immediately gives good results in figures, which always appeals to the world of management and communication.
However, the picture also has a dark side to it: the illegitimacy of those appointed by quotas and the discrimination of those who were not appointed because of quotas. Worse still, quotas, by artificially equalising the numbers, actually mask the lack of real change in the realities that generated the discrimination. Inequality will bide its time to reassert itself.
🇺🇸#10 – Men and women at work : role models or standardized roles?
Among the causes or factors that explain the glass ceiling, i.e. the difficulty for women to reach the same positions as men, we regularly mention the lack of female role models. Happy Men Share More proposes to shed light on the logic of these famous female role models, then to challenge it with 3 questions :
– Is it the women or the system that needs female role models?
– Why does a role model have to be female?
– Female or male, do we have the right role models?
🇺🇸#9 – Men and women : a common quest for meaning at work
Too often, in order to develop gender diversity and professional equality, decision makers ask themselves how to « help women ». Happy Men Share More believes that, except at the margins, this is not the issue and that only a universal approach to the needs and aspirations of men and women at work can generate real progress.
Today, I will shed light on this subject and will do so in three stages:
First, I will propose a framework for understanding the needs of men and women for meaning at work. We will then see that although these needs are the same for men and women, the company does not respond in the same way to men and women, and that without knowing it, and without wanting to, its operations penalize certain employee profiles, statistically more women than men.
Finally, we will see that progress is at the crossroads of two wills: Organizational and managerial excellence of the company that allows for true inclusion (and not just in words!) and the commitment of each person, at his or her level, to emancipate themselves from standardized operations that have no real reason to exist.
🇺🇸#8 – Are stereotypes really a key to progress on gender equality?
One of the many advantages of the issue of gender equality is that it is an opportunity to become aware of the weight of our representations on our behaviour. And to discover the cultural and anthropological wealth that governs our identities as men and women, at work and elsewhere. It is therefore definitely a professional subject, but one that is particularly personally involving. For Happy Men & Women Share More, the famous stereotypes about men and women are indeed a key to understanding discrimination, but they are not a magic wand, and we would be more efficient if we questioned the objective gendered norms that govern the functioning of the company.
In order to address this vast subject of stereotypes in a synthetic way, I will first give some basic references on the cognitive bias of stereotypes. Next, we will review the main stereotypes about men and women at work that impact on both their career paths. Finally, we will ask ourselves if this is really the issue.
🇺🇸#7 – Why and how can the new paternity leave promote a better gender mix in the workplace?
On July 1st, paternity leave in France will be doubled from 14 days to 28 days, with 7 mandatory days to be taken just after the birth of the child. This measure, voted almost unanimously last October, is justified on the one hand to allow fathers to enjoy the first days of their child and on the other hand to promote equality between men and women. This news is an opportunity for Happy Men Share More to come back on the impact of parenthood on careers, for men and women.
1. I will first share with you some basic data on parenthood at work and its impact on careers, especially for executives and managers
2. Then, we will look at the concrete changes brought about by the new paternity leave, and how such a measure can become a lever for in-depth change in the company’s culture.
3. Finally, we will broaden our reflection on the global issue of meaning at work, by looking at the impact of work on parenthood.
🇺🇸#6 – Can we win the battle for gender equality without reducing the pressure on working time?
On the 12th May this year, the National Assembly voted unanimously to validate the principle of quotas for women in corporate management bodies. The companies that will be really disturbed by this impending measure are those that have not been able to build up a sufficiently mixed pool of talent to make appointments on the basis of skills and ability for the position of leader, rather than on the basis ender. Happy Men Share More offers you a focus on a complex issue, the control of working hours, which explains a large part of the evaporation of female talent,
My focus will be in 3 steps:
1. I will first invite you to understand gender diversity as an issue of talent emergence and therefore of meaning at work
2. Secondly, I will invite you to understand how the daily pressure on time is a powerful destroyer of meaning at work and therefore a great evaporator of talent
3. Finally, I will suggest some guidelines and resources to help young parents manage their working time. This is important, because the leaders of tomorrow are for the most part young parents in our companies today.
🇺🇸#5 – Quotas without handcuffs: how can you prepare?
After a unanimous vote in the French Assembly on the 12th of May, France is on the verge of adopting the principle of quotas for women in corporate management bodies. The companies that will be really disturbed by this measure are those that will not have been able to build a sufficiently mixed talent pool to make nominations on the basis of skills and ability for the position of leader, rather than on the basis of gender.
These companies run the risk of being confronted with the two main perverse effects of quotas, namely discrimination against men prepared for these positions and doubt about the legitimacy of the women appointed under these conditions. This is a major risk of demobilization, discouragement, anger and injustice, which can break the pact of trust established between the company’s management and its employees, both men and women. How can one deal constructively with this new constraint and make it a lever for performance and meaning at work for all employees, men and women?
🇺🇸#4 – Presenteeism at work: where does it come from? How can we free ourselves from it?
Presenteeism is one of the cultural norms at work that explain the differences in access to responsibilities between men and women.
It is a very French peculiarity, although you may find it elsewhere and it is important to understand its cultural and psycho-social roots if we are to combat it effectively.
Antoine de Gabrielli, founder of the Happy Men Share More network, links presenteeism to the very special relationship that the French have with their work.
How could we define presenteeism exactly?
Presenteeism covers all the attitudes and behaviours that lead to people staying at their desks, at their place of work, when their work is finished and when it is not necessary.
It can be excessive time in the evening, it can be arriving very early in the morning; it can often be not taking one’s leave, not taking one’s birth leave, one’s paternity leave for example. So it’s all this excessive time, not directly useful for work, that we call presenteeism.
🇺🇸#2 – Is diversity an issue of inclusion or integration? Vocabulary does matter!
When we talk about women in the workplace, gender equality or professional equality, the words used can sometimes be confusing: diversity, community, inclusion, integration… In order to fully understand the issues at stake, it is very important to understand the concepts behind each of these words. We’d better have a look at a dictionary. In order to advance gender equality, much attention has been paid to helping women adapt to the company without necessarily trying to adapt the company to women. This may well explain the slow progress.
By shedding light on the notions of diversity and inclusion, Antoine de Gabrielli, founder of the Happy Men Share More network, shows us the importance of a systemic and universal approach, which genuinely seeks to facilitate access to employment and responsibilities for all. But an unadjusted logic of inclusion can have perverse effects of discrimination against women: hence the interest in mastering the subtlety of all these notions!
🇺🇸#1 – What is the glass floor?
Founder of the Happy Men Share More network, Antoine de Gabrielli has always seen the issue of professional equality as one of meaning at work for men and women. It is in this context that he has defined the notion of the glass floor, which mirrors the glass ceiling. It is in this context he therefore invites a gentle revolution in the workplace.
We all aspire to work in a committed way while meeting our essential private life challenges. Yet, how many people, mostly women, give up trying to progress in their careers, as so many obstacles, at one point, seem insurmountable?And how many people, mostly men, sacrifice too much to their work, without even really being aware of it?
