These findings are the result of the 2023 study “ Diversity and Inclusion within the CAC40 » by the director of the SKEMA Observatory of the feminization of companies, delivered on February 20th. Between inequalities, non-compliance with the Rixain law and a thickening glass ceiling, we take stock.
Freshly delivered, the study by the director of the SKEMA Observatory of the feminization of companies, which focuses on the parity of women within companies, and more specifically in executive committees, is cause for dismay. The finding is far from expectations since this survey, carried out on the basis of the 2022 annual reports of CAC40 companies, reveals that the instructions of the Rixain law are not always respected – if at all – within companies. of the CAC40.
As a reminder, this text of December 24, 2021 aims to accelerate economic and professional equality by creating a ” balanced distribution of each gender among senior executives and members of governing bodies » ; obligations which concern all companies with at least 1,000 employees.
Also, and although the Rixain law requires companies to include 30% of women by 2027 in their executive committees (comex), many companies are still far from the mark, some of them even establishing themselves at the foreign, escaping moreover the Copé-Zimmermann law.
This is the case of Airbus and Stellantis which have respectively 25% and 27% of women on their board of directors where the Copé-Zimmermann law imposes a quota of 40% of women on the boards. By taking up residence in the Netherlands, these social escapees “, as the editor of the study calls them, thus avoid the obligations of the law and are ” free » not respecting the quotas.
4 CAC40 companies have no women in their executive committee
For companies that remain domiciled in France, the figures are not encouraging. In fact, women occupy only 3.75% of the 80 positions of chairman and/or general manager in CAC40 companies; this is still a little more than in 2021 when 2.5% of these positions were held by women. However, no woman is CEO of any of these companies, two women are chairmen of a board of directors, and only one is chief executive officer, the January 2022 figures show.
In addition, of the 562 director positions in CAC 40 companies, 254 are held by women (+3% compared to 2021), i.e. slightly less than half (45.20%). On the other hand, of the 541 positions on the executive committees of CAC40 companies, women hold only 129 of these positions (+27% compared to 2021 however), i.e. 23.84%, where the proportion of men remains stable.
In addition, four CAC40 companies have no women on their executive committee, namely ArcelorMittal, Bouygues, EssilorLuxottica and Stellantis, the latter being hardly worried since they are domiciled abroad.
A thickening glass ceiling
The absence or low presence of women on executive committees is representative of the ” double glass ceiling within CAC40 companies, underlines the study. This ceiling is calculated according to the ratio of women executives and women present in the executive committees.
Thus, all CAC40 companies combined, women represent 39.05% of the workforce. Among them, only 22.95% of female executives are members of executive committees (compared to 19.59% in 2021) while they represent 35.46% of the executive population, “ traditional recruiting pool for executives” indicates the study. The « double glass ceiling » between the executive population and the executive committee then stands at 12.51; 3.2 women present in the executive committees out of 13.5 members.
The inequality index to calculate the glass ceiling revealed that Essilor Luxottica is the company with the thickest ceiling (51.70), since it has no women in its executive committee and 51, 7% of female executives, closely followed by LVMH (51.67), Hermès (37.78) and Vivendi (32.95).
On the other hand, companies like Air Liquide have a very thin glass ceiling, with an index of 2.43, or 28.57% of the 31% of female executives in the Comex.
However, the survey shows that the quotas are sometimes difficult to achieve, with some companies reporting encountering difficulties in recruiting women depending on the field. For example, companies such as Vinci, TotalEnergies, Thalès or Alstom indicate that they struggle to recruit women, unlike Danone, Sanofi, Vivendi or Hermès. However, in the latter two where the recruitment of men is more complicated, they reach a rather high inequality index…
Good students show better operational profitability
In 2022, the study reports that 12 companies (+50% compared to 2021) had on the other hand at least 30% of women in their executive committee, including BNPParibas, Carrefour, Crédit Agricole, or even L’Oréal.
Like Legrand, Eurofins Scientific and Unibail-Rodamco, Dassault even shows an overrepresentation of women on the Comex compared to its population of female managers (38.46% against 21.2% of female managers). It should be noted, however, that the greater proportion of women in the comex is not due to a replacement.
And this feminization is good, because beyond the parity between men and women within a comex or board of directors, the presence of women, period, has positive effects. Indeed, and in general according to the study, the greater the percentage of women in the executive population, in the workforce and in the executive committee, the greater the operational profitability as well as the quality of the environmental and societal responsibility of the company are high and better.
So over the year 2021, lhe operating profitability of the ten CAC40 companies whose management is the more feminized (LVMH, Hermès, Kering) is 47.97% higher than that of the ten companies with the least female management (20.36% against 13.76%); lhas social responsibility East 60.87% higher than that of the ten companies with the least female management (21.91 against 13.62) ; and theenvironmental responsibility is 53.10% higher for the least feminized (14.07 against 9,19).
Same observation in the Comex where thehe operating profitability of the ten companies whose comex is the most feminized (Legrand, Dassault, Société Générale) is 64.24% higher than that of the ten whose comex is the least feminized (21.17% against 12.89%). Social responsibility is 42.75% higher (19.3 versus 13.52), and the environmental responsibility of the ten companies whose comex is the most feminized is 41.68% higher than that of the ten companies whose comex is the least feminized (13.19 against 9.31).
In general, the majority of companies are gradually increasing the quotas from one year to the next, but the path to reach those set by the Rixain law for March 2027 is still long and takes – perhaps a little too much – his time. However, it is on the right track!
Allison Vaslin