More than other business sectors, finance has traditionally been characterized by under-representation for women across most of its businesses and management bodies. No-one can tolerate such a situation.

As a parent, citizen and business leader, the fight for true equality of chances and opportunities, of conditions and rights holds particular importance for me.

Here at Natixis, we are committed to building a respectful and inclusive working environment drawing on our staff’s diversity and where each voice is heard and every employee is valued and empowered to make an impact. We believe that companies that can welcome diverse profiles generate stronger intelligence, offer greater wellbeing and create more value.

We were delighted this summer to hear that Natixis is the leading bank in the French Ministry of State for Gender Equality and the Fight Against Discrimination’s ranking for gender balance in management bodies for companies listed on the SBF120. This ranking reflects our efforts and progress to increase female representation in our leadership groups, promote wage equality and support women in their careers.

However, we must continue to work together relentlessly to pursue these efforts, particularly in education to encourage more women to consider a career in finance, attract them to our industry and inspire them to take career paths that are still seen as more male-dominated. With this mind, each year we implement a raft of initiatives along with universities, business schools and even high schools to give young girls an insight into our businesses and break down stereotypes.

To further advance the promotion of women here at Natixis, we also launched the Women's sponsorship program, providing our female staff with individual mentoring from our female and male leaders. We have also rolled out more stringent recruitment procedures to ensure that we focus on skills-based criteria rather than personal affinities.

Lastly, in keeping with our commitment to sustainable and responsible finance, Natixis decided to support our impact investment asset manager Mirova in its development of an investment strategy devoted to promoting women in the corporate world and greater female representation in management bodies. 

Increasing female representation in the financial sector is not optional – it is crucial to ensure performance for our companies and our industry as a whole. Here at Natixis, we are convinced that only with active efforts from each and every one of us – leaders first and foremost – will we succeed in developing an inclusive, open and supportive environment, and stepping up this momentum. However, corporate initiatives will never be enough, no matter how ambitious they are, and so we must take collective action across all levels of society – politics, media, education, culture, business world, associations – to mobilize stakeholders and share best practices. With this ambition in mind, Natixis has decided to stand as partner to the Marie-Claire Think Tank again for the second year in a row.