100 points to know about...
Inclusive project management

Gender inequalities in professional fields are still too numerous in our Western societies today. Between salary inequalities, imbalances in promotions and lack of representation in management positions, gender studies show how far we still have to go. These inequalities are based more on sexist and ageist models than on real scientific analysis. Tackling gender inequalities in the professional sphere is to truly tackle the gender inequalities that structure our societies.

In 2021, EU Member States scored an average of 68 out of 100 on the Gender Equality Index, a measurement tool developed by the European Institute for Gender Equality. This score has risen by only 4.9 points since 2013, the earliest year of measurement on the Institute's website.

According to Eurostat, 66.2% of women aged 20 to 64 were employed in the EU in 2020. This rate has been increasing for almost ten years (60.9% in 2011). However, it is still more than 10 points lower than for men: on average, 77.2% of them were in employment in the EU in 2020. This can be explained by the higher proportion of women who have to choose between their job and domestic organisation (often related to children). Because the man's income is higher than the woman's in 3 out of 4 heterosexual couples according to INSEE, the choice of maintaining activity in contexts such as Covid-19 for example, is almost automatically made in favour of the man's activity. In 2020, women earned on average 13% less than men in the EU, according to Eurostat.

Currently, only one woman is the CEO of a CAC40 company. The same is true for all other levels of management. The share of women in the management bodies of CAC40 companies is 18.4%, while they represent 32% of managers and 48% of the workforce. On the other hand, women are over-represented in the most precarious and least well-paid jobs. In France, they hold 78% of part-time jobs and 70% of fixed-term and temporary contracts. These inequalities correspond to an economic concept known as the "glass ceiling" or "invisible wall", which refers to any case where an individual is confronted with a network of tacit, implicit or even hidden power that keeps him or her away from a level of power or pay or hierarchy to which he or she could aspire. Project management or leading jobs are therefore often more difficult for women to attain than for men.

The same is true in the digital sectors. Despite the major importance of women in the history of technological innovations (Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Hedy Lamarr, Katherine Johnson, etc.), women account for only 27% of employees in the IT and digital sectors and only 13% of the workforce in specialised engineering schools.

These figures reveal a truly problematic situation on a European scale. Some initiatives show the importance and interest of gender inclusion in digital fields and management positions which are still too often male dominated. Moreover, it has been proven that gender inclusion can have many benefits in terms of sustainability and for the company. This is what we will see in the next grain