Equal opportunities, not quotas
Gender diversity has a positive impact on business results, but..
- Over 80% of respondents say that gender diversity has a positive impact on business results. Small companies with up to 100 employees are the least convinced. Here, only 69% agree. In contrast, 96.6% of the women surveyed agree with this statement.
- On the question of whether recruiting female managers is a strategic priority in their own company, opinions are almost evenly divided, with 50.38% agreeing and 49.62% disagreeing. The women surveyed are slightly more optimistic: 56% say their company makes a special effort to recruit women for management positions.
- The importance of gender diversity, affirmed by a large majority in the first question, is therefore much less important at the strategic level. …the default is still male.
- On a day-to-day level, the picture is much better when it comes to the measures companies are taking to increase the proportion of women in management positions: 55% have already implemented such measures (43.4%) or are at least planning to do so (11.6%). When broken down by company size, the picture is even more differentiated: only 33.4% of smaller companies with up to 100 employees have already taken measures (27.2%) or are planning to do so (6.2%), while 66.7% have not yet taken any such measures. Among large enterprises, however, 74.4% have already taken action (70.4%) or are planning to do so (4%). And only a minority of 22% have not yet been able or willing to specifically ensure that more women can take up management positions.