Men in the corner - Building Gender Balanced Business

The strategic importance of women in business and what companies can do to maximise the opportunities they represent was discussed in a special session for men at the fourth annual gathering of the world’s top leaders at the Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society, held in Deauville, France from October 16-18, 2008.

Focus on Progress
The theme of the Women’s Forum this year was progress and drew on insights from the worlds of science, the arts, business, politics and academia.

1200 highly influential people from 75 countries were attending to debate, inspire, listen and network — 15 per cent of them men, who got a specially designed section known as the Men’s Corner, sponsored by Bain & Company, Les Echos and 20-First (Avivah Wittenberg-Cox’s consultancy company).

Why a Men’s Corner?

“In improving gender balance, women may hold the keys, but men still control the locks.”
Olivier Marchal, Bain & Company
Quoted in Why Women Mean Business, Wiley 2008

The Men’s Corner seeks to offer corporate leadership an opportunity to take accountability for the issue of gender. Over three days, the Men’s Corner proposed two kinds of opportunities to learn and exchange around the gender issue.

• 3 panel sessions with CEO’s of leading companies (Axel Miller – Dexia, Michel Landel – Sodexo, Patrick Sayer – Eurazeo, Frank Brown – Dean INSEAD) debated and discussed the opportunities and challenges of gender for the corporate world. These sessions also featured gender expert Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, CEO of 20-first and co-author of Why Women Mean Business: Understanding the Emergence of Our Next Economic Revolution, and Olivier Marchal, Managing Director of Bain & Company.

We looked in-depth and behind the scenes at how business can benefit from better gender balance, and how some of the world’s leading companies are already gaining competitive advantage.

Last year, the Men’s Corner was a huge hit at the Women’s Forum. Carlos Ghosn of Renault/ Nissan, Frank Brown of INSEAD and Jean-Claude Tricoire of Schneider Electric, were among the CEOs that addressed avid crowds saying that gender was a key strategic issue for their companies. Many of them committed to addressing the imbalances they recognised in their own leadership teams.

The objective of Men’s Corner is to share practical, applicable experiences so that participants have pragmatic ideas that they can put into practice back at the office at 8am Monday morning – either in the panel sessions or in smaller more informal discussions throughout the Forum.