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HEC has been a driving force behind the feminisation of management, with women constituting more than one-third of every cohort since the 1980s. One sign of the School’s special focus on this area was its 2001 creation of HEC WOMEN’S Commission.

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Its purpose
Approach and objectives
Our Actions
The Team

ITS PURPOSE - supporting professional women

"Women execs", a rapidly expanding "species"
Women’s ever-greater role in the work world (2 out of every 3 women are professionally active today, vs. 1 out of 2 a generation ago, c.f., INSEE) has been accompanied by the increasing power of female corporate executives. According to BIPE, between 1990 and 2002 alone there was a 76% growth in “women execs”. Since exceeding the symbolic figure of 1 million in 1997 (the same year that their male counterparts passed the 2 million mark), French businesswomen have continued their march onwards and upwards. Today 1 in every 10 women between the ages of 25 and 40 belongs to this highly influential community.
Redefining the couple and home life …
40% of these women live with a partner, in a pair of equals. Their finances may be solid but they have little free time, especially when children are involved. With such full schedules, they have a high demand for services and time-saving solutions. This stimulates economic activity in turn.
30% of all such women are experiencing an even greater innovation, with a professional status that is superior to their partner’s. The final third do not live in a couple - whether or not this situation is of their own choosing. ( Source: BIPE – February 2004 )
…and applying a career logic that has to integrate their private life Women execs always lead a “double life”, often with partners who do little more than “help” them from time to time. They also work more than other women, resorting much less frequently to part-time employment schemes. Although women execs often postpone motherhood until the age of 35, when they do have children, their statistics are similar to those found in other socio-professional categories.
Despite all of this, there are some who consider it all too easy for young women graduates to start a career and lead a professional life, because they haven’t had any children yet and may have been raised in a mixed sex environment. Others, on the other hand, view this endeavour as being harder than it really is, seeing barriers where none exist and starting out with a pessimistic attitude.

Women's networks, spreading like wildfirel

Seen more and more as a priority
There are a large number of (mostly male) networks that women dare not join, or else where they constitute a minority if they do. Yet it is undoubtedly very useful, at a certain point in one’s career and irrespective of one’s competencies, to gain exposure to other people and to become well known and identifiable.
Answering women execs’ expectations
Women execs want to be part of a positive dynamic, meet other women with similar interests and take part in events that enrich them at a professional level. In other words, they want to get on with things.
WOMEN’S HEC, a catalyst for network movements throughout France’s elite Grandes Ecoles sector.
Founded in 2001, Women’s HEC has blazed the trail for other Grandes Ecoles schools, helping to found a “GRANDES ECOLES AU FEMININ” association that eight of the country’s top academic institutions use to cooperate on a number of fundamental issues.

GEF fulfils three roles, serving as an observatory of female graduates’ career paths; a focal point for any salient initiatives launched in the Grandes Ecoles network; and an organiser of meetings where Grandes Ecoles women graduates can gather.

Women’s HEC has pushed an elite Grandes Ecoles logic in networks that were previously organised on a sectorial or functional basis, or for whom gender mixing itself had been the main concern. In contrast to approaches that were much too specific, elitist or politicized, Women’s HEC follows a new path suitable to all HEC women graduates regardless of their career choices, which can vary from the most "traditional" to the most "atypical".

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Approach and objectives

“Today’s women graduates have replaced career plans with life planning”

Our approach
All in all, 22,000 persons have graduated from HEC. Women account for 4,400 of this total, and for 44% of the 2002 cohort..

In 2001, HEC Alumni Association carried out a major survey of women graduates to improve its familiarity with and understanding of their needs. The study’s findings have confirmed that the approach presiding over the creation of Women’s HEC suits women’s deep-seated expectations.

Focusing on HEC female graduates’ personal experiences and career outlooks, “Women’s HEC” is a forum for thinking, the sharing of professional knowledge and the initiation of actions aimed at providing advice on, orienting and promoting all forms of careers (from the most “traditional” to the most “atypical”) to help our HEC colleagues with their “life planning” » and to allow companies to make better use of their competencies.

This Commission acts as a focal point and link for women who already belong to at least one of the Association’s other professional and sectorial commissions.
Our objectives
Women’s HEC aims to support the professional development of the Group’s female graduates (HEC, Masters, MBA, Doctor) both by encouraging them to contact one another to share their experiences, and also by carrying out actions that will enhance the quality of HEC female graduates’ professional lives.

It is obvious that particular attention has to be paid to the specific nature of women’s career paths, providing them with ad hoc services that will correspond to their needs and new expectations in a rapidly changing professional, economic and sociological environment.

WOMEN’S HEC also aims to encourage increased female participation in all of the activities that the Association offers, to help women make better use of the HEC network’s current, notably its sectorial professional groups.

In addition to women’s needs, WOMEN’S HEC also take actions focused on men who feel just as concerned by issues like how best to balance their private and professional lives. Studies published by the HEC Women’s Commission are also intended for men’s benefit, notably when this involves optimizing their life planning and making innovative career choices.

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Our actions

Helping the network to develop
Women are aware that they have often neglected their networks, for reasons mainly pertaining to professional vs. family time management pressures. We try to help them get back into touch:

- with one another, via regularly scheduled “Women’s HEC meetings” with speakers of varied backgrounds who come in to discuss career/life choices, like on 9 February 2004 with Marie Paule Dousset after the publication of her book “Au boulot the filles (To work, girls)”, or in March with Dominique Meda, a work sociologist

- with other associations, like GEF “Grandes Ecoles au Féminin” on 20 January 2004 at the Louvre Carousel, to present IPSOS’s 2004 study of women graduates.
Satisfy all types of expectations

- Women leaders :

How to manage a career at the highest level as a woman: A database of women executives who have graduated from the HEC Group has been compiled, so that women occupying top management roles can stand up and be counted.
- “Women’s Entrepreneurship” Conference, 24 May 04
- “Women Leaders” Evening, 15 June 2004

- Working differently:

Because of strong interest in these topics, Women’s HEC has focused on alternative forms of labour (employment other than under an open-ended contract, full-time employment, independent work, free lancing, job-sharing, remote working etc…)
- A March 2002 survey of women graduates on part-time employment
- A reference document written on alternative forms of work
- A March 2003 “Working differently” forum, in partnership with the HEC Alumni Association Careers department and involving the participation of 380 graduates, both men and women
- A “Negotiating part-time work” training programme in November 2003, plus ongoing info on part-time job banks.
- Going back to work
Given certain women’s expectations that they be able to go back to work (after a stint abroad or time out of the labour market), Women’s HEC has launched a number of re-employment actions. Individual interviews with one of the Group’s full-time staff members
Communicating efficiently

with HEC women since April 2002 via a Women’s HEC newsletter e-mailed on a bi-monthly basis
with the whole of HEC by participating in HEC Review and conveying Publication Commission members’ diverse backgrounds
on-campus, by meeting with students: e.g., on 22 May 2002, to discuss “Career plans or life planning”

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The Team

Our Commission is comprised of a Steering Committee that coordinates several workgroups organised on a thematic basis.

Presidente :
Évelyne Sevin (H.80)
Steering committee :
Évelyne Sevin (H.80)
Head of carrers :
Sylvie Chamberlin (H.85)
Head of leading women :
Valérie Baudson (H.95)
Person in charge to work differently
Pascale Chevallier-Gallen (I.86)
Head of communication:
Valérie Lombard (H.86)
Head of network :
Isabelle Korfan-Loy (I.85)
Secretary-general :
Fabienne Schwalbe (H.85)
Relations review:
Fabienne Saugier (H.91)
Women's HEC london:
Valérie Ellwood (H.88)

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