The share of women in management positions in the CAC 40 increased in 2024

Little by little, the proportion of women in the management of large groups is growing in France. Three years after the adoption of a law on quotas, there are more and more women at the helm, according to a study published this Tuesday, February 25 by the Skema observatory of the feminization of companies. In 2024, 28% of positions in the management bodies of CAC 40 companies were occupied by women, an increase of two points in one year.

This increase in diversity is a direct effect of the Rixain law, which will soon impose quotas for women in management positions in companies with more than 1,000 employees: 30% in March 2026 and 40% in March 2029. "This law has no equivalent in Western countries," notes Michel Ferrary, a researcher affiliated with the Skema business school and director of the observatory. Companies are preparing for it in just three years. Since the Rixain law was enacted in 2021, the proportion of women on executive committees or management boards of CAC 40 companies has increased by more than eight percentage points. According to Statista data, the levels were comparable in the United Kingdom and Germany in 2023 for management positions.

To do this, companies have not necessarily replaced a man with a woman. "They are rather adding a chair around the table," explains Michel Ferrary. Of the 543 positions on executive committees (or management committees) of CAC40 companies (+15 compared to 2023), women occupy 155 (+16 compared to 2023) and men occupy 388 (-1 compared to 2023). "We need to look in detail at whether the women appointed occupy positions as important as the men. A communications or CSR director is not the same as a financial director," says Michel Ferrary.

In January, Medef boss Patrick Martin was worried about the deadline for the first quotas of the Rixain law . "We won't be ready," he lamented. "There are jobs that are gendered. In my company," in construction and industry, "I'm tearing my hair out trying to feminize my management committee."

There is, however, a precedent, that of the Copé-Zimmerman law , which in 2011 established quotas in control bodies, such as boards of directors, which are widely respected today. "As much as in a board of directors, there are mandates: you appoint a woman in place of a man, it's not dramatic," assured Patrick Martin. "In the company, it's a little different: when you have a man who has not done badly in a management committee, and you " get rid of him " because the body needs to be feminized, it's much more sensitive," he added.

Portrait

In 2022, Michel Ferrary and his colleague Stéphane Déo combed through the data of 159 listed companies and scrutinized their results according to the degree of diversity in their middle management. This work made it possible to "confirm statistically significant relationships between gender diversity at the middle management and employee level, and profitability". They suggested that net margin and EBITDA (gross operating income, the main profitability indicator for companies) climb when the rate of women approaches 50% and fall beyond that. Low diversity - too many men and few women, or vice versa - weighs on profitability, all other things being equal.

Michel Ferrary says he has noticed since the election of Donald Trump in the United States, "a turnaround in companies" on diversity. "Some, like Accenture, McDonald's, or Walmart are questioning their diversity policies. " "But others, like JPMorgan, refuse to go back on it, because they believe it is a performance factor," he notes.