5) The Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society
The Women’s Forum has been a Publicis Groupe subsidiary since 2009. This global platform’s role is to promote the voices of women not only to issues of equality, but also to other issues concerning global social and economic issues as a whole. The Women’s Forum works for a fairer and more inclusive world, seeking to remove structural barriers to equality to ensure that women of all generations and from all ethnic, cultural and social backgrounds can be players and decision-makers in all areas.
Since 2020, the Women’s Forum has published its Barometer, which enables a comparison between the perception of the general public with the actual most recent figures in the G7 and/or G20 countries. This instrument is driven by the ambition of the Women’s Forum to be a reference point on areas where women are the most disadvantaged, while their impact is decisive such as the climate, female entrepreneurship, professions of the future, artificial intelligence and healthcare. This barometer enables the monitoring of the progress made year after year and inform political and economic decision-makers as well as civil society. The data from the 2022 edition of the Barometer speak for themselves: 74% of citizens in the G7 countries perceive inequality between women and men in terms of social, political and/or economic rights in their country, 67% of respondents are convinced that gender inequality at work is a real problem.
Forums
On the occasion of the 2022 Global Meeting in November 2022 in Paris, organized around the theme “Time to Act”, the Women’s Forum brought together political, economic and civil society leaders, alongside young activists, to share innovative solutions to the challenges of today and tomorrow. This 2022 hybrid edition brought together nearly 30,000 participants online in three days with 2,300 participants in Paris on the last day. In June 2022, a Women’s Forum was held in Berlin in a smaller format with 250 participants, making it possible to highlight the recommendations of the Women’s Forum to the members of the G7.
The Daring Circles and partnerships
Since 2018, the Women’s Forum has Daring Circles, bringing together around 50 partners: companies, international institutions, NGOs and experts. Five intersector working Groupes are active and aim to implement solutions where women are disproportionately affected and where their leadership is crucial: Women4AI, Women4Business, Women4Climate, Women4Health, Women4STEM. These action-oriented coalitions aim to develop operational solutions on the climate, technology for the common good, access to health and economic empowerment.
Since 2021, when the Women’s Forum launched WomenEntrepreneurs 4Good, its accelerator, in partnership with P&G and HEC, its aim has been to identify and support projects led by women that enable an acceleration of the energy and ecological transition and promote Green Economy. Around ten women were selected for this first seven-month program, alternating online sessions and access to experts and stakeholders who can help them grow their project in a sustainable manner and change scale. In France in 2022, in partnership with BNP Paribas and HEC, a list of 40 women was created through Club FWE40 (French Women Entrepreneurs) to support them in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as in CSR with the support of EcoVadis. Finally, the Youth Voices Initiative was set up to bring together 100 young women and men in Paris to involve them in workshops led by Boston Consulting Group on Climate, Health, STEM and Peace.
The Women’s Forum organized a session on the theme of violence against women on November 24, 2022, in the presence of two ministers, Isabelle Rome and Marlène Schiappa. The Publicis head office was lit up in orange in support of this cause on November 25. And the Publicis Consultants teams carried out a general public influence campaign for the benefit of the FACE association.
Other diversity and inclusion indicators
The legal framework in each country determines the data that may be made public. Gender and age are the only two criteria authorized without restriction in France and applicable worldwide. This is why every year since June 2020, Publicis Groupe has publicly shared its data on the ethnic origins of its employees only in the United States, as part of a regulation allowing it and a strong commitment to improve real inclusion within the agencies. Disability is a criterion that is unevenly followed in all countries; only French data is published in this document. For Publicis Groupe, indicators related to sexual orientation and religion are a matter of everyone’s privacy; this does not diminish the fact that the Groupe takes into account the challenges of intersectionality and their difficulties, as inclusion must include all criteria without exception in order to fight effectively against all forms of discrimination.