Natixis signs the United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles

By endorsing the Women’s Empowerment Principles, Natixis pledges to undertake the following:

• Establish high-level corporate leadership for gender equality;
• Treat all women and men fairly at work – respect and support human rights and nondiscrimination;
• Ensure the health, safety and well-being of all women and men workers;
• Promote education, training and professional development for women;
• Implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women;
• Promote equality through community initiatives and advocacy;
• Measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender equality.

Natixis strives to support all its staff worldwide in their career development, and has embarked on a series of initiatives to promote gender equality in the workplace:

• Setting detailed targets for recruitment and gender balance in its leadership circles out to 2020 i.e. 50% of junior recruitments will be women, 30% of the top leader group and 40% of the second leader group will be made up of women;
• Actively supporting the international Women in Natixis Network (WINN);
• Ensuring strict gender balance in talent development programs;
• Setting up initiatives to promote leadership and employability for women;
• Organizing training courses and programs to raise staff awareness of diversity, such as the launch of a serious game on stereotypes and discriminatory situations;
• Taking initiatives to promote careers for women in finance, such as job shadowing, videos portraying Natixis’ Talented Women, partnerships with universities, etc.

In the space of just one year, Natixis has moved up 27 places in the 2018 Ethics and Boards gender diversity index for women on boards on the back of these efforts, and now ranks 46th out of the 120 large French companies listed on the SBF 120.

“Building an inclusive and fair working environment for all our staff is a key priority here at Natixis, and we firmly believe that diversity is a vital source of long-term performance for the company. Our endorsement of the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles is further demonstration of our wholehearted commitment to gender equality” states François Riahi, Chief Executive Officer at Natixis.

Anne Lebel, Chief Human Resources Officer and member of the Natixis Senior Management Committee notes “Our endorsement of the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles will help us further our initiatives to increase the number of women in our leadership circles and promote their career development”.