International Women’s Day – March 8th
International Women’s Day is celebrated worldwide on March 8th since it was initiated by the United Nations in 1977. This year’s theme ‘Equality for Women is Progress for All’ particularly resonates with Mazars’ approach and with several actions undertaken at Group level and in several countries where Mazars is present over the past years.
As an international partnership, Mazars favors Collective Intelligence and believes diversity and genders’ equality are at the core of sustainable growth and progress. We foster an organization where the management of differences and equality between genders are a reality and we believe in the power of influencing through open discussions and debates on this topic. This is why we have been and still are an active player and contributor –inside and outside Mazars – in the debates about diversity and women’s in the workplace.
Mazars has been committed to women’s empowerment through various actions and programs. Here are below a few examples of these contributions.
Mazars as a Group
Committing to women empowerment
During our latest Global Partners’ Conference held in Berlin in December 2013, Mazars announced the signature of the seven Women Empowerment Principles put forward by UN Women. Mazars is now committed to support these 7 principles and to promote them in everything we do. To find out more about these 7 principles, click here.
During this same international meeting, Denise K. Fletcher, external member of Mazars’ Governance Council, took the floor to highlight the importance of diversity and man and women equality in an organization like Mazars. She said : “ In Europe, a Mc Kinsey study showed that if a company has two women or more on its executive board, its earnings before interests and taxes is higher is 11%, compared to 5.8% for other companies”.
Discussing expectations, understanding issues
Mazars also decided to contribute to the global debate through the production of thought leadership pieces and surveys highlighting complementary points of view in the area of diversity and women. This thoughtful content is shared internally with our teams in more than 70 countries and we take opportunities to share and comment it externally through several conferences and forums (ie: Global Summit of Women, Deauville’s Women’s Forum, etc).
Hence, Mazars launched a book in 2011 entitled ‘A Women’s World: A better World’ where Mazars Diversity Director, Muriel de Saint Sauveur interviewed 100 women in 33 countries to ask them what they would change about the world if they could do it. « A women’s world, a better world? » .The book was translated in 4 languages.
We also launched in 2012 a survey with the research firm Women’Up (The Y Revolution ? ) about Gen Y Women to better understand how they relate to the workplace and what kind of challenges they do face. Then, in 2013, we decided to conduct a survey focusing on Gen Y men as we believe they do play a crucial role within all evolutions that can take place globally. We interviewed 750 men from 60 countries, to write this study called What do men think ?
Mazars in Poland
In Poland we place great emphasis on women’s empowerment, which we consider a strong point of our company. We feel that diversity is a contributing factor to company’s growth. We ensure that all our employees enjoy equal opportunities for career development.
Being a company with the gender parity in the Managing Board we are aware of the advantages of diverse management styles and various points of view. Therefore we enter debates aiming at promoting women’s role as business leaders.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us with ay questions or for further information.
Mazars Communications Department
Mazars in Poland : Renata Stefanowska (r.stefanowska@mazars.pl)
Group Diversity Director : Muriel de Saint Sauveur (muriel.de-saint-sauveur@mazars.com)