Are you for or against quotas? Why?

. – “I am not a supporter of quotas and do not know any woman who is in favour of the quotas. No woman wants to be promoted in order to meet the quota. They want and should be promoted because of their skills and leadership capabilities. 

However, I totally endorse what quotas try to achieve. They force companies to implement gender diversity on higher management levels. In order to achieve this, active career development plans for managers in middle and lower management need to be in place. Hopefully in the near future quotas will no longer be required.

Today, what is a woman who leads?

“My short answer to this question is that the requirements for a leadership position are exactly the same for a woman as for a man. A good leader is characterised by his or her integrity, decision-making, influential and communication skills and obviously his or her passion for the job. Gender is not relevant here. Since there are still fewer women in leadership positions, it is unfortunately still regarded as something extraordinary. I know many women who have excellent leadership capabilities and they motivate their teams to achieve exceptional performance. Same counts obviously also for their male colleagues.

What is still holding back companies from implementing diversity?

“In many companies no concrete development plans are in place for middle to lower management. We need to train, develop and encourage our managers on that level already in order to have a good pipeline for senior management positions. This can be achieved for example by introducing meaningful mentorship programmes in the company. Also, very often, our unconscious biases are slowing us down, especially during the recruitment, but also promotion processes. Very often we build our opinions on wrong assumptions, but as long as this happens unconsciously we will not be able to change it.”

This livestream event will benefit from simultaneous French-English translation.