LEADERSHIP AU FÉMININ
Women’s leadership: challenges, levers and keys to asserting yourself as a leader
We believe that working on gender balance can and must create value for everyone.
Our cross-company programmes support women at every stage of their career, as well as young talents and managers in mixed-gender pathways, enabling them to build self-confidence, assert their leadership and develop strong international networks.
Women’s leadership is not a topic reserved for senior executives: it concerns every woman manager and every female talent who wants to progress in her career and strengthen her impact within her organisation. Building self-confidence, developing legitimacy and establishing oneself as a woman leader in environments still marked by inequality — these are the practical challenges Diafora has supported for 20 years, in the service of workplace equality and sustainable gender balance.
Understanding: 7 key points
What is the reality of gender balance in companies?
The Copé-Zimmermann Act (2011): a success for gender parity on boards of directors.
In 2011, France adopted the Copé-Zimmermann Act, requiring women to hold 40% of seats on the boards of directors and supervisory boards of large companies. Ten years later, the target had not only been met but exceeded: women now hold over 46% of seats on the governing boards of CAC 40 and SBF 120 companies. This result, praised across Europe, places France among the world leaders in boardroom gender parity—a model that many countries are now seeking to follow.
💡Uneven progress: gender parity remains a challenge in executive roles
Although women’s representation on boards has risen sharply, the picture is very different in executive roles. Despite the progress made, women remain under-represented on Executive Committees and Management Committees. The Rixain Act is specifically intended to accelerate this transition.
According to the 9th IFA–Ethics & Boards Barometer (2025), women hold 29% of positions on these strategic bodies within the SBF 120. However, these figures conceal significant disparities between sectors and companies.
An encouraging picture, but there is still some way to go before genuine parity is achieved at every level of decision-making.
💡Research & Data Spotlight:
Beyond the French figures, the European context also sets clear requirements: EU Directive 2022/2381 establishes a target of 40% women among directors by June 2026. The gender pay gap persists: 11.6% in France according to the OECD, slightly above the European average of 10.8%. And for anyone who still doubts the value of quotas, a longitudinal study by Blomkvist et al. (2024), following 2,700 elected representatives over 13 years, shows that quota mechanisms do not reduce the quality of appointments. On the contrary, they compel shareholders to assess qualified women candidates who might previously have been overlooked.
Leadership
28% of Executive Comittee seats at CAC 40 and SBF 120 companies held by women in 2025
4 women CEOs in the CAC 40
12 women CEOs in the SBF 120 in 2025
Female Talents
53% of bachelor’s and master’s graduates worldwide
48% to 55% of the workforce, depending on the country
28% of management positions worldwide
Source Unesco – 2025
Younger Generations
76% of Gen Z
74% of Millenials
have strong expectations regarding
- Engagement
- Retention
Source Deloitte – 2024
Clients
75% of consumers influenced by D&I considerations in their purchasing decisions.
Source Kantar – 2021
Diafora supports Executive Committees and governing bodies in making gender balance a strategic driver at the highest level of the organisation.
More than 600 Executive Committee members already supported.
Why do women remain under-represented in leadership positions?
We all have a responsibility to act for greater gender balance in the workplace.
Deep-rooted social norms
Society still conveys the idea that leadership is more closely associated with traditionally masculine traits, such as unilateral decision-making and assertiveness, while traditionally feminine qualities, such as collaboration and listening, are valued less in positions of power. In addition, the unequal distribution of domestic and parental responsibilities often limits women’s availability for demanding roles. These perceptions are far from harmless: they are internalised from an early age and continue to influence women’s career paths throughout their lives.
Personal challenges for women to overcome
Recruitment and promotion processes sometimes reproduce unconscious biases, favouring profiles that resemble current leaders. Assessment criteria, such as geographical mobility and strict full-time availability, and influence networks that are often male-dominated, rarely work to women’s advantage. Finally, the absence of proactive policies, including gender-balanced talent pools and career support, slows women’s access to key roles. Research describes this phenomenon as ‘homophilous networks’: men recommend men, thereby perpetuating patterns of co-option that structurally exclude women.
Des défis personnels à surmonter pour les femmes
Many women internalise barriers such as impostor syndrome or the fear of not meeting expectations. Difficulty asserting themselves in highly competitive environments, or reconciling ambition with their personal lives without feeling guilty, may also lead them to turn down opportunities. A lack of inspiring female role models in some sectors reinforces this sense of illegitimacy.
The data confirms this precisely: for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 85 women are promoted to the same level on average, and this figure falls to 71 for women from visible minority backgrounds. These structural inequalities are compounded by what researchers call the ‘invisible tax’: women devote more time to DEI initiatives, informal mentoring roles and relationship-building work that supports team cohesion, all efforts that remain invisible in appraisal and promotion frameworks. This quiet accumulation of structural disadvantages largely explains why progress, although real, remains far too slow.
Diafora designs and delivers interactive talks to help people understand, engage and take action.
Does women’s leadership exist?
Women’s leadership: distinctive strengths within diverse management.
Fundamentally, women and men share the same core leadership capabilities: strategic vision, resilience, interpersonal intelligence and the ability to inspire. However, education, social norms and enduring workplace codes shape different expectations, valuing certain traits according to gender.
Studies therefore show that women leaders often develop distinctive qualities, without these being exclusive to one gender:
Collaborative management
active listening, consensus-building and valuing collective intelligence.
An inclusive approach
attention to diversity, managing conflict through dialogue and creating psychologically safe environments.
Adaptive resilience
the ability to navigate complex contexts with empathy while maintaining high standards and performance.
A purpose-led approach
a strong commitment to meaningful goals that align business performance with shared purpose.
These styles are neither ‘feminine’ nor ‘masculine’; they are the result of experience and adaptation in environments where women have had to establish their legitimacy differently.
The challenge today? To move beyond bias and recognise that diversity of approach, whether it comes from women or men—enriches leadership and organisational performance.
💡The empirical evidence continues to grow: according to McKinsey (2020), companies with strong female representation in senior leadership are 25% more likely to achieve above-average profitability for their sector. Research in organisational psychology also draws a clear distinction between ‘transformational’ leadership, focused on inspiration, vision and people development, and ‘transactional’ leadership, which is more oriented towards exchanging rewards for performance.
Statistically, women leaders adopt the former style more often, and it is recognised as more effective for the complex challenges facing modern organisations. More recently, Paolone et al. (2025) established a positive and significant correlation between women’s presence on boards and the ESG performance of French companies—confirming that gender-balanced governance is a driver of sustainability, not merely representation.
Diafora delivers interactive workshops for managers and experts, sharing practical ways to advance gender balance every day
More than 6,800 managers and HR professionals engaged.
Developing women’s leadership: what practical levers can help break through the glass ceiling?
Women’s leadership does not happen by chance—it is built, asserted and strengthened through the right tools.
Our cross-company programmes support women at every stage of their career, from emerging talent to experienced senior leaders, as well as managers taking part in mixed-gender programmes.
💡The aim? To give them the tools to fully embrace their leadership, broaden their influence and build international networks that create opportunities.
Through interactive workshops, targeted training and tailored action plans, we work to make gender balance a strategic lever for cultural transformation. By rethinking leadership models, we help organisations harness diversity as a strength—for more innovative teams, more balanced decisions and sustainable performance.
Five practical levers for developing women’s leadership:
Build self-confidence and assertiveness
Identify and overcome limiting
beliefs and claim your rightful place in decision-making forums.
Build your personal brand and visibility
Learn to articulate your skills, achievements and distinctive leadership style.
Master public speaking and maximise your impact
Techniques for clear expression, persuasion and influence in competitive environments.
Activate and expand your international professional network
Build lasting strategic connections beyond your usual environment.
Join a cross-company programme
Step outside your reporting line, meet peers from other sectors, speak openly and build a lasting community.
Cross-company learning is the most powerful format for this work: outside the reporting line and free from internal scrutiny, it creates a space for open discussion where individual transformation can genuinely take place.
💡This has been our conviction at Diafora for 20 years: meeting someone different, a woman from another sector, generation or professional position, can trigger an insight that no internal training programme can create on its own.
Diafora welcomes 1300 women each year and helps them unlock their professional ambition, accelerate their careers, and strengthen their confidence, impact and networks.
More than 12,000 women have been empowered to take action
How does a mentoring programme play a key role in supporting women’s career paths and strengthening gender balance in the workplace?
Mentoring: an essential lever for workplace equality and gender balance.
By addressing practical levers, access to opportunities, talent visibility and career aspirations, it helps break through glass ceilings by providing tailored support.
Beyond skills development, mentoring helps participants understand the organisation’s unwritten rules and broadens their view of what success can look like, enabling women to move beyond systemic bias. It creates a safe space where sharing experience and strategic knowledge, networks, negotiation and decision-making, becomes a catalyst for confidence and ambition.
By fostering cross-functional relationships built on trust, mentoring also strengthens organisational culture and a sense of belonging, while bringing inclusion values to life. Finally, by breaking down silos across generations, functions and hierarchical levels, it broadens internal networks and creates collective momentum in which every talented person, regardless of gender, can thrive and progress.
A worthwhile investment: for women, for teams and for the organisation.
“I was able to analyse challenges with greater perspective and less emotion. Being outside my usual environment changed everything.”
“Advice from an Executive Committee member outside my reporting line… It gave me a direct, unfiltered perspective that I could never have obtained internally.”
“I was able to persuade my manager to introduce a new organisational structure. The programme gave me the method and the confidence to take the initiative.”
“The benefits are mutual: mentoring provides an external perspective on the organisation. As a mentor, I learn as much as my mentee.”
Mentors and Mentee build, meeting after meeting, something that doesn’t exist in their organisation’s org chart: a space beyond hierarchy, a place for open conversations about ambitions and doubts, and a connection across generations and professions.
9.0/10
Satisfaction
Mentees
9.2/10
Recommandation
Rate
100%
Mentees
who have taken concrete action
Diafora supports the awareness-raising and onboarding of the Executive Committee and programme sponsor, defines the programme framework and implementation approach in line with your organisational culture, and trains mentees and mentors in the mindsets and responsibilities required for an effective mentoring relationship, while raising awareness of the impact of gender differences.
The Diafora advantage: we recommend that mentees take part in targeted cross-company training from the launch of the programme or beforehand (see our programmes).
Is gender balance really a strategic advantage for business?
Embedding diversity and gender balance is not only a matter of fairness; it is a key driver of performance and innovation. Teams that are diverse in gender, background and experience bring complementary perspectives, stimulate creativity and strengthen resilience in the face of economic and societal challenges.
To turn this into a tangible advantage, organisations must train and equip their people to become active contributors to this cultural transformation. This requires targeted programmes that challenge bias, encourage inclusion and turn diversity into a collective strength.
+25%
higher likelihood of above-average profitability for companies with greater female representation in leadership
Mc Kinsey, 2020
11.6%
Average gender pay gap in France, an indicator that needs to be actively reduced.
OCDE
74%
of French companies in 2023, compared with 54% in 2020
Progress:
+20 percentage points in 3 years
In this context, vigilance is essential. At a time when ‘diversity washing’, promoting commitments without taking action, is coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism from employees, investors and regulators, organisations that make genuine progress do so through robust, measurable programmes embedded for the long term.
Slogans do not change cultures; concrete commitments do, driven by convinced leaders and rigorous training programmes that are regularly updated in light of the latest research.
Diafora’s mixed-gender, cross-company training programmes play an essential role: they enable participants to draw inspiration from other organisational contexts, share good practice and broaden their perspective beyond the boundaries of their own organisation.
By bringing different experiences together, these programmes accelerate the adoption of positive workplace behaviours that foster gender balance and diversity, strengthening organisational resilience.
Questions / Réponses sur le Leadership au Féminin
What is women’s leadership?
At Diafora, specialists in gender balance and leadership dynamics, we believe there is no single ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ style of leadership, but rather a diversity of leadership styles enriched by traits traditionally associated with gender. Rather than setting women and men against one another within organisations, the aim is to value how their approaches complement each other: listening and assertiveness, collaboration and decision-making, intuition and analysis.
This diversity of approaches strengthens organisational resilience by broadening perspectives, stimulating innovation and adapting decision-making to complex challenges. The aim? To create environments in which every talented person, whatever their leadership traits, can express themselves fully—for sustainable collective performance.
To explore the topic further, discover our training programmes and support on gender balance and diverse leadership styles.
What are the main barriers to women’s leadership in France?
Despite legislative progress through measures such as the Rixain Act and the Gender Equality Index, women still encounter the glass ceiling, gender stereotypes, self-censorship, mental load and a lack of visible female role models in senior leadership positions. These barriers are both external, organisational culture and unconscious bias, and internal, including impostor syndrome and doubts about their legitimacy.
To explore the topic further, discover our training programmes, which help women overcome these barriers and increase their visibility, while enabling organisations to deliver cultural transformation and support equitable career progression.
How can women develop their leadership?
Leadership is not defined by gender, but by universal capabilities: clear vision, the ability to bring people together, resilience and emotional intelligence, qualities shared by everyone, regardless of whether they are a woman or a man. However, persistent stereotypes and unconscious bias in the workplace can create specific barriers, such as the need to demonstrate one’s legitimacy more extensively or to balance assertiveness with empathy in an environment where expectations remain gendered.
Five practical levers for developing women’s leadership:
1 – Build self-confidence and assertiveness — Identify and overcome limiting
beliefs and claim your rightful place in decision-making forums.
2 – Develop your self marketing strategy and visibility — Learn to articulate your skills, achievements and distinctive leadership style.
3 – Master public speaking and maximise your impact — Techniques for clear expression, persuasion and influence in competitive environments.
4 – Activate and expand your international professional network — Build lasting strategic connections beyond your usual environment.
5 – Join a cross-company programme — Step outside your reporting line, meet peers from other sectors, speak openly and build a lasting community.
The aim is not to adopt a ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ leadership style, but to build your own style, authentic and suited to your context. It is the variety of approaches that enriches teams and organisations.
Why choose a cross-company format for women’s leadership training?
Diafora’s cross-company training programmes play an essential role: they enable participants to draw inspiration from other organisational realities, share good practice and broaden their perspective beyond the boundaries of their own organisation. By bringing different experiences together, these learning journeys accelerate the adoption of positive workplace behaviours that foster gender balance and diversity as a source of resilience.
What are the benefits of a mentoring programme for women?
A mentoring programme should be developed consistently with existing development pathways and aligned with all current HR processes within the organisation.
It enables organisations to:
– Promote sustainable gender balance by acting concretely on the levers of access, visibility and future projection for female talent
– Support talent development and career progression by decoding the organisation’s implicit codes and broadening models of success and leadership
– Encourage the transfer of experience and the sharing of strategic knowledge in a safe space for discussion
– Strengthen company culture and a sense of belonging by developing cross-functional relationships based on trust and bringing inclusion values to life
– Create intergenerational and cross-functional connections by breaking down silos and expanding internal professional networks
Is women’s leadership only for large companies?
No. Whatever the size of the organisation, developing women’s leadership delivers measurable positive effects. SMEs, mid-sized companies and start-ups have just as much to gain by investing in their female talent, in terms of recruitment, retention, team resilience and attractiveness.
Why choose Diafora to develop women’s leadership?
Diafora is one of the few organisations with 100% expertise in gender balance and leadership in business, combined with a unique international dimension: programmes in French and English.
Every year, we welcome 1300 women from more than 60 countries, creating equal opportunities for all talent within our clients’ organisations.Gender balance is a major issue across all sectors and geographical regions.
Today, we facilitate a community of more than 4 000 women around the world.
Our programmes support talent at every career stage.
We strengthen leadership and create strong professional networks.
Through our workshops and training programmes, gender balance becomes a pillar of your cultural transformation.
Découvrez nos programmes
Jeunes talents féminins
Cible :
Femmes en début de carrière, de 3 à 10 ans d’expérience, souvent autour de la trentaine.
Objectifs :
– Comprendre l’impact des différences Hommes/Femmes sur sa propre évolution professionnelle
– Anticiper et préparer son cycle de carrière/cycle de vie au regard de ses objectifs personnels et professionnels, et de leur évolution dans le temps
– Apprendre à communiquer clairement ses choix
– Construire et activer son réseau
– Bénéficier de conseils de femmes d’autres entreprises
Format :
Présentiel ou distanciel (1 jour)
🇫🇷 🇬🇧 Français ou anglais
Marketing de Soi
Cible :
Femmes ayant plus de 10 ans d’expérience en entreprise souhaitant affirmer leur image et gagner en visibilité professionnelle.
Objectifs :
– Comprendre l’importance de l’image que l’on véhicule pour atteindre ses objectifs
– Identifier l’image que l’on veut véhiculer et définir les messages que l’on souhaite passer
– Comprendre comment se rendre plus visible
– Construire son plan marketing pour atteindre ses objectifs professionnels
– Créer un réseau inter-entreprises de soutien
Format :
Présentiel ou distanciel (1 jour)
🇫🇷 🇬🇧 Français ou anglais
Leadership 1
Cible :
Femmes Sénior Managers ou expertes, de diverses nationalités, ayant plus de 14 ans d’expérience professionnelle et présentant un potentiel de leadership confirmé.
Objectifs :
– Comprendre les enjeux d’un monde en évolution et les défis du leadership dans l’univers professionnel
– Discerner les impacts et la valeur des différences de genre pour accroître son influence et son leadership
– Clarifier son ambition professionnelle, ses forces et explorer comment atteindre ses objectifs personnels et professionnels
– Mettre en pratique et améliorer ses stratégies pour accroître son impact et sa visibilité afin de jouer un plus grand rôle en tant que leader
– Elargir son réseau de pairs et tirer parti du feedback et du soutien précieux d’autres femmes leaders
Format :
Leadership 1 Séminaire résidentiel ou session en distanciel (2 jours)
🇬🇧 Sessions internationales en anglais
Leadership 2
Cible :
Femmes Sénior Managers ou expertes, de diverses nationalités, ayant plus de 14 ans d’expérience professionnelle et présentant un potentiel de leadership confirmé.
Objectifs :
– Construire un leadership plus stratégique et systémique dans un monde professionnel en évolution
– Gagner en « executive presence » en tenant compte des différences de genre de façon authentique et percutante
– Envisager la progression vers des postes à fortes responsabilités tout en optimisant leur énergie et leur résilience
– Développer une vision inspirante, gagner en influence et devenir « rôle modèle »
– Elargir son réseau et bénéficier des feedbacks d’autres dirigeantes de haut niveau
Format :
Leadership 2 Séminaire résidentiel uniquement (2 jours)
🇬🇧 Sessions internationales en anglais
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