Women are increasingly numerous in management positions in the CAC 40

Three years after the adoption in France of a law on quotas, women are increasingly numerous in the management of large groups, according to a study published by the Skema observatory of the feminization of companies . In 2024, 28% of positions in the management bodies of CAC 40 companies were occupied by women, 2 points more in one year.

This increase in diversity is a direct effect of the Rixain law, which will soon impose quotas for women in management positions in companies with more than 1,000 employees: 30% in March 2026 and 40% in March 2029. "This law has no equivalent in Western countries," notes Michel Ferrary, a researcher affiliated with the Skema business school and director of the observatory. Companies are preparing for it. In just three years, since the Rixain law was promulgated in 2021, the proportion of women on executive committees or management committees of CAC 40 companies has increased by more than 8 percentage points.

To do this, companies have not necessarily replaced a man with a woman. "They are rather adding a chair around the table," explains Michel Ferrary. As proof, the number of positions in the management bodies of CAC 40 companies increased by 15 in 2024, those occupied by women by 16, and those by men only decreased by 1. "We must look in detail at whether the women appointed occupy positions as important as the men. A communications or CSR director is not the same as a financial director," believes Michel Ferrary.

In 2022, his colleague Stéphane Déo had combed through the data of 159 listed companies and scrutinized their results according to the degree of diversity of their middle management. Work that had made it possible to "confirm statistically significant relationships between gender diversity at the middle management and employee level, and profitability" . They suggested that net margin and EBITDA (gross operating income, the main profitability indicator for companies) climb when the rate of women approaches 50%, and fall beyond that. Low diversity – too many men and few women, or vice versa – weighs on profitability, all other things being equal.