Sopra Steria, a European leader in consulting, digital services and software publishing, has been committed for many years to combating all forms of discrimination. By endorsing the "7 Women's Empowerment Principles" (WEP) of the UN Women's Charter, the Group is strengthening its action to attract more women to the digital sector and is taking steps to fight against gender stereotypes.
Ambitious objectives for gender equality
The United Nations (UN) carries out multiple actions across the world for the recognition of women's work, their participation in economic life, and their access to financial autonomy.
Promoting professional equality between women and men and ensuring equal pay, career paths and fair promotions, are fundamental commitments for Sopra Steria, which has 32.5% female employees in its workforce worldwide. By signing the UN Women Charter, the Group is pursuing its commitment to gender diversity and professional equality between women and men.
Vincent Paris, CEO of Sopra Steria, declares:
“We are very pleased to sign the UN Women Charter, whose fundamental principles are perfectly in line with Sopra Steria's commitments. I am convinced that gender diversity and professional equality between women and men boost innovation, creativity, and performance within companies. This is why we are taking action to increase female representation at all levels of the company within the Group. In particular, we are committed to increasing the proportion of women on the Executive Committee from 12% to 30% and the proportion of women in management bodies from 15% to 20% by 2025.”
Through the UN Women Charter, Sopra Steria is committed to applying the 7 Women’s Empowerment Principles:
- 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.
Concrete means to accelerate gender diversity in digital professions
Sopra Steria's measures to promote gender equality in the workplace focus on three areas:
- Promote diversity in scientific backgrounds;
- Attract more women from STEM programmes (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics);
- Ensure non-discrimination in women's career paths across the Group.
Consuelo Bénicourt, director of social corporate responsibility at Sopra Steria, says:
“We are carrying out a number of initiatives to promote gender equality and gender diversity at Sopra Steria, but also in the digital sector in general. We have, for example, designed and deployed training to help change gender-related behaviours and representations, mentoring schemes to support women in their development at all levels of the company, campaigns to promote role models to encourage vocations, or even mixed networks to help women discover the digital professions and attract more women to this sector.”
Together For Greater balance: an international programme to accelerate women's participation in management
In 2019, the Group set up the international TogetHER For TogetHER For Greater Balance Balance programme, involving employees in an innovative collective intelligence exercise to generate ideas and best practices.
The system is based on 5 major actions:
- Set quantified objectives to monitor changes in the representation of women in the workforce and in management (proportion of women in recruitment, workforce, promotion);
- Raising awareness, training and taking action, in particular on the impact of stereotypes, decision-making processes; preventing situations of sexual harassment and sexist behaviour;
- Accompany women's career development with mentoring programmes;
- Promote role models to encourage vocations, through testimonials or webinars, both internal and external;
- Promote mixed networks to discover and attract women to the digital sector through interventions, particularly in schools, colleges and high schools.
Local initiatives to promote digital jobs for women
More than 1,600 Sopra Steria employees are members of networks to promote gender diversity in the digital sector. In France, the Passer'Elles network mobilises more than 400 ambassadors among secondary school and higher education students to attract and recruit more women in the digital sector.
Sopra Steria also supports initiatives to promote the reconversion of active or unemployed women into digital professions, such as the Manifesto "For the reconversion of women into digital professions" carried by Syntec Numérique, which has enabled more women to be recruited (33.3% of hires under the Reconversion programme are women).
Professional equality between women and men is a priority for Sopra Steria, which is reflected in concrete actions deployed throughout the year. Click here to find out more about our commitments.