
Interview
Based in Paris, Sandrine Devillard is a senior partner with McKinsey and focuses on the European consumer sector. She is an international board member for the Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society and is global leader of the McKinsey Women Initiative.
At McKinsey we have been researching this topic for the past ten years. There is still underrepresentation of women on corporate boards, but the underrepresentation is even more striking on executive committees. Since we started researching this, the progress towards gender equality has only been 0.5-1% per year in executive committees and change is not happening by itself. Barriers to progress include society and the corporate mindset of profit and what success looks like, despite the fact that there is a clear correlation between gender diversity and company performance. More gender diverse companies − those that were able to attract and develop the best diverse talent − perform better.