In companies as in the public service, the access of women to management positions has never been a long calm river. In 2011, the Copé-Zimmermann law, which imposes quotas for women on administrative and supervisory boards, was adopted. A year later, the Sauvadet law for the senior civil service was passed. Marie-Anne Barbat-Layani, Secretary General of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, recounts the developments that have occurred in recent years, particularly at Bercy.
Ten years after the Sauvadet law aimed at appointing more women to positions of responsibility in the civil service, has their situation improved?
It’s obvious. This 2012 law is extremely ambitious. It asks to appoint 40% of women in management positions corresponding in part to the executive committees of companies. Certainly, the Ministry of Finance had a huge delay in this area. History explains it. Before 1974, for example, women could not join the General Inspectorate of Finance. The ministry was an environment of men, like all places of power or money.
When I arrived at Bercy in 1993, my boss warned me: “You are going to see the most beautiful skewer of gray suits of your life! » In premises that I often frequented at the time, those of the Club de Paris [où se négocient des solutions pour les Etats endettés], the shortest way that connected the two rooms where we worked was through the men’s toilets… I passed while staring at the blue line of the Vosges! Collaborating with women was really unusual.
How has this manifested itself in your career?
During my internship at the National School of Administration (ENA), the prefect who welcomed me called me “my casserole”. But I think he did it more out of somewhat paternalistic affection than out of misogyny. When I was Deputy Director in the Prime Minister’s Office, between 2010 and 2012, I happened to accompany him to London. While he was having lunch alone with his counterpart, the staff were installed in another room to share the meal with the British advisers. When my alter ego found me sitting in the middle, across from him, he seemed completely lost. He asked me who I was, if I took care of the communication! He did not understand who this good woman was who had had the nerve to settle in this place…
A senior European official with whom I had a disagreement told me one day that I had better be at home raising my children… In Bercy, a head of department passing me in a hallway and noticing my very advanced pregnancy , threw me with a smile: “Are you leaving us? » It has, in fact, long been considered in this ministry that the task was too heavy for a woman, or that she should give up having children. Previous generations may have had to choose. Not mine.
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