Sixty years after the law of July 13, 1965 allowing married women to open a bank account without the agreement of their husband, gender equality remains to be conquered in banks, on both sides of the counter.
“We are not yet at the point of balance”, notes the historian Sabine Effosse with AFP, but “the situation improves, it is undeniable”.
In parallel with the long fight for equality in law and in the rules, started long before 1965 and which can be extended to the Rixain law of 2021, is played that of the evolution of practices, difficult to gain.
“We know that today the projects carried out by women are less funded than those of men,” the Minister of Equality between women and men Aurore Bergé, on Tuesday, evoking in the wake of current exchanges on the subject with the French Banking Federation (FBF).
The disparity is also visible in the holding of savings products: women have fewer life insurance contracts and less actions of listed companies than men, according to a study published Monday by mutualist France and the Bpifrance public bank.
The brakes around savings are very old. If the women were able to drop their savings at the savings and foresight fund from the start of the 19th century, they had for example waiting for several decades to be able to withdraw them without the agreement of their husband.
The fairer sex only had the right to enter the Paris Stock Exchange until 1967.
– Marketing target –
The anniversary of the 1965 law, which at the same time grants the right to married women to sign an employment contract without the agreement of their husband, gives the opportunity to certain financial players to put themselves forward.
In addition to a “vacation notebook dedicated to the financial autonomy of women” and a targeted offer, BNP Paribas is launching a communication campaign extolling “more than 2 billion euros in credit to companies led by women” granted each year.
Questioned by AFP, the bank did not want to make public the total amount of these credits to companies, whether led by women or by men, which would have made it possible to compare.
The commercial discourse on the subject, more or less happy, is not new. The opening of bank accounts by women at the turn of the 60s and 70s was made with a lot of advertising, then centered on a means of payment, the check.
“Losing money, for example; in the crowd of a market, it is a disaster. Losing a checkbook, a slight setback,” explained Société Générale in 1970, on a poster appearing a woman in pants and Phrygian cap, released from her channels and brandishing a checkbook.
Camille Eymard, financial manager in the SCOR reinsurer and volunteer of the financial association, is now wary of too gendered approaches.
It is nevertheless necessary to “find the means to embark women” and to develop their financial knowledge, completes Virginie Chauvin, partner of the Audit forvis Mazars, also a member of Fin’Assels, an association “at the service of diversity” in finance.
– Role model –
The inequality in the practices of the sector is also seen in the photo of the first circles of the management teams of the major French banks, none of which has ever been led by a woman.
Faced with the shareholders gathered in general assembly, no woman was among the candidates for the succession of the boss of Crédit Agricole at the end of last year, in the first circle of power of BNP Paribas, however extended to six people at the start of the school year.
The profession is however at 57% female, according to the FBF, but this percentage tends to decrease as one rises in the hierarchy.
“Money is a balance of power,” recalls the historian Sabine Effosse, “there is necessarily one that loses a little of her power” in a phase of rebalancing.
Today the battle is played out on investments, access to financing and roles of power, she lists.
Posted on July 11 at 11:08 a.m.
