Accelerating on our path to gender equality

On the occasion of the 2019 Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society, AXA is proud to announce its plan to ensure fair pay across the organization and to reach gender balance at its top executive level by 2023.

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At AXA, we foster a culture of inclusion and diversity.

In recent years we have embarked on a journey to sustainably increase the number of women at the top and are proud to have progressed from 9% in 2009 to 32% today in our top executive group worldwide (top 300). We have taken the commitment to reach gender parity in that population by 2023 and are working across all countries to make it happen.

Alongside this commitment, we want to ensure that everyone working for AXA is paid equitably, regardless of gender. Many of our entities have progressed towards or reached pay equity (that is same pay for the same role, experience, skills, contribution or impact, regardless of gender) in recent years and our assessment of the current potential equal pay gap globally is an average of 2%. AXA is committed to removing all unjustified pay gaps with dedicated budgets where need be to reach full pay equity across all geographies from now on to 2023 at the latest.

Standards and processes are being strengthened to ensure gaps are not created in the future.

Karima Silvent

Group Chief Human Resources Officer

When you are leading a company with over 100,000 employees operating in over 61 markets, you need indicators; targets and transparency to ensure everyone is accountable to make change happen in a sustainable manner. I’m happy to see that the commitment of all our leaders on gender equality has enabled us to make tangible progress. Parity and inclusion are not an option and we are committed to embrace all dimensions as core to our business strategy.

The AXA way to gender equality

AXA has adopted a comprehensive approach to gender equality that intends to redress the balance for all talent, in order to support the development of women and men throughout the company.

To this end, AXA has organized sponsorship efforts to support the development of high-potential employees, with a focus on talented women as a lever to increase the representation of women among our top executive population. Since 2016 AXA has a global parent policy encouraging both parents including same sex parents to take fully paid leave when a child comes into the family, while its flexible working policies are open to everyone. Such efforts enable each employee to contribute in the best way they can and take advantage of every available opportunity.

Shattering the glass ceiling

AXA is committed to gender parity at every level, including top management. At our most senior executive level (partners group), we have already increased the percentage of women from 15% in 2017 to 24% in 2019. Over the past year, women accounted for 55% of the new CEO appointments made across the Group. In our global leadership network of 300 people, we are committed to achieving full gender parity by 2023.

For the fourth year in a row, AXA is an official partner of the Women’s Forum, an international event devoted to ideas and solutions for unleashing women’s leadership in the economy and society. Read more about AXA's participation in the 2019 Women's Forum.