Gender Equality in Decision-Making Positions : Assessing Progress

Paola Profeta is Professor of Public Economics at Università Bocconi, Milano and Coordinator of the Dondena Gender Initiative. As of 2020, she Directs the AXA Research Lab on Gender Equality at Bocconi University. Her research interests are in public economics, political economy and gender economics. Her main fields are policies to promote gender equality and women's empowerment, welfare state and redistribution. Paola has also worked on comparative tax systems and tax policy.

Anne Boring heads the Women in Business Chair at Sciences Po, Paris, and is also Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research focuses on issues related to gender equality in higher education and the labor market. She studies more specifically gender diversity in firms, gender biases in performance evaluations, and gender differences in students’ higher educational choices. In her current work, she is interested in testing and measuring the impact of interventions designed to improve gender equality in leadership positions and in entrepreneurship.

Georges Desvaux is the Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer and Member of the Management Committee of the AXA Group. In this role, he shapes the strategic transformation of AXA globally from Payer to Partner to all AXA’s clients, building global leadership in Commercial Lines, Health and Protection. Prior to joining AXA, Georges was a Senior Partner in McKinsey & Company. Georges devotes much of his energy to developing women global talent. At McKinsey, he initiated and co-led McKinsey’s “Women Matter” research on the role of women in corporations since 2007, including “Women Matter 10-year anniversary issue” (2017), “Women Matter Africa” (2016), “Women Matter - an Asian perspective” (2012).

Monika Queisser is Senior Counsellor to the Director of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Directorate and the Head of Social Policy Division at the OECD, where she supervises and coordinates the work on social protection, social indicators, pensions, affordable housing and family policies. She also manages the OECD Gender Intiative which examines gender inequalities in education, employment and entrepreneurship. As a champion of gender-related issues she frequently intervenes in expert groups, forums and panels worldwide. Prior to joining the OECD, Ms. Queisser worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., where she was a member of the pensions and insurance group in the Financial Sector Development Department.

Francesca Donner is The New York Times gender director and the editor of In Her Words, a column at The Times covering politics, economics, business, health, culture and society through a gender lens. Some of Francesca's recent projects for The Times have looked at issues surrounding unpaid labor, inequity in the U.S., and female workers at the front lines of the pandemic. Before joining The Times, Francesca was a deputy editor at The Wall Street Journal covering management and corporate culture. Francesca grew up in London, and attended Brown and Stanford Universities.