On the occasion of the International Women’s Rights Day, Marie-Anne Barbat-Layani, Secretary General of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, takes stock of the evolutions recorded on the place of women in the function since 2012 and the adoption of the Sauvadet law.
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In businesses and in the public service, women’s access to management positions has never been a long calm river. In 2011, the Copé-Zimmermann law, which imposes women’s quotas in the boards of directors, was adopted. A year later was voted the Sauvadet law for the High Public Service. Marie-Anne Barbat-Layani, Secretary General of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, traces developments in recent years, especially in Bercy.
Ten years after the Sauvadet law aimed at appointing more women to positions of responsibility in the public service, has their situation improved?
It’s obvious. This 2012 law is extremely ambitious. It asks to appoint 40% of women in management jobs corresponding partly to the executive committees of companies. Certainly, the Ministry of Finance had a huge delay in this area. The story explains it. Before 1974, for example, women could not integrate the general inspection of finances. The ministry was a mid-men, like all places of power or money.
When I arrived in Bercy, in 1993, my chef noted me: “You will see the most beautiful gray costume skewer of your life!” In premises I often at the time, those of the CLUB OF PARIS [Where’s trading solutions for indebted states], the shortest path that connected the two rooms where we were working through the toilets of men … I spent by fixing the blue line of Vosges! Collaborate with women was really not usual.
How did it manifest in your career?
During my internship of the National School of Administration (ENA), the prefect who was welcoming me called “my casotte”. But I think he did more by a little paternalistic affection than by misogyny. When I was Assistant Director at the Prime Minister’s Office, between 2010 and 2012, it happened to me to accompany him to London. As he had lunch at the head with his counterpart, the collaborators were installed in another room to share the British counselors’ meal. When my Alter Ego found me sitting in the center, in front of him, he seemed totally lost. He asked me who I was, if I took care of the communication! He did not understand who this good woman had had the turn to settle in this place …
A high European official with whom I had mesh from me a day that I would better be at home to elevate my children … In Bercy, a head of service crossing me in a hallway and noting my Very advanced pregnancy, launched me in a smile: “You leave us?” We have, indeed, long considered in this ministry that the task was too heavy for a woman, or that she had to give up having children. Previous generations may have to choose. Not mine.
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