External women’s networks

Vox Femina

While everyone agrees today that the need to promote real equality between men and women is crucial, business leaders and the media continue to churn out the same old arguments: we’d like to promote women, but we can’t find the right candidates! The voxfemina association: Paroles d'Experts au Féminin, convinced that these women exist and are even numerous, have put forward a novel scheme to increase their visibility: they want to identify these women and list their skills areas through biographies published on the Web2.0 platform that you are now connected to, and to lobby the media to get their voice heard by way of contributions in their specific fields of expertise.

Far from simply taking a stand, voxfemina encourages its members to work on their own field of influence and to use it to increase the collective visibility of women with acknowledged expertise in the world of business and, possibly, encourage younger women to be more ambitious...

Association created by Valérie Tandeau de Marsac, associate at Jeantet Associés, who was a speaker at the last Edhec Elles conference. 

More information: http://voxfemina.asso.fr

Force Femmes

Created in October 2005 by women entrepreneurs, Force Femmes resulted from a need for mutual support between women who want to do something for themselves about the difficulties they face in the job market. Force Femmes reflects the notion that women over 45 years old are a powerful strength in a firm.

“We’ve seen everything in our social network, women left behind after they reach 45 due to a lay-off, an accident, a divorce or a career gap to bring up their children. In general, society does little to help these women who are victims of a double discrimination: that of age and of gender. That’s why we work to develop concrete and specifically female-oriented actions,” Françoise Holder, President of Force Femmes, explains on the association’s website.

With a team of six employees, the association has over three hundred volunteers from the fields of human resources and entrepreneurship. It is supported by public organisations and firms engaged in the fight against job discrimination of women over 45 years of age. Force Femmes is present in over a dozen towns around France.              

EPWN

EPWN is a dynamic, fast-growing offline and online networking and leadership development platform for professional women from all sectors and industries. With 3000+ members and more than 90 nationalities, EPWN organizes 450 events a year in 19 cities: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brussels, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, London, Lisbon, Lyon, Madrid, Marseille-Provence Milan, Nice- Côte d’Azur, Oslo, Paris, Romania, Stockholm, Zug & Zurich, Vienna and Warsaw.

More information: http://www.europeanpwn.net/