In the area of ​​increasing the number of women in their teams, funds are undeniably trying to move from good intentions to execution. "The ESG criterion is now leading funds to increase the number of women in their investment teams, with equal skills," observes Martin Louvet, Senior Advisor at Vauban Executive Search.

This also allows for a more diverse selection of candidates from other sectors such as M&A, transaction services, leveraged finance, and strategy consulting

Alexandra Dupont, president of the Invest with Them club at France Invest and associate director at Raise Investissement, adds: “Our feeling is that the trend towards gender diversity has truly taken hold among funds and that there’s no going back. We are often contacted by the Invest with Them club at France Invest for advice in this area. We also encourage funds to diversify the profiles they seek, as there are few women with significant track records in private equity.”

Following the first edition of its Grand Prix for young female talent and the launch of the Parity Charter (signed by 80% of members), France Invest unveiled last summer a series of tools: French and European studies on the benefits of diversity and unconscious bias, the legal frameworks in force in this area and good practices in the recruitment and retention of female talent.

"The challenge is to provide concrete solutions to funds that tell us they want to feminize their teams, but that, on the ground, it's not so easy," explains Alexandra Dupont.

We will also continue working to measure progress: as part of the France Invest charter, signatories have committed to providing us with reports on the development of diversity within their teams. The first results should be made public around the second quarter of 2021