Feminising their job titles

“I’ve always wanted to feminise my job title. At first, my colleagues would say that “Directrice” sounds like a head teacher, and “Présidente” sounds like the President’s wife. Well, I call myself Directrice!” Like Delphine Henry, who is “Présidente” of ENGIE My Power and Deputy CEO (directrice adjointe) of ENGIE Home Services, all the female executives we interviewed have feminised their titles in French. English certainly makes things easier sometimes. But this is not a trivial matter. According to the Observatory on Inequality, based on figures from the French Ministry of Labour, only 21 out of 88 professions were “mixed gender” in 2019, compared with 45 that were “male-dominated”. In other words, most professions “are still occupied by a large majority of men” (over 65%). The gendered representations we have of them still carry considerable weight. So feminising her job title is “very important” for Delphine Henry: “if you can’t hear it, you can’t imagine it.”