Every year, Deloitte Luxembourg invites students from different business schools and universities to share their perspectives on gender balance and present their ideas as for what firms can do to attract women to professions that may be perceived as male dominant.

As part of the firm’s focus on ensuring a diverse and gender-balanced pipeline of talents, the participants were asked to come up with a solution to the following challenge: “According to the 2017 Deloitte Human Capital Trends, 69% of executives rate diversity and inclusion an important issue for their company. In terms of gender diversity, in your opinion, what concrete actions could an audit and consulting firm like Deloitte undertake in order to ensure maintenance of a healthy gender balance and therefore positively impact performance, branding and corporate purpose?”

Popular challenge
This year, 103 teams signed up for the Young Women Challenge. Each team consists of three talented female students with ideas and concrete suggestions for how to make a work environment interesting for women in the long term. The teams represent an array of highly recognized business schools: University of Luxembourg, ESCP, Skema, IESEG, HEC Paris, Sciences-Po Paris, Bocconi University, ICHEC and Copenhagen Business School. After a careful analysis of the projects, 12 teams were selected for the final and invited to Luxembourg to present their projects and ideas as for how to enhance the gender balance in the audit and consulting professions.

“The Young Women Challenge is about responding to the important question of gender balance from the perspective of the future workforce. Every year, we invite young and bright students to share their views on how to ensure a good gender balance and thereby help us shape a diverse environment for their future careers,” states Christiane Chadoeuf, Partner at Deloitte Luxembourg and the main sponsor of the initiative.

Eyes on the prize
The award ceremony took place on Friday 8 December, in the presence of 13 Deloitte partners and 3 external guests: Julie Beckers, Member of the Executive Committee of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, Helene Langinier, Associate Professor at the EM Strasbourg School, and Catia Fernandes, Coordinator of the Diversity Charter of Luxembourg and IMS Project Manager. The winners were:

• 1st place: the team from Bocconi University and Copenhagen Business School
• 2nd place: the team from Bocconi University
• 3rd place ex-aequo: the team from HEC Paris and the team from ESCP Paris

“A healthy gender balance is and will continue to be essential for firms to be innovative, agile and successful. We have our ideas as for how we can attract and retain female professionals in our firm, but we need the input and perspectives from the students to understand their priorities and what they value and expect from their future work place,” explains Valerie Gouin, Director at Deloitte Luxembourg.