Known as one of the “big four” audit, counseling and accounting company in the world, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) counts more than 162 000 employees in 154 different countries, half of their workforce being female. But only 15% of them made it to the partnership level to this day because of the field being greatly “male-dominated”, as a rather honest message on the company’s website underlines. Does the company hire fewer women than men? No, the percentage of recruitment is the same on each side. As a matter of fact, it is the women themselves who leave their jobs after 3 to 5 years in the manager level. Becoming mothers and working long hours on short deadlines is clearly no winning match, therefore inflexible schedules are one of the main reasons female talent is lacking.

As a result of an unbalanced man-woman parity, most american businesses are managed by males, leaving female contribution mostly at "labor force" level.

Yet as a Man-powered business, the company’s one and only asset, contrary to a machine-based enterprise, is human value. “Highly-educated and motivated employees are the ones who bring added value to the global performance of the firm. For this reason, attracting and retaining the best talents out there is one of the top strategic priorities for a firm of this industry. It would therefore be a huge value loss for the firm to see their experienced and talented females leaving the business”, as Maxence Lüthi, consultant for corporate finance at PwC Zurich explains. Moreover, PwC has evident interest in keeping its female staff members because the more diverse the ideas and the mentalities, the more efficiency, skills and performance. As Dennis M. Nally, global chairman of PwC, publically declares: “A big part of the reason [the company] wants women better represented at leadership levels in business is because they bring a different perspective to the table that could lead to enhanced decision-making, more innovation, and ultimately, higher performing teams”.

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Realizing that motherhood is at the base of women’s rightful wants, the company put multiple integration and development programs in place and regularly organizes meetings, courses and lectures encouraging them to climb the corporate ladder without giving up their family lives. As an example of PwC’s engagements, an award winning Gender Advisory Council was created in 2006, providing global assistance on the issue of women in the company. The goals of this council are to focus on female retention and development, supporting their way to leadership and changing the business branch’s status quo.

Established by Sarah Churchman (PwC UK director of diversity), July 2010, the above organigram examplifies the male-female differences PwC tries to soften with its different gender-equality programs: the higher the corporate level, the bigger the gap between the percentage of men and women working in it. Only 15% of women actually reached partner level, against 85% of men, whereas the lower, associate level, counts more women.

The company also figured that some of international firms’ weaknesses laid in the fact that working hours were not flexible enough for parents, and they offer no decent child care structure, causing a recrudescence of mothers staying at home to take care of their children instead of returning to work after they gave birth. In order to avoid that, nursery spaces were arranged for employees to drop off their kids right next to their working place, allowing them to go to work light-spirited, knowing their children will be taken care of all day or even only for a few hours by professional babysitters, this way improving  men-women parity by allowing women to return to work. The newly introduced flexible schedules the company offers its staff has also contributed to rank PricewaterhouseCoopers in the top 50 world employers.

Besides, as an attempt to raise essential questions and awareness of corporate female issues, women working at PricewaterhouseCoopers are encouraged to share their experiences with other members of the staff, be it locally or worldwide. Exchanging points of views, ideas, working principles and leading methods is indeed beneficial for mutual comprehension and rich reflection on how to make long-term changes in terms of people’s habits and stereotypes as well as concrete modifications within the firm’s global philosophy. As part of all the reunions the company offers, members can assist to mentoring courses, coaching projects, networking programs or innovative development programs such as “reverse mentoring”. On a more ethical point of view, the staff members can also participate to symposiums, treating more delicate questions like bias awareness and gender comparisons within the working area.

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Women working for PwC haven't always been treated as men's equals but gender issues at corporate level have evolved a great deal over the years, making space for female influence and decisions.

Of course such women-empowerment programs aren’t established just for the good cause; they’re a win-win situation allowing both parties, employer and employee, to be satisfied in the end. Even if they cost a lot, the company knows that investing in big time diversity developments will be beneficial in terms of numbers and of image as well as giving them a competitive advantage to attract and retain female talents. So by supporting females, PricewaterhouseCoopers is not only taking one more step into the future business working model but is also, and mostly, making a mere rational decision.