Legrand has announced that Amelie Zegmout, director of Residential and Tertiary Industries, has been appointed as the ‘iM Women EMEA Champion.’ The iM Women aim to celebrate and recognise female industry individuals who empower and inspire others to play a part in the digital economy.

iM Women is committed to help expand diversity by promoting a culture of awareness in the IT and data centre industry. A major first step is to address the gender gap.

Today, women represent less than 10% of the workforce with an even smaller percentage holding senior leadership positions. This appointment is an effort to place special attention on an underrepresented but extremely valuable part of the IT community.

Commenting on the appointment, Amelie Zegmout said, “I feel honored and extremely privileged to have been chosen for such an important cause, and I sincerely hope that it will inspire far more women to join our industry.

“We at Legrand are equally committed to get women employed who want to work in such a diverse and attractive industry. In our recently issued ‘Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)’ roadmap Legrand publicly list and monitor set specific targets when it comes to women in our work force.

“I feel proud to be working for a company that during the period 2013-2018 now has increased its percentage of women in key positions by 32%. Of course, there still is a lot to do but initiatives like these should get us a step in the right direction in achieving our objectives.”

Legrand’s CSR is firmly anchored in the group’s identity and its operations. Diversity of profiles is a source of strength and is therefore a priority goal of Legrand’s social policy, which aims to strengthen the position of women in the company.

The group has set a goal of reaching male/female parity of employees by 2030, with at least one third of top management jobs.

By 2021 the company has set itself the goal to have 20% of women in management positions.

“Surely we do not merely appoint people on their gender but foremost look at skills and experience. What we are doing however is to actively recruit those women that have the right technical background and are highly interested in being part of an organisation that has innovation as one of its key drivers,” Zegmout concluded.