How Women Can Pass On the Values in a Family Business

Priscilla De Moustier talks about women’s roles in her family enterprise, historically, and today.

Women’s role in our family has always been up to a point fairly important, I was just telling you about this great-great-great grandmother who created the family structure, the structure of the family holding, and then before that, mother-in-law I think, during the revolution all the men had to leave because otherwise they would have had to fight in the army in the revolution, so they were all in immigration and this fairly old lady ran the show by her own, stayed there, finally was put in prison, and the mills were confiscated and at the beginning of the 19th century her son re-bought everything. So women have played a part traditionally. And of course, we’re in France, so women inherit the same shares as men, so they’ve always been in the inheritance system and so on, so they’ve always had also the, traditionally, the role of transmitting the values, the knowledge, the family values, everything which has been, I think, quite important. And now, well they’re of course like everywhere, we’re now on boards, they are also, in addition to that, values transmission, values, the values of being the hidden power, they also have roles, more classic roles like being board members, we have 3 board members, women, on the family holding board and we’re going to hopefully have some more, and out of the 6 members, family members, on the listed companies board, 2 are women.