Dior and UNESCO hosted their latest Women@Dior & UNESCO World Conference on Thursday, where more than 1,000 women gathered to hear speeches and testimonials from luxury executives, trainees, mentors and even a Nobel Prize winner.
“We are here to celebrate women's empowerment,” explained Asha Sumputh, the host bilingual journalist from the stage of UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
This meeting celebrated key feminist themes: access to education, equity, inclusion and gender equality, core priorities of the Women@Dior & UNESCO education and mentoring programme. Which led to the creation half a decade ago of Dream For Change, where several hundred talented young students from countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Jamaica, Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri Lanka benefit annually from the Women@Dior mentoring programme. . .
A jury chaired by Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri selected the winners of this year's Dream For Change project, where five teams presented concrete projects to empower girls in their local communities.
“I feel very honored to participate in the Women@Dior jury and to discover the projects conceived by an incredible new generation of women from around the world. From health to education, it is truly inspiring to see their drive and dedication to building a better world and “dreaming of change,” the creative director enthused.
This year's two winners were Meraki, a business incubation project in India to support small businesses launched by rural women, presented by Neha Jain. And Be Neutral, a project from Korea that addresses the dangers of body dysmorphia and the pressure to conform to beauty standards, hosted by Lee Soun.
The morning session began with a musical performance, an ode to the power of brotherhood by the Voice2Gether gospel choir. And it ended with a powerful speech by Leymah Gbowee, a Nobel Prize winner and human rights activist from Liberia.
His key idea, having the courage to make yourself heard. An idea she learned after a teacher gave her an F, since she rarely spoke and went unnoticed in the classroom. After asking the teacher to read it more carefully, she upgraded to an A.
“Speak up! I realized that my voice was my agency and my soul,” said Gbowee, who had the courage to address one of Africa's cruelest dictators in her homeland. Leading her to create a foundation to provide them women more options.
Gbowee has quite a unique story. His grandmother, who died at the age of 115, was a first community teacher. She herself graduated from high school at 17 and wanted to be a pediatrician, but the civil war turned her world upside down. She previously had four children in five years, before returning to higher education.
More than 1,000 women from more than 60 countries gathered for the event, where Delphine Arnault, president and CEO of Christian Dior Couture, addressed them in a video message. “In a changing world, gender equality plays a fundamental role. Our guiding principle is to transmit, empower. That is why we are excited about our partnership with UNESCO,” said Arnault.
“Christian Dior was a pioneer of women's empowerment, he dreamed of making women feel beautiful,” noted Olivier Sastre, director of human resources at Dior, in the opening speech, underlining how the role of women, pointing out that 70% of farmers in Africa are women.
While Stefania Giannini, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education, was determined to highlight the least liberated country in the world: Afghanistan.
“There women are prohibited from accessing primary and secondary education. This is one of the most serious obstacles to women's empowerment anywhere. We should all be Afghan women,” she emphasized, performing at one of Chiuri's first shows for Dior, where she presented T-shirts that read, 'We should all be feminists.'
“There has been progress around the world: 50 million more girls have been in school since 2015. However, we are still far from our goal. “Women represent two-thirds of the 700 million illiterate people in the world,” she lamented.
If at times the event bordered on a public relations exercise by the world's richest luxury group, LVMH has clearly worked hard to bring greater gender and pay equality to its collection of more than 70 brands.
“We cannot abandon our efforts. The world needs more equality. UNESCO was born after World War II… an effort even more useful today, when intolerance threatens freedom of expression and human rights,” said Chantal Gaimperle, executive vice president of Human Resources at LVMH, dressed in a great white men's shirt with a muddy print of the Eiffel Tower.
“Recent estimates from the World Economic Forum suggest that it will still take 130 years to close the gender gap. It shouldn't take that long… Women control 80% of the world's household budgets, a figure larger than the economies of China and India combined. “Imagine that power,” Gaimperle added, highlighting that LVMH has helped thousands of women achieve pay equity.
On March 8, the group launched a new group digital mentoring program, while this summer's Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, where LVMH is a major sponsor, will be the first with full gender parity.
Isabelle Faggianelli, vice president of Corporate Social Responsibility at LVMH, called Women@Dior and UNESCO “a public-private partnership to make a better world,” noting that there are now more than 400 trainees per year in the program and about 300 mentors.
A growing problem is AI, which several speakers warned risks reinforcing stereotypes and perpetuating the positions of women.
“Thousands of decisions are already based on AI and, because women are underrepresented in the data, they are less likely to be recognized or called for a job. AI is therefore amplifying inequality unless it is properly addressed,” said Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences.
Other contributions were made by Dior decision-makers Marie-Céline Dupuy D'Angeac; Anne-Valérie Narcy; Borhene Chakroun, Director of Lifelong Learning Systems at UNESCO; influencer Lena Mahfouf; and film producer Virginia Valsecchi, who highlighted the remarkable story of
Franca Viola, a brave Sicilian and the first Italian woman to win a sentence in an Italian court against a rapist who intended to marry her back in the sixties.
Before the entire event ended with Voice2Gether singing from an upper gallery, while hundreds of female guests gathered for a joint photo on the main stage. The sisters do it themselves.
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