An interview with Caroline Mille-Langlois, from Orange, on the three qualities that are essential for women to climb the corporate ladder. Watch the video interview on 360FashionTV.

Mercedes Erra, Executive Chairwoman of Euro RSCG Worldwide in France has just presented a survey showing consumer’s opinion on companies.

Firstly, this survey highlighted the point that 65 % of the public thinks that their opinion should drive company’s conduct and overall strategy.

The thing that has to be kept in mind, particularly by all the leaders attending this Forum is that their responsibility is constantly growing. Indeed people are mainly thinking that the role of companies in our world is changing in lots of fields. For example, more than 75% of English, American and French people think that business bears as much responsibility for driving positive social change as governments.

Corporate reputation on social and environmental responsibility is a key driver of confidence and will become a driver of companies’ performances. With greater awarness people are ready to pay more for ethical and sustainable products.

In today’s world, a large number of executive women are having children later in their lives, or even deciding not to have them in order to advance in their careers. They make longer studies and some of them invest in a time consuming career. Indeed, the mean age of the first pregnancy went from 23 years old in 1976 up to 29 years old in 2005. These facts were shown yesterday Thursday by Corinne Hubinont, Professor and Co-Head of the Department of Obstetrics at the Clinique Universitaire St-Luc, in Belgium, during the Discovery Moments, to a very interested audience, in a session (photo) titled: “Pregnancy and Executive Women …is it a challenge?”

To answer that question, Corinne confirmed what most executive women feel when they think about having children and continuing to advance in their careers: Yes, pregnancy for executive women is a challenge. After the age of 35, the risks of pregnancy start growing at a higher rate. In addition, the time when executive women start thinking of having a child coincides with the time when they are on the track to a successful career, which normally demands long hours of work, travelling and late meetings. She called attention to a “new high risk pregnancy”, associated with stress, high physical workload, dissatisfaction at work and late pregnancy, despite the major medical performance we have today.

Some ways to manage this challenge were suggested and discussed during the session. For example, to facilitate early pregnancy, during the studies or early in professional life. Another important point would be to allow long pregnancy and materity leave in “late pregnancy” in order to decrease their complications. But all these solutions depend not only on women, but on society as a whole.

One of the women in the audience reported that she was noy very reassured by the solutions that exist today, as they depend on a change in society and this takes time. She is 35 and doesn’t have children. Another woman, from the Belgian Board of the Women’s Forum, said that she decided to have children later, around the age of 30, so that she could advance in her career before. But she considered herself lucky because she didn’t have any problems getting pregnant or during pregnancy.

The question of how women executives can manage the challenge of pregancy is not solved, but discussing them in the Women’s Forum seems to be a good beginning to think about solutions and starting to make things change.

In Alphonse Daudet’s book, the Arlésienne is a character that everyone is thinking of, worrying about, but that never appears clearly.

We have our Arlésienne at the Women’s forum. Yesterday, lots of speakers referred to her, without mentioning her name. Guess who she is?

Helping you talking about the fact that she is actually member of the US senate would break the myth. Chatting about the fact that she’s running for the US presidency or that she is married to a former US president is clearly inappropriate…

Possibly, political opinions don’t have their place in the Women’s Forum. True, but the most powerful nation in the world could be ruled in few months by a woman, for the first time. Is that what is on the minds of the forum delegates? She’s probably in everyone’s mind because she could change our world and become an example of a woman succeeding as a the first woman US president.

When I asked the Human resources director of an American consulting company her opinion on the future “master of the world” as a woman, she seamed quite confident in the likelihood of that happening. “She’s very smart, she will not try to rule the world as a policeman, and she has lots of experience as the shadow adviser of her husband”.

“Talking about her is probably such a tough subject that it would requires its own forum” answers a French lawyer. Keeping for them their political opinions, most people I interviewed told me their wish to see a woman at the top of US politics. Recent polls shows that their wish could come true in the near future.

Yes, I’m talking about Hillary Clinton. It took about 1 hour and 10 minutes yesterday, during the first session of the Forum, for a panelist to mention her name.

Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of Areva, the French nuclear group, who spoke yesterday at the Women’s Forum, has been named Europe’s top businesswoman in the Financial Times annual ranking. More here, details on the top 10 here.

Writes the FT: “Ms Lauvergeon displaces Ana Patricia Botín, executive chairman of Spanish bank Banesto. Ms Botín headed the FT ranking in 2005 and 2006 but dropped to number four this year. Ms Lauvergeon, second in 2006, has earned a strong reputation at the state-owned nuclear company, where she faces both political and commercial pressure.

There were seven new entrants in this year’s top 25, headed by Cynthia Carroll, Patricia Russo and Monika Ribar, who in the past year have taken the top executive jobs at, respectively, Anglo American, the mining group, Alcatel-Lucent, the telecommunications company, and Panalpina, the big Swiss logistics and transport group.”

How are women shaping the business environment of the 21st century?

In a panel on Thursday, Laura Liswood (Senior Advisor, Goldman Sachs) pointed out a telling observation. Men are taught: The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Women are taught: If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all. The resulting challenge is that these are constitutionally opposed.

She went on to say that a key assumption is that critical feedback is core to career development. However, within that, “Like” is very comfortable giving critical feedback to “Like”. The direct opposite is also true – they are very uncomfortable giving critical feedback to “Unlike”, so they are more likely to mumble “just fine”.

The best leaders, Liswood said, move their leadership styles depending on the context, and have the most tools in their toolbox – including the command and control tool, and the consensus tool. She brought up the classic example from Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink“: 16% of American males are more than 6 feet tall, and 57% of CEOs are more than 6 feet tall. She went on to remark that she has done extensive research on leadership, and has interviewed many women CEOs in the US, as well as top male and female leaders around the world - and she has never seen a correlation between skeletal structure and leadership capabilities.

Another quote: What’s the definition of an assertive man – someone who bombs a small country. Of an assertive woman – someone who puts you on hold for 5 seconds.

Growing up in developing countries is not easy. Being a women in a developing country is hard. Increasingly women are becoming the sole providers for their families. This makes their role even more important. But, how can they do that when their opportunities are limited by gender, education and health issues?

Actually, things are being done and done in a great way. I had a chance today to talk with Kalpana Simhan from Vital Voices. This organization is dedicated to invest and train emerging women and girl leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs who work to increase women’s and girls’ participation in all strides of society. They are present in Africa, Eurasia, East and South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

Investing in women who lead other women is a cascading effect. They also help women promote equitable laws in their countries. What I really liked about this organization is that they don’t go to places and tell people what to do: they let women in communities lead their own. This is really important when working in social projects, it is not about “imposing” a right way, it is about respecting the way people do things and provide them with the tools and training to help them achieve their dream.

One of this morning debates asked the following question: What should women expect from political leaders? Interesting, but what about women as leaders in politics? Elisabeth Guigou, former French minister of justice and Linda Lanzillotta, Italian minister for regional affairs agreed on the fact that women are sharing qualities that could lead them to perform better in political positions. Women are “more innovative”, “more generous”, “they bring diversity”. Women’s are also more ethical than men. Maria Anjeles Amador, former health minister of Spain, thinks that as soon as women’s will reach a similar level of responsibility as men, they will probably be as corrupted as men are!

Diversity is important in politics because people need to identify with leaders that are able to understand their needs and their problems. Gender diversity improves politics efficiency. It also leads to a better knowledge of the population aspirations. But women credibility has to be challenged. Women should be criticized just as men are, that is actual equality Elisabeth Guigou thinks.

To achieve that goal, men have to play a role, they have to “share the power”, Maria Anjeles Amador told me, “Women are half of the population, we are not men’s adversary, we just have a different vision that could be useful”, it seems that the right solution is to “walk together” she adds. Long Jiang Wen from the Chinese delegation insists on the necessity to bring women to higher position especially in countries where this results difficult. Particularly in those countries it is important to make men be aware of the necessity to leave some place to diversity in governing bodies.

The main goal is to reach Plato’s will: “a world in which nobody feels happy for being a man and nobody feels selfless for being a woman”.