A Feminist Call

I used to think the only thing that stood in my way of climbing the corporate ladder was my age. I often thought I could do things better than many positioned above me. Ego? Maybe.

I was reassured when a teacher who now has her own firm complained that she was never taken seriously at a young age. She said things change when you become in your mid-30s and this comforted me, although I still had a lot to wait.

However, I was destroyed when I found myself in a multinational in France, at Siemens PTD, and saw that the higher positions were not only occupied by older people, but they were also, in their totality, dominated by males. "Dominated" does not even give the distribution justice. It leaves us to assume that there's a minority of feminine presence; which until today, I still have not detected. With less than 1% of its senior level workforce female, Siemens PTD Grenoble is far from believing in gender equality. What's more is that merely 18% of its total workforce is female...

Marketing Security

Did it ever strike you that in order to market an insurance policy or a security service, you need to first market insecurity?
Is there any ethical issues lying underneath it all? ...and to what extent can this actually be efficient?

I have realized that in order to reach their customers the companies in these type of industries strongly rely on salespeople or brokers. Could this actually have anything to do with it, or is it just the need of knowledge and expertise that makes this strategy the driving force in these industries?

Security remains a basic need (if you refer to Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Would advertising insecurity lead to an increase of sales in the security industry?

In order to send an advertising message and attract consumer interest, agencies tend to link the product to one of the needs, sex being the most popular tool used but it is not the only one. The human need for belonging is often successfully addressed... Why not security?