Speaking from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Marie-Françoise Damesin, Executive Vice-President of both Alliance and Renault Human Resources, has highlighted three “very important reasons” why women are essential to the automotive industry.

“First reason, we need to better understand our customer base,” she said. “We need to have women in product planning and in design and we need to have women in sales, involved in selling to the customer. We know that 90% of female customers like to have a sales person who is female and 50% of male customers like to have a sales person who is female.”

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Damesin said that in France, women account for 34% of Renault’s sales force.

“Second, we need to have innovation and a diverse workforce is much more creative. If we take the example of the Captur [compact SUV] the team that created that was 50% male and 50% female. We think there was innovation from working together on that project that we maybe haven’t seen before.

“And the third point is motivation. It is very important in our company – both Renault and Nissan – that females have the feeling of the same opportunity as males.”

Alliance boss Carlos Ghosn has also spoken before about the importance of women and especially female managers in developing a positive corporate culture and in the successful performance of Renault-Nissan.

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At a session in Davos last week, Carlos Ghosn stressed the long-term view of the company and that it remains firmly committed to investing in emerging markets.

“We continue to invest in all these countries, because we invest not for the next two or three years, but for the next 10 or 15 years,” he said. Ghosn also emphasised his view that despite the adjustments currently taking place in the BRICS countries, they are all capable of strong growth.