Although women in Europe have been pouring into finance for decades, only a small number ever make it to the top.
“I had to make a choice,” recalls Martine Verluyten. “Was I going to remain eternally in the background, or would I fight to become CFO?”
She faced this decision shortly before her 50th birthday, after a long and varied business career. Rising through the ranks as an auditor—one of only two women in the firm at the time—she was put off accountancy as a long-term career option when, during a performance review, an incredulous (male) manager scoffed at the notion of her becoming the first female partner in continental Europe.
Shortly after that meeting, Verluyten packed up her desk and moved to Raychem, an electronics company, working for more than 20 years in a variety of finance posts in Europe and the US, “but never very close to the CFO role,” she notes. In 2000, she joined Mobistar, a fast-growing Belgian mobile-phone company, as deputy CFO. When the incumbent CFO left six months after she arrived, it was the first time she faced a realistic shot at the top finance post.
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