Inside the 20th Anniversary of the Cartier Women’s Initiative in Milan

Last April, Milan was the venue for a gathering of numerous female business leaders and international figures, including Amal Clooney, who came together to discuss the theme: Cartier Dialogues, Women Lighting the Path. On stage at IBM Studios, facing a large audience—including many students from Lombardy’s economic capital—the discussions highlighted the need to advance women’s rights, framing it not merely as a moral issue, but as a matter of justice, economic potential and democracy.

On this point, Rodolphe Ratzel, Cartier’s Director of the Italian Market and host of the ceremony, highlighted the Cartier brand’s commitment, noting that “twenty years ago, Cartier decided not only to celebrate women but to take action, by spotlighting women entrepreneurs whose ability to change the world is real.” The Cartier Women’s Initiative has since grown into a community of 330 fellows from more than 70 countries.

This ambition, shared throughout the discussions, is also that of Amal Clooney, co-founder of the Clooney Foundation for Justice and professor of international law at Oxford, who wished, through her presence, to support and remind everyone that the history of women’s rights is recent. She drew on the story of Gwyneth Bebb, one of the first women to study law at Oxford, whom a British court barred from practicing law just over a century ago. Amal Clooney used this case to highlight how pervasive legal exclusion still is. She reminded the audience that Italian women did not gain the right to vote in national elections until 1946, that French women could not open a bank account without their husbands until 1965, and that German women needed their husbands’ permission to work until 1977. Less than ten years ago, women in Saudi Arabia still needed permission from a male guardian to travel.

“The exclusion of women is not a thing of the past,” she said. “It is recent. It was ubiquitous, and in far too many places, it persists… Only 4% of women live in countries where they enjoy full legal equality.” In many countries, women remain a minority among neurosurgeons, judges, and senior executives. “We are trying to solve these crises with only half the talent at our disposal,” warned Amal Clooney.