Axe throwing has become the new outlet for stress relief in 2025. The events company Rejolt, which specializes in corporate activities and promotes “adrenaline rushes now available as group experiences,” offers this trendy activity to major CAC 40 companies (the 40 largest companies listed on the Paris stock exchange). “Requests have increased by 30% in one year,” said Laurent Gabard, director general of Rejolt. “We work exclusively with very large companies, across all sectors. Team building is truly exploding. It has become an HR tool, with activities close to the office, affordable budgets and local organizations. Employees need to release their stress and break up the workday.” Team building has always been a way to instill the expectations companies have for their employees.
Are companies, whether public or private, facing a resurgence of machismo? During the unveiling of Axa’s renovated headquarters on May 21, the insurance group’s human resources director, Karima Silvent, highlighted the existence of a fully equipped gym with a punching bag, exercise mats, and stationary bikes as a mark of good working conditions. Comfort and compensation were mentioned only later.
“The world of work has been shaped by masculine values,” recalled sociologist Haude Rivoal, who is affiliated with France’s Center for Employment and Work Studies and author of La Fabrique des masculinités au travail (“The Making of Masculinity at Work,” 2021). This dynamic was characterized primarily by valuing strength, maintaining distance from femininity, and adhering to the gender division of labor. “The expression of masculinity – ideals of strength and power – serves to diminish the feminine. Previously, male domination took the form of sidelining women from leadership bodies,” the sociologist explained.
Four channels of transmission
Beneath the ornate gilding of the 18th-century Hôtel Particulier de La Vaupalière in Paris, where Axa’s headquarters are located, only men’s portraits hung on the walls. Indeed, there were no women in leadership at the time of the UAP mutual insurance societies, which merged with Axa in 1999. The insurance company is now nearly exemplary in terms of gender parity, with 48% women in executive management and 38% on the executive committee. However, the mural displayed in the new building, tracing the company’s history to the present day, featured only one woman.
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