Nearly one in three women is a victim of either physical and/or sexual intimate violence from a partner or non-partner in their lifetime, according to the World Health Organization and UN Women.
To help survivors of violence across the world, actor Salma Hayek and her husband, Francois-Henri Pinault, have helped create the Kering Foundation, where he serves as CEO and chairman. The foundation collaborates with local organizations in the U.S., Italy, Mexico, France, South Korea and the U.K.
Over the last 16 years, the Kering Foundation has helped 1 million survivors of violence.
“We always want to be better and better human beings not just at what we do and in our family, we do strive to be better in many different layers,” Hayek Pinault told “CBS Mornings” in an interview alongside her husband.
Call to action
Since it was founded in 2008, the Kering Foundation has trained 40,000 professionals to provide services to survivors, according to its website.
But for the couple, their activism started long before.
“We started doing this work many years ago, for me more than 30 years ago, and it was not a popular subject. Nobody wanted to help it … And so we’re living in a different time. How important it is for all of us to come together and do it together,” Hayek Pinault said.
For Francois-Henri Pinault, he felt a call to action through his company.
“I’ve always been convinced that any corporation, whatever the size, should have a commitment that goes beyond being successful financially, making a profit, as something more we need to commit to our communities,” he said.
The father of two girls credits his wife for bringing awareness to violence against women.
“When I transformed my company into this luxury group, I was looking for what commitment should make the most sense for me, and at the time I met my wife in 2006, and I discovered the reality of violence and women. I thought it was remote from where I was living and no, it’s all over,” he said.
He added that most of his employees of the luxury goods company Kering are women, along with a large extent of customers, bringing the issue even closer.
“So you put all of that together and say well that is the commitment I want for my company, for myself, for my family, for my kids, and we started from there.”
On Monday, “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King emceed the Caring for Women fundraiser dinner, which brought together celebrities, philanthropists and charities to help the Kering Foundation’s mission of ending violence.
Hayek Pinault said her husband’s commitment to activism is something she loves about him.
“It was completely his initiative and that’s when I fell in love with him … He said, ‘I think it’s time to redefine luxury’ and I thought that was so beautiful,” she said.
But Hayek Pinault joked that it wasn’t love at first sight.
“I was embarrassed to be seen with him. I was very strong in the activism, and I didn’t want to lose credibility, and then he was just so charming, interesting and so much fun, and it just kept going and going. Love doesn’t have to be really difficult.”
