A Committee for Gender Equality was created at CEREMADE in 2017.

Members

The Committee for Gender Equality is currently composed 16 members, including 7 women et 9 men.

Juliette Bouhours (PRAG), Isabelle Catto (CR), Maxime Chupin (IR), Béatrice de Tilière (PR), Laetitia Della Maestra (Doctorante), César Faivre (T), Amic Frouvelle (MCF), Alessandra Iacobucci (IE), Guillaume Legendre (MCF), Benjamin Melinand (MCF), Katia Meziani (MCF), Olga Mula (MCF), Madalina Olteanu (PR), Vincent Rivoirard (PR), Angelina Roche (MCF), Robin Ryder (MCF), Julien Stoehr (MCF), Yannick Viossat (MCF), Irène Waldspurger (CR).

Mission

The mission of the Committee is to lead discussions on equality between women and men, and to promote it in the laboratory. It will suggest actions to encourage women to undertake and pursue a leading career in science. The Committee is composed of members of the laboratory, ensuring an adequate representation of PhD students, engineers, CR/MCF and DR/PR and an equal distribution of speaking time between women and men. Among the members, a parity pair is in charge of the co-leadership whose role is to :

• represent the Committee, 
• organize and facilitate meetings,
• write working materials.

The gender statistics of the laboratory

The laboratory statistics are summarized below (in French).

Evolution

Responsabilities

Laboratory practices

In order to improve equality between people, particularly in terms of gender, the Committee has proposed concrete practices for the laboratory.

Inclusive writing, feminization of names

• The Committee and the laboratory director will use inclusive writing in their communications.
• To date, the laboratory's website does not propose the feminization of the titles and grades. For those who wish to do so, the Committee will work with the university services to feminize the titles and grades.

Good practice for selection committees

The parity committee has proposed a text of good practices, to be read during the selection committees (translated from French).

“We remind that the scientific policy of the laboratory is to give priority to the quality of the file and the theme. In the study of women's files, Ceremade strongly encourages the selection committee to grant 1 year per child; for example, the file of a woman who defended in 2015 and had 2 children is evaluated like that of a man who defended in 2017. The committee members are also reminded that all of us, men and women, are subject to different biases based on gender, ethnicity, disabilities, etc.

Furthermore, the selection committee (through its chairperson) and the laboratory will be informed of the proportion of women and men: candidates, auditioned, ranked.

Ceremade therefore encourages everyone to act with discernment."

This text was adopted by the board and the general assembly of the laboratory.

Conferences, Seminars

• The Committee made the following proposal (accepted by the Lab Council) regarding funding for conferences organized by its members.
  
  “In order to make progress in the area of gender equality, the Laboratory Council requests that any conference funded by CEREMADE include a proportion of female speakers that meets or exceeds that of the discipline/theme.”
   
• The Committee encourages the organization of all seminars/working groups of the laboratory by a parity pair. The current functioning of the seminars is as follows:
  
  
• To encourage and counteract gender bias, the Committee proposes a practice to ensure the proper representation of women in the various seminars/working groups: “for each invitation, consider one woman and one man, compare and then decide who to invite”.
  
  The statistics for seminar guests are as follows:
  
  

Management of the CNRS grant

CNRS provides a grant to laboratories that have a Committee for Gender Equality. The question of its use remains unanswered. The avenues that were mentioned during the discussions of the parity committee are

• reimbursement of childcare expenses due to conferences. Although this is a priori a difficult point to put in place, a study of what is allowed will be conducted.
• The payment of speakers for gender workshops for high school and undergraduate students.

Sick kids days

CNRS staff are entitled to 6 days of "leave" to take care of sick children. It seems that this is not the case for teachers/researchers. The parity committee aims to clarify this point.

Actions to improve equality

First an observation: the proportion of women decreases significantly between high school and the end of a scientific career. The laboratory's parity committee has set itself the following objectives

• encourage women to undertake or pursue a scientific career,
• help women reach certain key career milestones,
• to overcome societal or individual gender bias.

Mentoring for post-doctoral, ATER and doctoral students

“Mentoring is an interpersonal relationship of support, exchange and learning, in which an experienced person invests his or her acquired wisdom and expertise to foster the development of another person who has skills to acquire and professional goals to achieve (translated from Mentorat Québec, 2016 ; Lafranchise et Cadec, 2014 ; Houde, 2010).”

The Committee proposes to set up mentoring for post-doctoral, ATER and doctoral students. Each student would be assigned a "mentor" among the researchers or teacher-researchers of the laboratory; the goal is to create a relationship of the type described above.

Such a framework is not possible at the M1 and M2 levels due to the number of students. One avenue for reflection is the representation of women in the presentation of career paths during information meetings.

Female undergraduate students - high school students

It was proposed to organize a day on the theme "Women in Science" which could include the following points:

• A speaker specialized in gender inequalities would make a presentation at this event,
• Activity with a theater group (one such intervention already took place at IHP),
• Invitation to leading female researchers to present their backgrounds and research,
• Round table of questions and answers,
• Speed meeting with female PhD student,
• Fun introductory research workshops,
• Intervention of the association "Femmes et Maths".

In the organization of such a day, it will also be interesting to contact the secretariat of "equality between women and men and the fight against discrimination" to know the actions envisaged by this association. The organization of such a day is an objective for the beginning of the year 2020.

As this organization is time consuming, the possibility was raised that the person(s) in charge could benefit from a teaching exemption. This point will be discussed at a later date, particularly with the relevant authorities.

Half-day event organized in March 2020

In March 2020, the Committee organized a half-day event for high school girls with the Lycée du Bourget in Saint-Denis. This day brought together a dozen high school girls in the last years of high school. This meeting took place in two parts: first, three teacher-researchers presented their career paths and their research topics, then, after a small snack, there was a "speed-meeting" which allowed groups of 2 or 3 to discuss with an engineer, a researcher or a teacher-researcher in mathematics. This day was a great success!

Female representation in Dauphine's communication

The Committee's goal is to ensure that women are properly represented in the university's communication. To that end, two items were discussed:

• ensure the presence of women at events such as "High School Saturday". The involvement of female students as a means of communication seems to us to be an interesting point. It allows us to avoid over-soliciting female teachers-researchers while at the same time proposing a discourse anchored in the reality of young women wishing to pursue a scientific career.
• Contact the university's communications department to encourage parity in the university's various media (testimonials, photographs, etc.).

 

Contact

To contact us: Isabelle Catto cattoping@ceremade.dauphinepong.fr, Alessandra Iacobucci iacobping@ceremade.dauphinepong.fr, Maxime Chupin chupinping@ceremade.dauphinepong.fr