Today, Feb 11th is the International day of Women in Science (twitter/Facebook #WomenInScience) recognized by the UN in the A/70/474/Add.2  Dec, 22 2015  . This day recalls the essential role of women in the scientific and technological community. By promoting the participation of women in research activities, the fight to end stereotypes and to promote intersectionality in academic research is developing with the support of all. Below some links to portraits of CIIL Women in Science :

S Belouzard

P Brodin

P De Nadaï

Among the fabulous films of the 16th edition of the Pariscience festival , the "Picture a Scientist" is a movie, directed by: Ian Cheney and Sharon Shattuck, shows that "sexual harassment and gender inequalities does not spare the world of science. This edifying investigation opens the doors of laboratories and gives the floor to several scientists, who break the silence by confiding in their professional career, plagued by harassment and discrimination. This LINK is also related to this film and the subject it deals with.

They are INSERM !

NEWS

At the initiative of CIIL's equality advisors, the first meeting between CIIL women took place on December 15, 2023. The aim of this friendly get-together was to raise awareness of the missions of the equality referents among the Unit’s women, to forge links, exchanging and sharing experiences. Of the CIIL 120 women members, 40 answered the call and over 30 came to share their experiences over a coffee time.

In view of the success of this first meeting, Women's Cafés will be organized 3 times a year around a specific theme. Certain issues affect women more specifically, such as career progression difficulties, managing mental workloads, or returning from maternity leave, for example. More sensitive subjects may be tackled, such as sexist and sexual violence, which is mostly suffered by women. These different themes will be proposed as and when we meet and according to the wishes of the participants, who will hopefully be able to speak more freely among themselves.

A new UN report launched on June 12, 2023 revealed no improvement in the level of prejudice shown against women over the past decade, with almost nine out of 10 men and women worldwide, still holding such biases.
In France, 56.47% of people hold such biases. Fortunately, only 6.93% think that the University is more important for men than for women.
Report can be consulted and downloaded here.

Two out of 12 Nobel Prizes were awarded to women in 2022, one out of 13 in 2021…

Important number: 60. This is the number of Nobel Prizes that have been awarded to women since 1901, far fewer than the 895 prizes that have been awarded to men. Some 25 prizes were awarded to institutions and organizations (Source : Nobel prizes).

Nice infographics on Franceinfo website (2021)

The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council will give half of its research grants for its largest funding programme to women and non-binary applicants. What about France?

This article on the Nature website, ‘Game-changing’ gender quotas, has caught our attention. In Australia, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council will give half of its research grants for its largest funding programme to women and non-binary applicants.

In France, the ANR has published a very detailed report on the analysis of gender ratio data in the AAPG generic call for projects between 2015 and 2021*. The report shows that 31.9 % of projects are submitted by women and that this percentage remains almost similar for funded projects, 30.7 %. As you have noticed, we still lose 1.2 points of woman coordinators between deposit and funding. More detailed analyzes show that, for all funding instruments (JCJC, PRC, PRCE), the percentage of funded projects coordinated by women increases over time. Between 2015 and 2021, it increased by +7 points among the JCJCs, +2 points among the PRCs, +8 points among the PRCEs. This development is encouraging. However, at this rate, for the PRCs which represent the vast majority of funded projects (57.6%), it will take more than 70 years to achieve gender equality. Will the ANR still exist in 2092? The hope is in the young woman scientists who, in 2021, are the coordinators of 41.9% of the JCJC funded projects, and will certainly become confirmed researchers with PRC funding.

* ANR website

Give visibility to Women in Science. The twitter @366portraits account, created in 2020, had the objective of publishing a portrait of a Woman in Science per day. By July 20, 2022, the account had posted 500 portraits. The goal has increased to 600! #600womeninSTEM

Some of them are famous, Marie Skłodowska-Curie or Rosalind Franklin, but for others, we have forgotten, or never knew, that behind very well-known names, hide women at the origin of major discoveries, Maud Leonora Menten (the Michaelis-Menten equation for biochemists), or Marilyn Kozack, discoverer of the Kozack sequence, for example.

Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) #600womeninSTEM

Websites to go further:

• In French, « journal du CNRS »

lejournal.cnrs.fr/dossiers/femmes-de-science

• United Nations Website

https://www.un.org/en/observances/women-and-girls-in-science-day

• In comics (in French)

Femmes de sciences en BD

At the national level, the Mission for the Place of Women at the CNRS acts as an observatory responsible for promoting, advising and evaluating the inclusion of gender in the institution's overall policy.

The Mission pour la place des femmes au CNRS (MPDF), created in 2001, reports directly to the CNRS President. It runs a network of some twenty correspondents and correspondents in the regions and interacts with the CNRS parity/equality committee. Reporting to the President, the Mission for the Place of Women at the CNRS is responsible for ensuring that gender issues are taken into account in the institution's overall policy in order to make professional equality effective at the CNRS.

Its action is based on four main axes and 14 priority objectives (further information):

• acting for professional equality within the CNRS
• The aim is to advance equality, in particular by working towards gender balance in research professions, ensuring equal access to recruitment and promotion, increasing the number of women in positions of responsibility, making women more visible at scientific events, preventing and combating sexist and sexual violence, and promoting a balance between professional and personal life.
• promote the transversality of the "gender" approach in research
• Sex and gender are still insufficiently taken into account in research, both with regard to voice recognition by digital applications, wage inequalities, and diseases involving animal and human tests. Integrating this dimension nevertheless allows for major improvements in biology, artificial intelligence, economics and neuroscience: software that works better, reduction of unanticipated side effects of drugs, etc.
• promoting scientific and technical careers among young people, especially girls
• The MPDF strives to support and create spaces for doctoral and post-doctoral women to be visible and to speak out, as their experiences are affected by specific problems: a feeling of illegitimacy, difficulties in appropriating and integrating a scientific profession whose dominant representations are implicitly masculine, increased exposure to sexist and sexual violence. It therefore supports mentoring actions, organises and participates in dedicated events (colloquia, round tables) and promotes these issues during awareness-raising actions.
• Developing European and international partnerships
• As professional equality policies are strongly supported not only at the CNRS but also at the national level, the MPDF interacts with counterpart structures within the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, universities (CPED) and other bodies. It also has links with other institutional partners and women's professional networks.  It supports the associations Women & Science and Women & Mathematics, as well as the Gender Institute.

It coordinates the European project GENDER-NET Plus, which funds transnational research projects with an innovative gender dimension and participates in GE-Academy, which aims to create a European network of training courses on equality in higher education and research, as well as in GENDER-STI, which works for a better consideration of gender equality in international scientific cooperation. It also supports the EPWS (European Platform of Women Scientists).
Acting for professional equality at the CNRS
The MPDF is in charge of the action plan for professional equality between women and men at the CNRS, as well as the equality aspect of the HRS4R label (European human resources strategy for researchers). The aim is to advance equality, in particular by working towards gender balance in research professions, ensuring equal access to recruitment and promotion, increasing the number of women in positions of responsibility, making women more visible at scientific events, preventing and combating sexist and sexual violence, and promoting a balance between professional and personal life.
At the regional level, Stéphanie Barbez et Maxime Flamant are the two Gender Equality Correspondents of the Hauts-de-France delegation.

At the Center level, as of February 2021, the CIIL is composed of 14 research teams, 4 of which are coordinated by women. The total number of staff is 122 women and 92 men. This figure covers different realities depending on the personnel.
For the staff with fix-term contract, parity has been reached with 38 women and 37 men in total as illustrated for the scientists (5 men and 4 women) and post-docs (8 women and 12 men). However, it should be noted that there are 23 female doctoral students and 15 male doctoral students and among the engineers and technicians : 3 women and 7 men.
As far as permanent staff is concerned, if we are close to parity for scientists (28 women and 32 men), Assistant Professor and Professor (10 women and 11 men), a very strong imbalance exists for the engineers and technicians with 46 women and 12 men.

Equality Correspondent of the Unit (coregal): Frank Lafont