Press release - September 10, 2020
On Thursday, September 10, CPED represented by Sandrine Rousseau was interviewed by the High Council for Equality between Women and Men (HCE) on the gender impacts of the draft Multiannual Research Programming Act (LPPR).
We deplored the fact that equality between men and women in research was not at the heart of the discussions or concerns prior to the drafting of the law.. In addition, no mention of the law's impact on female researchersThe impact study only mentions the entry of women into careers and maternity. The main risk of the LPPR lies in the cumulative effect of the measures: if women fall victim to gender bias at every stage of their careers, we can inevitably expect to see a strengthening of men's position in the leadership of French research.
We do, however, welcome measures to limit the number of theses that can be supervised at any one time. This could help to reduce "mandarinat" logics. The reform of bonuses and their greater homogeneity, the details of which are not specified, is also a positive factor.
The LPPR is a law that will structurally alter research careers. At the same time, the law for the transformation of the civil service obliges establishments to draw up a plan to reduce inequalities, and provides for the possibility of significant financial penalties. But to reduce these structural inequalities, equality issues need to be integrated into all legislation. To achieve this, three levers are important and could be integrated into the LPPR :
- Equal access to financing and overheads from the ANR.
- Implementation of equality indicators and impact studies and this, on all the devices proposed by the law.
- Involvement of funding and assessment bodies These include making it an item in the HCERES strategy assessment, or imposing co-sponsorship of research projects.
Only then can the Multi-Year Research Programming Act become a lever for equality, rather than an obstacle to it.
Contact Sandrine Rousseau, President of CPED
(see full contact details in the attached CP)