In France, as in the rest of Europe, the industry has difficulty recruiting, and in particular it has difficulty attracting women. More than 70% of employees in the sector are men, compared to less than 30% of women. In tech, we are even further from parity. So to attract women to these professions, initiatives exist. An association puts girls, middle school or high school students, in contact with sponsors who work in industry and in tech.
A competition to encourage young girls to work in industry, that’s the idea put forward by the Elles bougent association. For this ninth edition, around twenty proposals were presented, innovative projects with initiatives for ecology, applications for education or health. Thus, more than 300 middle school, high school and university students, as well as sponsors from the world of industry and new technologies, met at the end of spring at the Ministry of the Economy in Paris.
Delphine Sanchez, an engineer at Safran Electronics & Defense in Poitiers, has been a sponsor of Elles bougent for almost thirteen years, she accompanied a team of students who defended a robot project to fight against ocean acidification. Every day, she notices the lack of women in her sector: ” In the office where I am, there are four of us girls out of 30 people,” testifies the engineer. In an attempt to inspire vocations, she works in high schools, where girls often choose professions that are already very feminized: “ They want to be florists or beauticians or nurses. And it’s true that after our interventions, we show them the range of possibilities, what we are capable of doing and they see that we have fun in our work and that allows us to sow a few little seeds.”
Sowing seeds and sometimes triggering ideas in young women who didn’t think they were capable of pursuing scientific careers: “ After a few interventions, we had young girls who contacted us and told us that they had changed direction and gone into science. And they are having a blast! »
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Valérie Brusseau is president of Elles bougent and research and development director for the automotive equipment manufacturer Valeo. The group encourages its employees to become sponsors for the association, because moving towards parity also has an impact on a company’s performance: “ There is a real issue of operational efficiency since it is said that as soon as there are more than 20 or 25% of women in a community, we improve collective efficiency by 40 to 45%. It is a real issue to feminize the research and development teams of industries, and in general of all the industrial professions of Valeo. That is the interest of Valeo “, insists the president of Elles bougent.
However, the initiatives of associations are not enough: the share of women in industry in France has stagnated for almost 20 years. The causes: prejudices, discrimination or even an educational model that struggles to lead girls towards scientific fields.
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