The symposium “Careers of women in academia, in research and in engineering: struggles for spaces of transmission and valorization of knowledge” was organized in the frame of the 8th International Congress of French-speaking Feminist Researches (CIRFF) by the EPWS association ECEPIE and the University of Ottawa on August 28th, 2018 in the University Paris-Nanterre.
Women’s careers in higher education, research and engineering are not the same as that of their male colleagues. The percentage of women decreases in high-level positions that provide access to decision-making. This persistent situation of vertical discrimination, called “glass ceiling”, was analysed in this symposium, in a transnational way, by the confrontation of recent sociological researches conducted in Europe and Canada.
The works of Nicky Le Feuvre from University of Lausanne, Switzerland, (presentation by Pierre Bataille), Bernard Fusulier from University of Louvain, Belgium, and Gita Ghiasi from University of Montréal, Canada, were presented in the first session of the symposium.
The second session was devoted to the relationships between the academic researches and the field actions in Europe and Canada.
Following a presentation of Monique Frize (University of Ottawa) on the Canadian experience for increasing women in engineering, Claudine Hermann, EPWS President, described the European policy in favour of women scientists since 2000 and explained EPWS aims and actions.