Every month, for you, EPWS presents the characteristics and activities of one Member Association.
Read all the previous Interviews with our Members here
Our member for August is the French association CPED, Conférence Permanente des chargé.e.s de mission Egalité et Diversité (Standing Conference for Equality and Diversity Officers within Higher Education institutions).
For the CPED, Rozenn Texier-Picard, President of the CPED, Associate Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Rennes and Isabelle Kraus, co-founder and Vice-president for European affairs of the CPED, Associate Professor at the University of Strasbourg have accepted to answer the EPWS questionnaire.
Contact this association: cped-contact@groupes.renater.fr
Contact this member: rozenn.texier@ens-rennes.fr, Isabelle.kraus@unistra.fr
Association website: www.cped-egalite.fr
EPWS: If you wanted to describe your association in one sentence, what would you say?
The CPED federates French higher education and research institutions by encouraging shared practices with respect to gender equality and diversity. It provides a forum for addressing and offering solutions to the issues our institutions encounter in the introduction of equality and diversity policies.
EPWS: What are the objectives of your association?
Our objectives are to provide a cooperative space for the equality and diversity officers of higher education institutions in France; to promote and facilitate gender equality in higher education institutions; to observe and analyze gender policies within higher education.
EPWS: What is the history of CPED, in a few words?
The eleven founders of the CPED met in 2011 in Strasbourg (see picture below). At that time only a few universities had equality, diversity or similar missions’ officers and they felt a need to share practices and to constitute a professional network. In 2012 the CPED was declared as an association. The network grew with the increasing numbers of institutions setting an equality and diversity officer thanks to active political actions and years after years the association became more influent. Today the CPED federates 78 institutions.
EPWS: Could you explain the organisation of your association?
The members meet every four months, for two days, and share practices with respect to various subjects. The association also has thematic working groups (gender-based violence, discriminations, women’s careers, maternity leaves, etc.) and works with many academic and non-academic partners.
EPWS: What are its recent achievements?
In 2017 and 2018 the CPED mainly addressed two issues: gender-based violence and discriminations against transgender students. We produced with the association ANEF (Association Nationale des Etudes Féministes –French national association of feminist studies) a vade-mecum against sexual harassment in higher education and research (2017), organized an international conference on gender-based violence (December 2017), a poster campaign to raise awareness on sexual harassment and a guidebook for institutions to create a tool against gender-based violence (2018). In 2018 we also organized an international panel about how higher education institutions can be more inclusive of transgender students.
EPWS: What is your agenda for the coming months?
In June 2019, with the French ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation, we will organise a workshop about professional equality between men and women in higher education and research institutions. We will address the questions of gender equality plans, equal pay, parental issues and lifetime balance, etc. We will also develop training sessions about gender-based violence for French higher education and research institutions, together with two other French structures, ANEF and JuriSup (the professional network of legal affairs officers in French higher education, research and innovation). Other ideas are in discussion now, such as surveys and awareness-raising on discriminations in higher education institutions.
EPWS: Are you collaborating with other EPWS members?
We have a close collaboration with the EPWS French members “Femmes & Sciences”, “femmes et mathématiques” and ECEPIE. Some CPED members also have links with Mnémosyne and WiN-France. The collaboration with similar associations in other European countries was initiated in 2016. Along with two EPWS members, BuKoF in Germany, KOFRAH in Switzerland, and with the Austrian networks Arge Gluna and GenderPlatform, we organized a panel at the 9th European on Gender Equality in Education and Research in Paris. We are willing to further develop this type of joined conferences.
EPWS: What do you expect from EPWS? In what ways can it help you develop your action?
EPWS can help us developing projects and sharing practices with other European institutions and countries where some of the questions we encounter have already been addressed or are currently addressed.