Gender Equality Plan

Ecole Polytechnique commitment for gender equality constitutes the grounds for building an internal diverse environment that faces current social challenges.

To overcome current gender gap, present in Higher Education Institutions, Ecole Polytechnique’s engagement is focused on overcoming possible discrimination against girls and young women from the access to scientific education, fighting self-censorship, promoting equity strategies in the workplace and public representation, and preventing sexual or sexist violence.

To achieve this goal, the Ecole Polytechnique current Gender Equality Plan (adopted in 2021 by the Governing Board) includes 4 action lines:

1. Assess, prevent and address gender pay gaps
2. Guarantee equal access for women and men to career development and professional responsibilities (recruitment, promotion and training).
3. Support the balance between professional and personal life
4. Prevent and face discrimination, harassment and sexual and gender-based violence.

which are translated into tangible actions:

• we count with dedicated resources. In particular, we count with a diversity and outreach manager, Marie Bresson, and under her umbrella we count with specific referees for gender equality at staff and at students’ level.
• we offer training to the whole organisation, including gender equality contents to promote a more equal organisation. For example, train managers in charge of recruitment and managers and we offer equal training opportunities for women and men. Around 200 people were trained in 2020 and 23 workshops were organized specifically in the scientific labs in 2021 for around 200 people again.
• we count with a work life balance organisational culture providing flexibility work scheduled times to the whole organisation staff, by allowing remote work, flexibility of working hours.
• we are integrating gender equality to research results and teaching content to support equality in our educational programmes and research projects. All our students receive training against gender bias. Some of our students, under supervision of Prof. Etienne Ollion managed a “Projet Scientifique Collectif” about student life under the prism of gender.  Furthermore, Prof. Guillaume Hollard has recently written a paper with José de Sousa. (already revised and resubmitted) “"From Micro to Macro Gender Differences: Evidence from Field Tournaments".
• we have created a reporting and support system “HDVS” (Harassment, Discrimination, Sexual Violence and Sexist Acts), designed for the entire community of the Ecole Polytechnique. We offer individual and collective support and we are running a campaign to raise awareness among all community to avoid discrimination, harassment and sexual and gender-based violence.

All our efforts and engagement in favor of gender equality are already visible within our institution in our annual reports which shows a more equal cultural root at our institution as a whole.  Our commitment has turned into action in our campus life and it is aimed at being in a process of permanent improvement.