Women in the Engineering Sciences Honored at the 2017 Deans’ Forum
Organized by Mines ParisTech in partnership with Chimie ParisTech and ESPCI Paris, the second annual Deans’ Forum for 2017 was held on August 31 and September 1 with a focus on Women in Science and Engineering. The discussions centered on two major areas: the first day was devoted to the issue of gender parity and equality, while on the second day participants were able to share their experiences and best practices.
Women’s representation in science and engineering: two days of discussion
A large audience was on hand to hear speakers from a variety of countries (including the US, Norway, Sweden and Denmark) talk about the importance of gender equality and indeed parity, both in the classroom and in the professional world. Although participants agreed that there’s still progress to be made, they cited multiple initiatives that give today’s women wider access to some remarkable career paths. Past experience and experiments have demonstrated in the field that women bring a complementary and unique perspective to the day-to-day engineering tasks usually performed by men. Moreover, the adoption of indicators and the introduction of formal procedures are helping to alert academia and beyond to some positive trends emerging within the general public.
Each day ended with a classical music recital as part of the "Musique aux Mines" festival, happening at the same time.
“Scientific pianists” capped off the day’s discussions on August 31, while on September 1 a group of young professional musicians gave a remarkable performance of a work by composer Gracianne Finzi.