Home>Congratulations to the 2022 cohort of the Gender and Public Policy Certificate
03.05.2022
Congratulations to the 2022 cohort of the Gender and Public Policy Certificate
Article originally published on www.sciencespo.fr
On April 21, 2022, the closing session of the Gender and Public Policy Certificate took place. This programme, offered by the School of Public Affairs and Sciences Po's Research and Educational Programme on Gender Studies (PRESAGE), is aimed at students from the School of Public Affairs and the School of International Affairs (PSIA) and provides training in policies to combat inequality between women and men and discrimination.
EQUALITY IN THEORY... AND IN PRACTICE
For two semesters, 31 first-year Master's students attended a series of conferences allowing them to meet committed actors, to become familiar with the state of current scholarship, to deepen their theoretical knowledge on these subjects, before putting them into practice in the framework of engagements entrusted to them by 7 partners from the public, non-profit or private sector.
This closing session was thus an opportunity for students to present their projects to the two directors of this programme: Hélène Périvier, economist at the Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (OFCE) and director of the Research and Educational Programme on Gender Studies (PRESAGE) at Sciences Po, and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, former Minister of Women's Rights and then of Education, and currently director of the NGO ONE for France.
IMPLEMENTING EQUALITY IN THE WORKPLACE
Two missions related to professional equality were entrusted to Sciences Po students. A group of four students worked with the SNCF Mixité network on a self-diagnosis tool on the reception and integration of women in the French national railroad company, which still only had 23% female employees in 2021.
Another group worked with a departmental fire and rescue service (SDIS) in the Grand Est region. This was an opportunity to become familiar with a little-known environment and to bring an outside and constructive viewpoint to an action plan on professional equality in the public service.
In these organisations, students discovered a new way of talking about gender equality - a new vocabulary.
ANALYSING THE TWELFTH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF THE 5TH REPUBLIC
Two groups worked on the 2022 presidential election and delivered the main findings of their work. A report produced in partnership with the Observatory of Gender Equality of the Jean-Jaurès Foundation shows, for example, that the regional daily newspapers still deal very little with topics related to gender equality and feminism. Another group concluded, following a precise analysis of all the programmes of the presidential candidates, that there is still a left-right divide in terms of gender equality.
TO ADVANCE THE STATE OF OUR UNDERSTANDING OF MAJOR CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
The other students addressed current affairs by approaching them through the prism of equality issues. The association Universités & Réfugié-es (UniR) gave four students the task of writing a report on the challenges faced by refugee women in accessing higher education in Île-de-France. Other students worked with the Women's Foundation to conduct an in-depth analysis of reality TV shows and publications by influencers on social networks to analyse the degree of sexism. Finally, a group has carried out a work of popularisation and dissemination of information on key topics of gender equality public policies in the form of a podcast.
A PROMISING MOMENTUM
The two directors of the Certificate course concluded the session by congratulating all the students for their investment and the quality of their work.
