How to make young girls want to pursue a scientific career? To dare to say that they can be physicists, neurologists, etc …? The first step is to make visible women visible, to show that it is possible. Twenty portraits of women have been enthroned in the city garden for ten days – and until December 5. An open-air exhibition to fight against the lack of female staff in the scientific field. “We want little girls to identify with these scientists“, confirms on France Bleu Isère Fairouz Malek, researcher at the CNRS, coordinator of the exhibition and representative of the Parité Science association in Grenoble.
France Bleu Isère: Why this imperative to make women scientists visible?
Fairouz Malek: We wanted to import this exhibition – which already existed in Toulouse, Paris and Lyon – for the simple reason that we want to encourage girls and women to do science because they are still very, very, few in number in scientific professions.
Do you personally, in your studies for example, or in your professional life, feel this demeaning of women scientists?
In fact, what we feel is that for more than 50-60 years. There has been a meteoric rise in the presence of girls in scientific studies and in scientific professions. On the other hand, for a little over ten years, this proportion has been stagnant. There is a glass ceiling. For 10-15 years now, there are around 25 to 30% of girls in science and even less in science. And it stagnates.
And this while they are in the majority, for example, in scientific baccalaureate. How do you explain this glass ceiling? What are the obstacles that still persist?
This is largely due to the education of girls, to stereotypes that do not go away, that become traditions. We’re going to tell a girl “doing math is too hard for her”, we’re going to prevent her from thinking that she can be an engineer. The girls are about 50% in science, bac S. And when they arrive at the time of making choices for university, well, we do not find them. So that means that at one point or another, in their journey, their life, they have been influenced by ideas, stereotypes, recommendations from family and society.
How does it manifest itself? How do you still perceive it today?
It is very simple. Yes, these are remarks and it starts already as soon as the child is born. We are going to tell the girl “you will put on pink and you will play with dolls”. We’re going to tell the girl “math is too hard for you”. When she goes to college or high school, we will tell her “Oh no, this is not for you, this job, choose a literary path instead, it’s better for girls, art and literature c ‘is for girls and math, for boys. ” In fact, all of these stereotypes have persisted for centuries and centuries and they are still with us. And that’s why we want to show girls that no, it’s not true: girls can go to scientific professions, they can be technicians, engineers, researchers and they can be teachers. There is no hindrance to that if they wish.
The aim of this exhibition is to give new models of women scientists to young students. Does it have a real impact on them afterwards?
Even more than the students, this exhibition is for the public. As you have seen, it is in the Grenoble city garden. It is for the young, the old, the couples, it is for the girls and the boys. The goal is to give a picture of what a woman scientist is today. We did not want to make an exhibition of “giant” women, such as Marie Curie, but we wanted to show the women of today in scientific professions, who make science today. People who go to the city garden will be able to say to themselves “Oh, she’s a woman like mom or like me, she’s a physicist, neurologist, etc.”. We want to give an image of today’s woman so that young girls and little girls can identify with these scientists and so that they can, in the future, also do scientific jobs.