Blog1: Gender Equality Charter

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Blog#1: Universities Sign Gender Equality Charter

In France, a new charter was signed into law in an effort to make the playing field more fair for men and women in educational attainment. According to recent statistics, women only make up 24% of professors, 27% of central committee members, and 8% of managers. The charter committee was made up of Genevieve Fioraso (minister for higher education) and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem (minister for women's rights) plus the heads of three conferences of university presidents. On the international stage, France has only about 43% of its new PhD recipients as women. This is below Iceland (63%), The U.S.(52%), and the U.K.(45%).

The article cites that students favored disciplines based on gender stereotypes. Male students favoring sports and applied sciences, and female students favoring languages, arts and social sciences. This new charter would aid in decreasing and hopefully removing these gender stereotypes from certain college courses of study. One method cited directly was the 'elimination of sexist language in administrative documents.' Such language of course could inadvertently cause men or women to feel out of place by registering for 'male' or 'female' courses while they attend college, so I think that is very helpful.

In addition to this, the universities say that men and women should both be fairly represented at all levels and encouraged to participate in gender equality training. It is believed that creating more fair conditions for men and women that this will help women move up into higher administrative positions and be fairly represented as the men are. Other goals here are that this new charter will stop violence against, and the sexual harassment of women.

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130131131317448