LIP equality committee
The LIP Equality Committee is composed of a small group of LIP members coordinated by Valeria Vignudelli and Bora Uçar (hyperlink to web pages, with contacts). Its main goal is to act against biases and discriminations, by identifying and carrying out missions aiming towards inclusiveness and equality at LIP, with special emphasis on gender equality.
- Members of the Committee:
Eddy Caron
Daniel Hirschkoff
Laurent Lefèvre
Damien Pous
Nathalie Revol
Mahshid Riahinia
Bora Uçar
Titouan Vayer
Valeria Vignudelli - Contacts:
- Valeria Vignudelli: valeria.vignudelli@ens-lyon.fr
- Bora Uçar: bora.ucar@ens-lyon.fr
Do not hesitate to contact us, or any member of the Committee, for any question or issue concerning equality at the laboratory, or in case you wish to join our discussions (the Committee plans several meetings per year).
Reporting of Sexist and Sexual Violence, and Equality Mission at ENS de Lyon
ENS Lyon has activated a reporting address for cases of sexist or discriminatory behavior, as well as sexist or sexual violence: signalement.violences.discriminations@ens-lyon.fr
An anonymized reporting form is also available. For more information, visit https://www.ens-lyon.fr/lecole/nos-engagements/lutte-contre-les-discriminations-et-les-violences. At ENS Lyon, Florence Françon mission.egalite@ens-lyon.fr is responsible for the equality mission for all genders. Natacha Portier and Philippe Daubias are equality referents.
Equality Actions at LIP
Several equality and parity actions are underway at LIP. If you wish to participate or assist in the organization, please do not hesitate to contact us.
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Non-mixed meals are organized several times a year by Nathalie Revol, Natacha Portier, and Anne Benoit.
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LIP welcomes high school girls from the Lyon region to encourage them to choose scientific study paths, as part of the "Filles Maths Info" day once a year (Natacha Portier and Nathalie Revol), and the "Sciences : un métier de femmes" days.
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A training session for female doctoral students in the laboratory took place for the first time in 2023. It's a small-group training that allows them to work together on various topics related to different stages of their careers and the challenges they face. This training also enables doctoral students to get to know each other better and develop a professional network in a supportive environment. To achieve this, the training incorporates techniques from co-development and collective intelligence and is supervised by two certified coaches, Carole Méziat, a cybersecurity consultant, and Natacha Portier, a laboratory member
Some links to useful material
The webpage of the equality mission of INS2i contains recommendations and useful statistics.
The webpage of the IRISA Equality Committee contains a lot of useful material, including targeted book lists, discussions and guide to relevant sujects as inclusive language...
A video in French from Sorbonne University highlighting the role of biases in Hiring Committee.
Recommendations for Selection Committees
All members of the committee need to be vigilant with respect to discriminating behaviors that might occur during the selection process. In particular, being aware of (un)conscious bias and stereotypes allows them to reduce their impact on the hiring panel.
The LIP Equality Committee recommends taking the following steps:
1) The head of the committee is in charge of recalling the importance of this topic, and she/he is recommended to show and distribute to committee members this video (8 minutes) which, amongst others, the ERC Scientific Council encourages evaluators to watch.
This video highlights a number of issues that are important in the functioning of a selection committee. We stress below those that are related to diversity and equality.
- Independence: In academic evaluations, women's independence is more often questioned. This questioning tends to have a negative impact.
- Use of informal information: Evaluation panels frequently discuss information obtained via informal channels. Such informal information tends to favor men and disfavor women.
- Interpreting reference letters: Reference letters written for women applicants sometimes differ subtly from those written for men applicants. For instance, a reference letter for a woman might contain adjectives like "knowledgeable, reliable and easy to get along with", while for a man it could be "outstanding scientist doing excellent research".
- Influence of first impressions: First impressions might positively or negatively influence the evaluation process; in particular, this could be related to the outfit.
- Affinity bias: People tend to favor candidates that are like them or have something in common with them, and gender can be one of such elements.
- Questioning skills: The bar is often higher for women. When gender is known, there is often a bias from the evaluator. The bias is independent of the gender of the evaluator.
- Criteria for evaluation and expectations: For instance, candidates who are mother can suffer a motherhood penalty, whereas men often benefit from being a parent. A mother will often be assumed to be less available for doing her job. On the other hand, concerning maternity leaves, we recall that ERC extends women candidates' eligibility by 18 months per child.
Further useful material (in French) to be shared with the committee members can be found on the page of the Inria Comité Parité Egalité and in particular the slides on bias.
2) On a voluntary basis, two members of the committee (preferably one man and one woman), will be selected for being in charge of:
- watching over discriminating behaviors, in particular by recalling and discussing bias which might apply
- keeping a record of the percentages of candidates by gender at the different stages of the selection process, for internal assessment of the committee.
We invite the committee to apply these guidelines to favour diversity and equality in general.