International Women’s Day : Institut Mines-Telecom acting for gender equality and against gender-based violence

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International Women’s Day provided an opportunity for IMT to reiterate its commitment through its Gender Equality Plan, the Ambassadress program led by the Mines-Telecom Foundation involving students from all IMT schools, and the initiatives taken by its schools on a daily basis to foster equality. IMT Mines Alès, for example, called on the participation of its staff to rename 17 of its rooms after female figures.

Gender equality

Several years ago, Institut Mines-Telecom implemented multiple actions to foster career equality between men and women, including parental support schemes and a specific pay adjustment measure to offset certain wage gaps.

 Action plan to address sexist and sexual violence

As a public institution with a teaching and research activity, IMT has chosen to take a global and inclusive approach on the scale of the Group’s 8 schools in building an action plan which encompasses staff (including external lecturers) and students.

The action plan focuses specifically on implementing measures to address sexual and sexist violence and was developed by volunteer IMT staff and students, via regular working group sessions.
The diversity of practices and the abundant interchange between the participants of these working groups led to the definition of this plan and the goals to be met in the short, medium and long term, in order to shape a masterplan which could be applied uniformly across IMT.

A program devoted to promoting women in engineering

As is the case for all engineering schools in France, the proportion of female students at Institut Mines-Telecom remains considerably low. They represent 26% of the engineering student body on average, but this figure varies between 17% and 37% according to the school and program. There is a higher proportion of female engineering students on programs linked to the environment or pharmacy, for example, than on those linked to digital science.

Institut Mines-Telecom schools have already been acting for many years to attain equality within their engineering classes. Increased diversity among its student population, and more particularly in terms of gender, forms a key point of the Institute’s 2023/2027 strategic plan. An inter-school working group was created in 2020 to map the situation and identify both the hurdles discouraging young women and ways to attract them to the engineering field. In this framework, an action plan to address gender-based violence was also implemented.

In addition to these local initiatives already in place, Institut Mines-Telecom and the Mines-Telecom Foundation launched a collective ‘Ambassadress’ program which draws on the regional network of IMT engineering schools. The aim of the program is to raise awareness among middle and high school students, through in-school visits, of the paths to take in order to enter engineering school. 31 female and 4 male engineering students from IMT Atlantique, IMT Mines Albi, IMT Mines Alès, IMT Nord Europe, Mines Saint-Étienne, Telecom Paris and Telecom SudParis are involved in the program this year.