
The Observatoire de Paris hosted a major event in favour of male-female equality. Geneviève Fioraso, minister for higher education and research, and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, minister for women’s rights and spokeswoman for the government, both came and presented their ministry’s pledge in the framework of the governmental plan for women’s rights and professional equality. In anticipation of the bill concerning universities and research, which will be discussed by the Council of Ministers in March, they launched a charter for the establishment of gender parity in university governance ; they signed this charter in the presence of many personalities from academia.
As soon as they arrived, the two ministers entered into a discussion with two female researchers at Observatoire de Paris, Rosine Lallement and Françoise Combes, also a member of the Academy of Science. They were introduced by Marie-Christine Angonin, vice-president of the administrative committee, in the presence of Anne-Marie Lagrange, CNRS Research Director, laureate of the Irène Joliot Curie prize for 2011.
Women and science
Subsequently, Geneviève Fioraso and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem received, from their authors Michèle Riot-Sarcey et Florence Rochefort, the report on gender equality, prepared by the strategic group.

They were then welcomed by Claude Catala, president of the Observatoire de Paris. The ministers then presented their plan for joint action, and signed the charter for male-female equality, together with the representatives of the conference of university presidents, the conference of directors of french engineering schools and the conference of the grandes écoles. In all, the document involves 300 universities and higher education schools.
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