Our students in a #WomenInSTEM intervention at the Lycée de la Vallée de Chevreuse (Gif-sur-Yvette)

With the aim of fighting self-censorship and encouraging vocations, three events were organized in March and April 2023 to allow eight female engineering students in their first and second years of the ENSAE Paris engineering program to meet and exchange ideas with high school students from the Vallée de Chevreuse high school in Gif-sur-Yvette.

Although they come from different admission paths, they share the desire to see more young girls dare to take the preparatory classes, as well as university courses, which allow them to access the grandes écoles and more particularly the engineering schools. 
After a round table discussion, they exchanged with the audience to better define the range of possible outlets to which the title of engineer leads, as many professions and sectors sometimes unknown to high school students. In a second step, using an excerpt from the documentary film "Bienvenue dans la vraie vie des femmes" (Welcome to the real life of women) by Virginie Lovisone and Agnès Poirier (2009), our students discussed the different perceptions that girls and boys have of their school results from a very young age. Finally, they concluded the presentation with a concrete feedback from their experience as students at ENSAE Paris in order to better enable the young women gathered to project themselves in an engineering school.

Many thanks to Dariia HARYFULLINA, Mira MAAMARI, Solène MORO, Sarah OULD AKLOUCHE, Rose SALAUN, Juliette SCHNEIDER, Mathilde SEROUGNE and Lilou SOULAS for their commitment.