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Innovation, health, AI: will the future belong to only one in four women?

2023-05-24T10:09:11.101Z

Highlights: Only 24% of women enter science, tech and AI professions in France. Women are absent from the jobs that build the future. Being a girl today acts as a source of inequality. 60% of teachers do not encourage girls to go to the professions of tomorrow. The France has the second highest differential in the world in the level of anxiety between boys and girls before entering math class. In Japan and China, more and more young men are marrying a virtual woman, a hologram, a kind of nurse who sends them messages during the day.


Only 24% of women enter science, tech and AI professions. This is the distressing observation of the Sistemic forum, launched by Aude de Thuin. How can we change the situation?


State of emergency

"The figures are frightening," says Carine Berger. The Secretary General of INSEE, herself a polytechnician, was the first to take the stage on May 12, accompanied by mathematician Cédric Villani (normalien, 2010 Fields medalist). "The scientific professions have only 24% of women and when we read the studies in detail, this figure drops to 18% in the IT and data sector, making it one of the ten universes where they are least represented in France," says Carine Berger. Women are absent from the jobs that build the future. It is paradoxically in Western countries, where the fight for professional equality is in full swing, that the proportion of girls drops drastically in scientific fields, when it reaches 45 or 55% in the countries of the former Soviet bloc and the Maghreb. "It is a dominant feature of our societies to eliminate girls from the places of having and power," says Elyès Jouini, head of the Women and Science Chair at UNESCO. Being a girl today acts as a source of inequality in the same way as being from a disadvantaged background. Hence the urgency of reversing the curves.

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The weight of stereotypes

Why this early lack of interest in science subjects, among girls who are often better students than boys in primary and middle school? Again, the numbers hurt. "This was confirmed to us by the Ministry of Education: 60% of teachers do not encourage girls to go to the professions of tomorrow," regrets Aude de Thuin. "The France," adds Cédric Villani, "has the second highest differential in the world in the level of anxiety between boys and girls before entering math class." During this famous class, teachers give boys twice as much voice as girls. A "bad atmosphere" pointed out by all the reports and which explains, perhaps, why the France began to train fewer women scientists with the beginning of the mixed school... Brought into contact with boys, girls would lose confidence until they fade away. A habit, finally, that will nestle in the folds of education and family. Isn't it often boys who are asked math "glues" or math problems during Sunday lunches or car trips? "Unconsciously, parents still have an image of their daughter based on femininity," says Aude de Thuin. They have a hard time imagining their daughter as a developer and it's a shame because that's where, in these performances, and from an early age, it all begins. The reform of the baccalaureate, which made maths optional in high school, has accentuated the plummet. Today, only 56% of girls in first grade and 44% in final year attend a minimum of 3 hours of classes in this subject per week – when it takes at least 8 hours to form a coherent scientific mind and prepare it for higher education.

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The challenge of AI

"Artificial intelligence is not intelligence, it does not think, does not think, but replicates a system," says Laurence Devilliers, professor of AI at the Sorbonne and researcher at the CNRS. "It is important to remember this because it replicates, therefore, the way of thinking of those who program it, and reproduces its biases. In Japan and China, more and more young men are marrying a virtual woman, a hologram, a kind of nurse who sends them messages during the day, takes news of them, prepares the house before their return, and that they can turn off at night! » This world does not make you dream? "AI needs to be nourished by intelligence," concludes Aude de Thuin. And it's a message of hope: tell girls that when you don't like math, other studies – social sciences, philosophy, art – are also essential to develop it. We must, therefore, have a much less dramatic vision than anything we are told especially since the arrival of ChatGPT. And each at our level, look at the girls differently. ●



Source: lefigaro

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