Strenghtening stakeholder collaboration in Eastern France

The Grand Est region is France's third-largest industrial region, whose companies are seeking to increase their competitiveness and are in the process of transforming themselves in digital, environmental and societal terms. To achieve greater equality and representation of women at all levels of positions and in all sectors of activity, a number of initiatives are being carried out with players in the regional ecosystem.

If we look in particular at the representation of women in scientific and technical professions, industry and the digital sector, we see a profound disparity between women and men (less than 30% of women in industry), which is even greater when we focus on the percentage of women in positions of responsibility.

The initatives aiming at greater gender equality and representation of women include e.g.;

• Multi-year plan for equality between women and men, which lists the actions undertaken,
• Grand Est Transformation skills network, bringing together solution providers and thematic experts run by Grand E-. Nov+ (the regional innovation and attractiveness agency for the Grand Est region),
• or the launch in July 2023 of a call for projects entitled Elles+Grand Est=sciences to promote initiatives to raise awareness of scientific, technical and digital careers and training among young girls and women in the Grand Est region.

Companies for Improved Gender Equality

Some companies are already aware of the stakes and are already heavily involved in gender equality. This is the case of the French group Orange, which is present in the Grand Est region through its regional delegations. Orange is committed to professional equality as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy. Several actions have been implemented to develop gender diversity in technical and digital professions (25% of women by 2025) and support female entrepreneurship, encourage women's access to positions of responsibility (35% of women by 2025), guarantee equal pay for men and women (0 pay gap by 2025), promote work-life balance and combat sexism, harassment and violence.

The search for new talent, whatever the type of structure, is vital to support the competitiveness and attractiveness of companies.

Grand E-Nov+, as a partner in the European DEBUTING project, part of the Interreg Europe programme dedicated to strengthening the inclusive culture within companies by improving policy instruments, has seized the opportunity to invite the Grand Est Region as an associate partner and the Orange regional delegation as a member of the local working group alongside other member players (CCI Grand Est, 42 Mulhouse, Femmes du numérique/ Numeum, KMØ Mulhouse, Alsace Digitale and Elles Bougent) to take part in this project.

Creating Responsible Digital Community

For Grand E-Nov+, the project will feed into the creation of the responsible digital community as part of the Grand Est Transformation skills network, particularly on subjects relating to gender diversity and inclusiveness.

The Grand Est Region and Orange see an interest in highlighting their initiatives on the subject of gender diversity, in order to attract more talent for the benefit of regional transformation and business performance.

DEBUTING will contribute to the development of regional public policies, in this case those of the Grand Est Region such as the S3 (Intelligent Strategy Specialisation) or by reinforcing the Equality Plan for Women and Men.

The subject of equality is therefore of great interest, whether at European level through this project or at regional level through the dynamism of the local players and the impetus of the Grand Est Region, but also at national level through the interest shown by the Orange Group, which, at the request of the Grand Est territorial management, wishes to promote the best practices from the Grand Est and more generally from the DEBUTING project to the other territorial delegations.

This collaboration is now reflected in a respective commitment to work further on gender diversity at both regional and European level through the DEBUTING project, as evidenced by a letter of action which was initiated by Anne Coreau from Orange, Innovation Manager (when the consortium was welcomed to Strasbourg on 10 and 11 October) and signed on Thursday 23 November in Paris at the fair “Salon des Maires” with Orange France, the Grand Est regional councillor Irène Weiss and the Grand E-Nov+ DEBUTING project team, 2023.

This confirms that equality is still in its infancy and is proving to be promising for our region.
New opportunities are emerging to further accelerate gender diversity in companies and attract even more talent to our regions.