Promoting Gender Balance

ISABELLE JUPPÉ
Corporate Social Responsibility Director,
Lagardère group

Promoting Gender Balance

Although a number of initiatives have come to light over the last 10 or so years to reinforce the position of women in digital technology and encourage young girls to aspire to digital careers, women are still hugely underrepresented in this area. At a time when artificial intelligence is permeating all dimensions of society more every day, this underrepresentation is becoming of concern for everyone.

That is why, in keeping with its support for the Digital Ladies & Allies association, the Lagardère group and its LL Network have decided to invest in particular in this mission of promoting women in digital technology.

The network’s annual day in June 2019 gave the opportunity for a number of Digital Ladies from the Lagardère group to speak at the end of a conference given by digital mathematician Aurélie Jean on the biases – particularly gender biases – that can exist in algorithms.

The network has also set up a committee bringing together various experts from the Group’s business lines to support – by means of listening and advice – members of the #Startuppeuse club created by Viviane de Beaufort, professor at ESSEC business school.

Lastly, the LL Network has also decided to launch, with the support of start-up IT4Girls, a coding academy to allow its members to learn the basics of computer coding. These sessions enabled them to learn about Python language after an initiation into Scratch software.
All participants (one of whom was male!) thoroughly enjoyed the training and wanted to take another training session on demystifying artificial intelligence in 2020.

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