Science Factor, which promotes projects of scientific or technical worn by the students, with an equal participation of boys and girls, held its 8th edition.

Launched in 2011 by Claudine Schmuck, founder of the firm Global Contact, specializing in innovation and diversity, the competition Science Factor held its 8th edition on Thursday 7 may and awarded four teams of middle school students or high school students. The originality of this event ? It mobilizes young people around innovative technology projects, citizens (health, habitat, environment, transport, etc), and imposes a daughter of the head of each team. Result : the participation is really joint. A feat at a time when the share of women in science careers declining in France, as revealed by the end of 2019 the latest study Gender Scan. This year, among the winners, included eight girls and four boys. For the first time, Bpifrance is associated with this event. Its director of social and environmental responsibility (CSR), Philippe Kunter, explains why.

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Why Bpifrance is a partner in the competition Science Factor ?

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Philippe Kunter : from the creation of Bpifrance in 2013, the promotion of female entrepreneurship has been enshrined in our charter of corporate responsibility as one of our four main lines of action, together with the employment of young people, the transition energy and support to the implementation of a transparent governance. We have always been very keen to have in our different activities, a balance of men and women. Thus, in our board of directors, it is expected that the two employee representatives are a man and a woman. We currently have the same balance among the representatives of the State (a 50% shareholder), Caisse des Dépôts (a 50% shareholder ), regions and distinguished personalities. Our doctrine in Bpifrance is clear : we invest in and assist companies, without distinction, whether of leaders or of leaders with the essential criteria for the competence and the quality of project promoters. In all the events that we organize, in all of our publications and testimonies, we are careful to highlight as many women as men. We are also advocating for strengthening the presence of the heads of business in our accelerators SMES/ETI. For us, the best way to do this is to include this topic on a daily basis, embedding it into practices, without stigmatising.

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is This enough to get things moving ?

We are seeing an evolution on these subjects, admittedly progressive, but real. This is why we need to strengthen our commitments. In 2018, together with three other players from the place (Caisse des Dépôts, Idinvest and Swen Capital Partners), under the aegis of France Invest, we enriched the questionnaire “ESG” (environmental criteria, social and governance, editor’s NOTE) that we send each year to the fund and to companies in which we invest : in addition to the elements of the loi Copé-Zimmermann, we have added indicators of gender diversity on the composition of the committees of management, the investment teams. We are also signatories of the charter Sista and the charter of parity in France Invest.

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By the way, since we took over the missions of the Agence France-Contractor under Bpifrance Creation, in 2019, we have assisted close to 60,000 women in the creation of business and granted over 12 000 loans of honor to those entrepreneurs. Our ambition is to go much further on those devices, in particular to reach out to more women in the regions.

Science Factor aims primarily to educate young girls to the scientific and technical professions…

We see very well that there are not enough women in the sector of digital. And it works from the youngest age. That is why we support the concours Science Factor whose impact is very strong because it is the only contest tech that has 50% of girls among the participants. By providing objective innovation citizen and putting a girl at the head of each team a candidate, it encourages them to go into science and technology. At the end of the contest, 48% of the participants say they are interested in a job in the tech, and this proportion rises to 52% among girls ! Nearly 80% of the finalists say they want to move towards a scientific education, a figure that rises to 85% among girls. It is very powerful. Science Factor helps young girls to distinguish themselves. We will invite the four winning teams of the edition 2020 of our event Bpifrance Inno-Generation, which will be held on the 1st of October next. Last year, it brought together 52 000 people in one day. The idea is to put our young winners and the winners in relation with the leaders of Bpifrance, the innovation experts and business leaders. We want to raise awareness of entrepreneurship, to enable them to make contacts and take advantage of the energy released by this event.

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The role of women in the economy

Women and world after : the organizations mobilized for a recovery inclusive of 1000 hours to support entrepreneurs Marlène Schiappa wants to put gender equality at the heart of the recovery post-Covid-19

are you Afraid that the crisis of the coronavirus leads to a fall in female entrepreneurship ?

We all, in our respective organizations, that in the event of a containment with children, isolation is the equation impossible. So you can imagine how much the situation is tense for the women who are often involved more. So far, in terms of resilience, it will be more difficult for a woman or a man in a business leader ? Hard to say. It depends on the sector of the market, the size of the company, its financial resilience. At this stage, we do not have information according to which women entrepreneurs have more difficulties to get financing in the framework of the EMP (Loan guaranteed by the State). Today, the situation is of concern for all businesses, the banking system as a whole is mobilised, we are in a support operation of emergency. Our goal is to save companies, regardless of the sex of the leaders.