2023-04-26 06:00:46
An Ipsos international survey for the L’Oréal Foundation revealed in mid-March that one in two female scientists said they had been “personally confronted with at least one situation of sexual harassment during her career”. Eight out of ten women said they had suffered from sexist remarks. Two cases illustrate this sad observation. They led the CNRS, after investigation, to temporarily exclude two researchers. Both decisions were published in the official bulletin of the French public scientific research body on April 13.
The first case concerns a research director from the CNRS in Strasbourg, seconded to the Inserm-Interface unit for fundamental and applied research in cancerology (Irfac) since January 2013. In June 2022, a doctoral student and a former doctoral student turned to the heads of their doctoral school “for facts dating mainly to 2022 for the first, and 2017 for the second”we say to the CNRS. “They were immediately directed to the listening and support unit which received their testimony and transmitted it to the CNRS reporting unit”, says Isabelle Kraus, vice-president of equality, parity and diversity. An Inserm-CNRS survey was then launched. At the same time, the university took preventive measures against the research director and directed a new doctoral student to another thesis director. A trainee is also concerned.
Considering “the seriousness and the likelihood of the facts”the researcher was suspended from his duties on November 7, 2022. The internal investigation revealed that the researcher had since 2015 “inappropriate behavior consisting of inappropriate gestures with a sexual connotation and compliments on their physique making them uncomfortable for the duration of their thesis or internship, (…) and that, by this behavior, he placed them in an intimidating, humiliating and offensive situation”. One of the two doctoral students was unable to complete her thesis.
“Touch behavior”
Before the joint administrative commission meeting in disciplinary council on February 15, the researcher admitted that he had shared his room during a professional trip abroad with one of the two doctoral students, whom he had lying on top of her as she lay asleep on her back at the beach – both in bathing suits – and he had traveled alone to a doctoral student’s home to work with her on her thesis as she was in great difficulty to complete his writing.
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