Air France, partner of ‘Elles bougent’ to promote the recruitment of women in the IT sector

During a morning session at Air France’s three IT sites in Paray-Vieille-Poste, Toulouse and Valbonne, Air France welcomed 150 high school students to present its career opportunities and projects, and above all to increase their awareness. Women in the IT division, committed to this approach, shared their experiences, presented their career paths and the difficulties they’ve encountered by sharing their own stories, as well as presenting games and videos.

Anne Rigail, Air France CEO and Jean-Christophe Lalanne, EVP, Group CIO, spoke via videoconference at the three sites to remind the audience that Air France is creating all the conditions for gender equality and the feminization of technical professions, with training and support for positions of responsibility, equal pay, work-life balance, actions to promote parenthood, the fight against stereotypes and ordinary sexism, as well as the creation of internal and external women’s networks.

IT professions are concerned by a lack of female candidates. The purpose of these meetings is to encourage young girls to pursue scientific and technical studies and to consider careers that until now were considered to be reserved for men. Today, within Air France’s IT teams, 32% of the workforce is female. At a national level, 38.7% of engineering students are women and 47% of high school science students are girls. These are encouraging figures but they need to increase even further.