Orange committed to encouraging girls to study sciences and join the telecoms sector
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Paris, March 12, 2009
On March 3, 2009, Orange signed up to the European Code of Best Practices for
Women and ICT, which aims to encourage women scientists to make a career in the
information and communication technologies sector.
Overseen by the European Union, this code has been drawn up with the support of five businesses from the new technologies sector and aims to:
Rolling out Orange’s best practices throughout the Group in Europe
By signing up to this code, Orange is taking a further step forward with its policy to promote gender equality in the workplace, in line with its commitment over the past few years, one of the aims of which is to promote and encourage the feminization of scientific and technical sectors.
In this way, Orange wants to get its best practices adopted as widely as possible within the Group, taking the specific contexts of each country into consideration. For instance, the Group will be inviting all of its countries to adopt a rule applied by Orange Spain, which involves keeping all recruitment procedures open until at least one woman has put themselves forward as a candidate.
Orange is also committed to developing a “shadowing” program at European level, as already developed by Orange in France, based on a simple principle: a school girl “shadows” a woman engineer during one day at work, giving her an insight into what a scientific career might be like. One of the immediate objectives of this program is to break away from any preconceived ideas in terms of how young women see the technological sector and its professions, in this way encouraging school girls to study sciences.
Among its various initiatives, the Group has launched a review with the Lyon School of Management to identify the key success factors for a woman engineer within the business.
These actions are intended to encourage the hiring of women at Orange and enable a better gender mix. There is still room for progress: indeed, women account for 37% of France Telecom-Orange employees in France, while 20% of the Group's managers around the world are women. Women represent 11% of the workforce for network professions, 22% for jobs in IT and 25% for innovation jobs.
Orange is also committed to the development of women's careers
More generally, because Orange firmly believes that gender balance, across all functions and all levels of the business, represents a key success factor for its economic performance, the Group has over the past few years been implementing a professional equality policy and aims to set the standard in this area in all of its businesses and professions.
Overseen by the European Union, this code has been drawn up with the support of five businesses from the new technologies sector and aims to:
- respond to the global lack of engineers in Europe by encouraging women to study sciences and embark on careers as engineers
- increase the feminization rate for technical sectors
Rolling out Orange’s best practices throughout the Group in Europe
By signing up to this code, Orange is taking a further step forward with its policy to promote gender equality in the workplace, in line with its commitment over the past few years, one of the aims of which is to promote and encourage the feminization of scientific and technical sectors.
In this way, Orange wants to get its best practices adopted as widely as possible within the Group, taking the specific contexts of each country into consideration. For instance, the Group will be inviting all of its countries to adopt a rule applied by Orange Spain, which involves keeping all recruitment procedures open until at least one woman has put themselves forward as a candidate.
Orange is also committed to developing a “shadowing” program at European level, as already developed by Orange in France, based on a simple principle: a school girl “shadows” a woman engineer during one day at work, giving her an insight into what a scientific career might be like. One of the immediate objectives of this program is to break away from any preconceived ideas in terms of how young women see the technological sector and its professions, in this way encouraging school girls to study sciences.
Among its various initiatives, the Group has launched a review with the Lyon School of Management to identify the key success factors for a woman engineer within the business.
These actions are intended to encourage the hiring of women at Orange and enable a better gender mix. There is still room for progress: indeed, women account for 37% of France Telecom-Orange employees in France, while 20% of the Group's managers around the world are women. Women represent 11% of the workforce for network professions, 22% for jobs in IT and 25% for innovation jobs.
Orange is also committed to the development of women's careers
- Orange is committed to the development of women's careers: the Women’s Forum and SciTechGirls. Orange has been partnering the Women’s
Forum for the Economy and Society since its creation in 2005, in addition to the
“SciTechGirls” program, launched in 2007 to encourage girls to pursue studies
and careers as scientists or engineers.
- In emerging countries, the Orange Foundation is committed to education for girls. More than 70 million girls around the world do not have access to education.
The Orange Foundation has signed a partnership with UNICEF and, in conjunction
with the Group's subsidiaries and local associations, is carrying out major programs
to support the education of girls, particularly in Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast,
Madagascar and Jordan.
More generally, because Orange firmly believes that gender balance, across all functions and all levels of the business, represents a key success factor for its economic performance, the Group has over the past few years been implementing a professional equality policy and aims to set the standard in this area in all of its businesses and professions.
press contacts
01 44 44 93 93
Sébastien Audra, sebastien.audra@orange-ftgroup.com
Sébastien Audra, sebastien.audra@orange-ftgroup.com
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