Marie-Pierre Dauban, 43 years old, mother of two children, crane operator profession. His daily life: climbing into a cabin located several tens of meters high, operating a lifting machine using a joystick, moving heavy loads, distributing materials on a construction site, pouring concrete walls between formwork …A man’s job in a man’s environment, some will say. Not Marie-Pierre Dauban, a former pastry chef who graduated a year ago from the Toulouse section of the National Agency for Professional Training (AFPA).
In Paris, the same AFPA rewarded her, Friday March 8 (International Women’s Rights Day), on the occasion of the fourth edition of its “Professions for them” trophies, an internal competition consisting of highlighting women having found their way in supposedly masculine sectors. The event aims to counter a statistical reality: out of 87 professional families identified, 50% of women register in only twelve of them, according to a 2020 INSEE study.
Crane operator is one of the professions that is still very gendered. It was while carrying out a skills assessment that Marie-Pierre Dauban came across this job which is forbidden not to women, but to people suffering from vertigo. Her goal was to find training leading to a job that would give her time to care for her children. “I also wanted to no longer work on Saturdays and Sundays, which is often the case in the restaurant industry, and not have my head at work when I came home”she explains.
In another life, Marie-Pierre Dauban was first a pastry chef in Paris (starred restaurants, tea rooms, caterers, etc.), before creating an agency offering brigades of waiters and cooks in the field of events, then opened a store selling bagels in Toulouse. Her business sold after the health crisis, the jack-of-all-trades began looking for a new profession. Without preconceptions or prejudices.
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His debut at AFPA was epic. “The first time I climbed on top of a crane, I really wondered what I was getting myself into. The load was swinging everywhere, the cabin was moving in all directions… My lack of confidence made me the weakest in a group that included only men, soldiers and heavy goods vehicle drivers used to driving machines. », she says. Her trainer, Séverine Guin Hannier – one of the first female crane operators in France – will reassure her in her choice.
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