The press release had all of a satisfaction. At the start of the 2022 academic year, the CentraleSupélec engineering school was delighted with a “significant drop” gender-based and sexual violence on its campus, and described indicators “positive” by presenting the results of a survey covering the year 2021-2022. Behind the words of contentment, the figures were nevertheless very heavy: seven victims of rape, seventy-six assaults or non-consensual physical contact and forty-two cases of declared sexual harassment (for 1,500 respondents, and over one year only) in the prestigious establishment.
The first edition of this survey, covering the previous year, had the effect of a bomb in the world of engineering schools. At the time, the results were even more damning, with twenty-eight rapes and seventy-one sexual assaults recorded.
“But today, with seven proven cases of rape, plus twelve other people who say they are unsure of the qualification of what they have suffered, I do not believe that we can speak of a “significant” improvement. as it has been done”, regrets Aurélie Metzelard, student at CentraleSupélec and president of Çapèse, the feminist association of the establishment which carried out these two studies. Like the other associations contacted, involved in their engineering schools, it nevertheless welcomes fruitful communication in recent months with the administration, and a clear development in the latter’s desire to put in place concrete measures.
After the 2021 report by CentraleSupélec, investigations have indeed multiplied in these establishments – often at the instigation of female students –, bringing to light the extent of gender-based and sexual violence taking place on their campuses. In April 2022, The world made public the results of an internal Polytechnique study, in which one in four students claimed to have been the victim of a sexual assault since entering École Polytechnique, and eleven rapes or attempted rapes were then counted in the various promotions of the establishment. In June 2022, AgroParisTech identified seventeen cases of rape and 141 victims of sexual assault among the students present in the school.
From long schools to relaxation
On the plateau of Saclay, where these establishments are grouped, and elsewhere in France, the major engineering schools were then forced to commit themselves more against sexual violence and against the mechanisms that establish them, on their predominantly male campuses. If these schools had been communicating for years on their measures against gender-based and sexual violence, these were often limited to timid information meetings. “It’s only been a few months since real measures have been put in place, before that, it was very far from the necessary”notes Eugénie Multrier, president of the Polytechnique student council.
You have 73.99% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.