[{"pubDate":"Thu, 29 Oct 2026 07:58:21 +0100","url":"https://theconversation.com/the-impossible-equation-of-being-a-researcher-mother-striving-to-make-ends-meet-294312","titre":"The impossible equation of being a researcher mother, striving to make ends meet","id":3248546,"description":"How can we encourage women to pursue scientific careers? In recent years, a number of mentoring or awareness campaigns have been put in place to encourage French high school students to study maths, physics or engineering sciences, while they remain underrepresented in these fields. One of the last large-scale initiatives is the Filles et Maths program , launched in 2025, including work on gender bias, the implementation of “role models” or timetables featuring flexible hours. The program was nonetheless met with criticism: while women remain under-represented in some disciplines, they also remain a minority in the highest positions across the board in the academic world, from mathematics to social sciences. In France, gender inequalities are therefore not limited to access to scientific studies: they cut across all university careers and make many women leave French Higher Education and Research before securing tenure. This “drain” is explained by several factors among which motherhood holds an important place. A survey in Denmark illustrates that unlike men, one in three women abandon their scientific career after the birth of their first child. The survey I have been conducting among doctoral students and social scientists highlights the difficulties faced by women who became mothers before becoming permanent employees. Since the 1980s , recruitment requirements have become tougher with candidates needing to have written a good PhD paper, regularly have their work published , participate in scientific events and get involved in the life of research labs. Much of this work falls under hope labour , that is, unpaid work done in the hope of future employment. In this context, what could be called the myth of the “total researcher” takes shape. This is based on the double penalty of being a productive scientist (without necessarily receiving any financial reward) and embodying the ideal of a career woman, devoted companion, and dedicated mother all rolled into one. However, this ideal of the “total researcher” clashes with the actual conditions of scientific work and motherhood. Paying the motherhood penalty in academia Becoming a full-time researcher requires mothers who aren’t tenured researchers to reorganise their lives. Some cram several days’ work into one by doing casual work, part-time teaching, unpaid scientific projects, and parental responsibilities. The pace often makes women work under pressure, sometimes at the expense of the quantity and quality of their scientific work. Other women choose to remain unemployed or take parental leave and thus link their career to that of their spouse if they earn enough. If this strategy of linked career is favourable for scientific production when you have a child, it also creates material dependence that could lead to sexist and sexual violence within the family unit, which this testimony from Jeanne, a doctor and mother of a little girl, illustrates: “I sometimes feel like I have to [‘have sex’], telling myself that ‘I owe him’ and ‘He lets me know it’.” In a professional context , where every moment must count, maternity, parental or sick leave become scientific working hours in themselves. Rebecca, for example, shared that she continued writing her final thesis when her son was sent to hospital in an emergency. This situation feeds a feeling of double guilt: the respondents believe they are never up to par, neither as mothers nor as researchers. Joana explains: “I took parental leave from work, but I feel bad about working when I see my son next to me.” Some non-tenured researcher dads, on the other hand, benefit from an academic paternity bonus. The gendered division of domestic and parental tasks, as well as taking paternity leave, sometimes allows them to devote more time to their research. To quote Marion’s doctor of History husband’s words: “I have completed nearly two articles in one month of paternity leave!” The","source":"The Conversation – Articles (FR)"},{"description":"Following widespread looting sprees and acts of violence occurring on the sidelines of the October 17 student protests, so-called “casseurs” seem to be the centre of attention. But the term, which comes from the French verb casser or “to break”, poses more questions than answers. The sociologist Paolo Stuppia examines the unprecedented situation many cities across France are having to contend with, and the complex combination of collective action whose motivations are unclear and the social media’s extreme agility. The Conversation: How unprecedented are the scenes of looting that we witnessed on the sidelines of the October 17 demonstrations? Paolo Stuppia: What may be unprecedented is the extent of the destruction of private property and the goods that have been stolen. It should be clear, however, that not all the looters can necessarily be sorted into identifiable groups, at least politically. Indeed, as the politician Xavier Crettiez, the sociologist Isabelle Sommier and the historian François Audigier emphasised in 2021 in their joint project Violences politiques en France , the targets of acts of violence that are considered to be politically motivated can be determined both by technical constraints and the militant culture of the people involved. Let us recall Italy in the 1970s when autonomous activists spoke of “self-reduction” (the act of seizing goods or essential services), Maoists in France spoke of proletarian reappropriation. Their raid on Fauchon’s luxury grocery store on place de la madeleine and the redistribution of goods to slums and workers’ hostels that ensued went down in history as their biggest claim to fame. Can we go as far as to say that the October 17 looting sprees were politically motivated ? Even if we do not have all the details concerning the profiles of the people arrested, videos posted on social media and stolen goods being resold online tend to rule out the idea. That said, at least some of the targets were chosen haphazardly. While some are symbols of capitalism, like luxury stores, insurance companies, banks, multinationals , others included a number of more localised stores, small shops selling toys or video games; for example, which are rarely targets for such incidents. If, especially since the alter-globalisation movement , we have seen the emergence of damage to property, primarily targeting symbols of capitalism and multinationals, in particular; this phenomenon goes hand in hand with “off the cuff” incidents by groups without any political affiliation, who join demonstrations to “get in on the act” in such a way that we are unable to determine whether it’s just a way of letting off steam or if it’s driven by a goal of redistributing goods – this weekend we witnessed some scenes of goods being redistributed, such as food being given to the homeless. What do we know about casseurs’ profiles? When did they appear in the demonstrations and when did the term first appear in the media? P.S.: Historically, the first research article on the casseur phenomenon can be traced back to the sociologist Gwenola Ricordeau . In France in the 1990s, as was the case during the student and high school movement of 1998, Ricordeau noticed that young people came to demonstrations to commit acts of vandalism or to mug people without having anything to do with the causes behind protest movements. They were driven by opportunism and also a desire to break up the monotony of everyday life. The fact of disqualifying people by designating them as “criminals on the street” therefore ultimately leads us to riot-like phenomena, with or without the “looting” element, which are part of the continuity of “suburban revolt” or “city riots” which have gradually developed in working-class neighbourhoods since the second half of the 1970s. As we demonstrated alongside the sociologist Valérie Becquet in our book Géopolitique de la jeunesse , it","id":3233179,"source":"The Conversation – Articles (FR)","titre":"France’s ‘casseurs’: why the term fails to do justice to the extent of looting and spiralling unrest","url":"https://theconversation.com/frances-casseurs-why-the-term-fails-to-do-justice-to-the-extent-of-looting-and-spiralling-unrest-294805","pubDate":"Thu, 22 Oct 2026 08:03:11 +0200"},{"description":"On Tuesday, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson submitted recommendations for deleting or revising anticompetitive regulations across the entire federal government to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. This report is a response to President Trump’s Executive Order on Reducing Anticompetitive Regulatory Barriers . The Executive Order tasked the FTC with finding unnecessary regulations that exclude new market entrants, protect dominant incumbents, and predetermine economic winners and losers, as a first step to repealing them. “President Trump’s Executive Order recognizes that heavy-handed regulations can hurt competition, including by entrenching incumbent firms, raising costs for new entrants, and discouraging innovative new ways to serve customers,” said FTC Bureau of Competition Director Daniel Guarnera. “Competitive markets lower the cost of living, improve the quality of products and services, and drive innovation. Our engagement with citizens across the country and agencies across the federal government has underscored the importance of scrutinizing regulations to ensure that they don’t distort healthy, free-market competition.” Examples of anticompetitive regulations that the Chairman recommends for deletion or modification include: Biden-era Department of Transportation regulations that preference businesses owned by “socially and economically disadvantaged individuals” when awarding contracts for transportation projects, rather than allowing free competition on the merits. Department of Education regulations that permit colleges and universities to include the cost of textbooks and supplies as part of annual tuition, which thwarts students’ ability to save money by buying their textbooks through alternative channels. Proposed Biden-era Consumer Product Safety Commission regulations that would require table saws to use expensive finger-detection technology controlled by the sole patent holder. A Forest Service handbook that establishes eligibility requirements that inhibited entry from a younger generation of ranchers. The report is now under review at the Office of Management and Budget. The FTC will continue to work collaboratively with OMB and all of the relevant federal agencies to rescind or revise their regulations as","id":2379473,"source":"Federal Trade Commission Concurrence communiqués","url":"https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/ftc-recommends-anticompetitive-regulations-deletion-or-revision","titre":"FTC Recommends Anticompetitive Regulations for Deletion or Revision","pubDate":"Thu, 18 Sep 2025 09:52:16 +0200"}]