The surveys dedicated to the time sharing in households show great inequalities between men and women. In the countries where long series of data are available, there are only slight evolutions toward equality. It seems that in this field too there is no natural tendency to equality.

A first inequality appears in the time devoted to paid work, which is significantly longer for men; however huge differences exist between European countries, reflecting the different types of involvement in the job market.
There are also inequalities in household chore specialisation: women prepare the meals, wash up the dishes, do the washing, the ironing, whereas men do odd jobs in the house; more generally, it appears that women take care of the daily, repetitive tasks whereas men do the occasional ones. Having children has an important impact on these inequalities, which are made worse, as the specialisation of roles is intensified.
Today we wish to analyse these inequalities, focusing on the most qualified individuals pursuing scientific and technological careers. Are they confronted with different imbalances? Are there significant differences between countries?

The various themes that will be dealt with are the following:

Session 1
Statistical identification and methodology

Session2
The decisions taken at different life stages

Session 3
Part-time work and teleworking

Second day: Impact of public and corporate policies on individual                      paths. Evaluation

Comparisons between countries indicate that men and women have very different profiles of activity; whereas full-time work is the norm for men, the situation is more varied concerning women. In the countries of Northern Europe, the rate of working women is high, with a high percentage of part-time work (except in Finland) and a great deal of professional segregation, whereas in Southern Europe women work less and part-time work is almost nonexistent. If many configurations coexist between these extremes, everywhere discrepancies between male and female salaries remain. The conference objective is to analyse the effects of public and corporate policies on the imbalances between men and women in the field of research.

The different themes that will be dealt with during this second day are:

Session 4
The impact and evaluation of public and corporate tax and social policies

Session 5
Policies at balancing family and work life. Log term cost of these policies

Submission of papers

The researchers who intend to present an oral communication (around 10 minutes) are invited to send on line to the Scientific Committee a 5000-sign abstract before April 15th, 2009. This abstract will include, apart from the description of the content of the study, information about the methodology used and some bibliographical references. All researchers concerned will be told before June 30th, 2009 whether their proposal has been selected. Then the full papers will have to be sent to the Scientific Committee before October 1st, 2009.

Submission of posters

The researchers who wish to present a poster are invited to submit a short description of the poster (one page at the most), using the form provided on line. The deadlines are the same as for oral presentations (see above).

Proceedings will be published after the conference; authors of accepted papers will be invited to send a full paper.

Conference languages are English and French.

Calendar

Scientific Committee

• Prof. Dominique Anxo (University of Vaxjo, Suède)
• Dr. Peter Auer (OIT) (Suisse)
• Prof. Barbara Bergmann (University of Maryland, USA)
• Prof. Daniela Del Boca (University of Torino, Italie)
• Prof. Jeff Hearn (Swedish School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland and Linköping University, Suède)
• Dr Liisa Husu (Hanken Economics School, Finlande)
• Prof. Alfredo Hualde (El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana, Mexique)
• Prof. Suzanne Lacroix (Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal et Chaire Marianne-Mareschal, Canada)
• Prof. Nicky Lefeuvre (Université de Lausanne, Suisse)
• Prof. Danièle Meulders (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgique)
• Dr Françoise Milewski (OFCE, France)
• Dr Hélène Perivier (OFCE, France)
• Dr. Marie-José Potvin (Canadian Space Agency, Canada)
• Prof. Jill Rubery (Univ de Manchester, UMIST, UK)
• Prof. Nina Smith (University of Aarhus, Denmark)
• Dr. Eva Vamos (Hungarian Museum of Science and Technology, Hongrie)
• Prof. Paola Villa (University of Trento, Italie)
• Dr. Catherine Weinberger (University of California, USA)

Organising Committee

• President : Yvonne Pourrat (CDEFI, France)
• André Béraud (INSA de Lyon, ECEPIE, France)
• Christine Cluzel (IBM, France)
• Marie-Jo Delord (ECEPIE, France)
• Anne-Sophie Godfroy-Genin (ENS Cachan, France)
• Nydia Gonzalez (E. Centrale de Paris, France)
• Catherine Grandcoing (CNAM, France)
• Claudine Hermann (E. Polytechnique, Femmes et Sciences and EPWS, France)
• Danièle Meulders (ULB, Belgium)
• Jacques-Henri Strauss (AVRIST, France)

General remark
This conference aims at giving researchers from all over in the world the opportunity to take stock of present research on these issues, but also to confront them with the experiences and analyses of women and men working in state organisations and/or private companies.