Plenary sessions

Organizations

Introduction
Genre et numérique : une exigence de qualité?

Geneviève Le Fort

Geneviève Le Fort has been Vice-Rector for Quality at the HES-SO since 2016, with particular responsibility for equal opportunities and diversity. She began her professional career as an art historian specialising in pre-Columbian Mayan civilisation and then moved on to institutional functions in the field of higher education: firstly, she was responsible for equal opportunities at the University of Neuchâtel, and then deputy director of the Swiss Agency for Accreditation and Quality Assurance. Geneviève is particularly interested in issues of social responsibility of universities and their link with quality and institutional development.

Johanna Gapany

Johanna Gapany is a political figure from the canton of Fribourg, member of the liberal-radical party and State Councillor since 2019. Member of the Commission for Science, Education and Culture (CSEC). She studied economics at the Fribourg School of Management and has lived in Canada and Germany.

After working in marketing for a gift box company, she was hired as a communications officer at the Daler Hospital.

Local organization
Hier et aujourd’hui à la HEIA?

Jean-Nicolas Aebischer

Former professor at the HEIA-FR, lecturer at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Fribourg, former head of the Chemistry Department of the EIA-FR, and of the Pôle « Chemistry and Live Sciences » of the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO) Jean-Nicolas Aebischer is director of the HEIA-FR since 2012

Laurence Bielmann Dubied

Laurence Bielmann Dubied was the first female engineer trained at Fribourg. She is currently Engineering Project Manager for Elvexys SA

What’s coming next 
Next Year in Lausanne

Jacques Genoud

Jacques Genoud is the General Director of the HES-SO/Fribourg and an engineer by training. He is also a member of the Swiss Engeneering committee where he supports women’s careers. He applies the concepts of flat leadership and organizes the academic succession introducing and carrying out projects such as Digital Skills.

Talks

La transition numérique devra se faire avec les femmes (FR)

IT plays a growing role in the development of our societies, but for several decades women have been severely under-represented in the IT professions. There is nothing inevitable about this gendered division of knowledge: in the 1980s, IT was a fairly feminized area, at least for a technology.  Nowadays, while women occupy 30% of jobs in digital industries, they are mainly in ancillary departments (such as marketing or HR). In cutting-edge areas such as AI or cybersecurity, less than 15% of the workforce are women. It is time to change this paradigm and stop blaming this discrimination on girls and women who supposedly do not make bold career choices and do not dare go into science. Women do not self-exclude, they undergo a continuous social exclusion that turns them away from everything digital. It is not women who need to turn toward “Tech”, but the digital world that desperately needs more inclusion. 

Isabelle Collet

Isabelle Collet is a professor in the Sciences of Education section at the University of Geneva where she runs the team G-RIRE: Gender – Intersectional relations, Educational relations. She is also a research associate at the Institute of Gender Studies, University of Geneva. A computer scientist by training, she researches on closing the gender gap in STEM (especially IT) and developing strategies for inclusion of women in higher education. In 2019  she published Les oubliées du numérique.

Women’s visibility in the media and on social networks

Flor Méchain

Flor Méchain, a trained translator, supports the French-speaking projects of Wikimedia CH. She helps volunteers to run contribution projects on Wikipedia and its sister projects (especially to reduce gender bias!). She trains employees of heritage collections who want to publish their content on Wikimedia projects, or academics who design projects for scientific disclosure.

Gala Mayí-Miranda

Gala Mayí-Miranda, an art historian, is one of the co-founders of Noircir Wikipedia, a multilingual initiative that aims to fill the gap in references, articles and information about Africa and its diasporas, cultures and notable people, including women, on Wikipedia. With Ivonne Gonzalez, she offers workshops open to all to teach Wikipedia to those who wish to join their project, in collaboration with galleries or museums. She also trains students.

Round tables

Entrepreneurship: gender and the digital world

Isabelle Cohen Solal 

Isabelle Cohen Solal is a Business Consultant for Swiss and international institutions. After studying business in England and obtaining a Master’s degree in Finance in France, Mrs Cohen Solal was Manager of International Equity Funds and Diversified Funds in Paris (France). In 2000, she moved to Geneva and joined a private bank as relationship manager and head of product management. In 2006, she took over the traditional and alternative fund selection team for discretionary mandates of a foreign bank in Switzerland. She then joined Swisscanto to manage the French-speaking fund distribution entity and to look after institutional clients. Following the takeover by Zürcher Kantonalbank, she became Vice-President, head of banking relations for Latin Switzerland. Since 2019, she’s been carrying out specific assignments for institutional clients in the various fields of sustainable finance, strategy and business development. She is Board Member in various industries, also Chair of 100 Women in Finance Geneva, Business Angel and has been appointed Expert for Innosuisse, the swiss innovation agency.

Fabian Lütz  

Fabian Lütz is currently a Researcher and PhD Candidate at the University of Lausanne (UNIL). Between 2015 and 2020, Fabian worked as a Legal Officer at the European Commission (DG Justice and Consumers, Gender Equality Unit). At the European Commission, Fabian worked on legal questions of gender equality and non-discrimination with a particular focus on issues of Work-Life Balance. Fabian obtained his legal education in France (Licence and Maîtrise en droit (Paris, 2006, 2007)), Germany (First State Exam, 2010; Second State Exam, 2013) and Belgium (LL.M. European Law and Economic Analysis, College of Europe, Bruges, 2011) and conducted a research stay as visiting researcher in the United Kingdom (Queen Mary University London, 2015). Previously, he worked for law firms in Germany and Belgium and completed his German Legal Training (Referendariat) inter alia with an international law firm, at the European Commission (DG Competition) and the Court of Justice of the European Union. His research interests include European Law, Gender equality and Non-discrimination law, Work-Life Balance, Competition Law, Regulation of AI/algorithms and behavioral economics.

Heather Cairns-Lee 

Heather Cairns-Le is Adjunct Professor of Leadership at IMD, an experienced leadership development professional whose work involves the design and delivery of executive learning, research into leadership and organizational development, group facilitation and executive coaching. She has designed and run programs for senior executives and management teams at top European and U.S. Business Schools and for many international organizations. Heather’s research focuses on the development of self-awareness, authenticity and sensemaking and the role of metaphor in break-through thinking and creativity

Digitized intimacies: how gender and sexuality are shaped by algorithms and personal data collection processes

The ever-increasing use of mobile applications (apps) for dating, doing sports, health tracking, controlling fertility and more, is shaping the notion of intimacy and gender in direct relation to data and algorithmic processes that digitize a person’s body and emotions. This digitization influences the way individuals see themselves and interact with others in social contexts. Intimacy apps is a paradigmatic example of the construction of relational and bodily experiences with and within digital devices, as well as with our offline environment. 

This roundtable invites multiple stakeholders from academia, industry and civil society to discuss around the following questions:

  • What are algorithmic biases and how do they influence the presentation of woman’s body (queer / hetero) in apps?
  • How do entrepreneurs tackle gender issues in the app’s design?
  • In which ways do technologies affect sex workers’, influencers and more broadly users’ sexuality?
  • What forms of empowerment can help civil society to take control of their personal data and their (digitised) daily life?

Coordination

Fabio Monnet

Fabio Monnet is a Youth Internet Governance activist. Proponent of online privacy and equality. Sceptical of online monopolies and pro democratisation of the cyberspace. His background is in international affairs (UNISG) and environmental sciences (UNIGE). He is a member of the steering committee of the Swiss IGF, representing the voice of young people. 

Jessica Pidoux

Jessica Pidoux is a sociologist and holds a PhD in Digital Humanities from the EPFL. Her research focuses on the design and usage of
matching algorithmic systems in online dating. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in citizen science at CEE, Sciences Po Paris, and director of the Swiss non-profit association PersonalData.IO where she builds with civil society participative methods for data
governance.

Marie-Pierre Vidonne

Marie-Pierre Vidonne is a physicist by training. After several years working in R&D in the public and private sectors, in February 2021 she joined Hestia.ai as an analyst, in charge of subsidies and consortium building. She has also been a voluntary contributor to the wiki of PersonalData.io for several years and in Wikimedia projects. She is particularly interested in the ecosystem of adtechs and linked personal data.

Speakers

Pauline Ferrari

Pauline Ferrari is a journalist specializing in new technologies, Web cultures and communities. She has a degree in Media, Culture and Technologies from the University of Montreal and a Master’s in Journalism from Sciences Po Toulouse. She has worked with media such as Numerama, Vice, Korii, TETU, Louie Media, Konbini Techno and Konbini News, and Pixels du Monde.fr. Since January 2020 she has run a podcast on sexualities and sex in real life, Comic Sans MST.

Anna Jobin

Anna Jobin is a Senior researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute of Internet and Society (HIIG) in Berlin. Previous affiliations include ETH Zurich, Tufts University and Cornell University. Her research focuses on the intersection of science, digital technology and society. She currently leads an international research project on « Artificial Intelligence » as a sociotechnical institution in politics, media and science. She is also the president of the extra-parliamentary Swiss Federal Media Commission, an inaugural member of the Swiss Young Academy, and a lecturer at the Management Center Innsbruck as well as at EPFL.