Female representation in France needs to progress quicker

Gustave Eiffel was so pleased with his engineering masterpiece, the icon of Paris, that he wanted it to serve as an enduring symbol of French ingenuity.

To share his pride in France’s intellectual achievements, he had the names of 72 famous scientists and other high achievers inscribed in a frieze running around the first floor of his eponymous tower.

Surprise, surprise: all 72 of the illustrious chosen ones were men.

Perhaps he can be excused because of the context he lived in. In the late 19th Century, and for centuries before, 50% of the population did not count as much as the dominant 50% who had been born male.

Women did not have professions, they could not vote, they were not supposed to discover or invent or build and they were expected to be seen but not heard of or remembered in the same way as men.

Why would anyone inscribe their names in gold on a national monument, even if the monument in question carried a feminine nickname – la Dame de fer (the Iron Lady)?

We live in a different world now in which there is at least notional gender equality.

In the light of feminism, we are able to return to the past and ask whether people like Gustave Eiffel, for all his genius, could have done better.

Were there no remarkable women around to be celebrated on the Eiffel Tower?

Next year, if all goes to plan, 72 new names will be added to the tower: this time, all female.

A selection has been made of women who have achieved renown in their respective fields.

Marie Curie, naturally, will be one of them, but also pioneering obstetrician and midwife Angélique du Coudray and the physicist and mathematician Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, the first woman to be elected to the French Academy of Sciences.

That should go some way towards redressing the balance, albeit belatedly.

There may be people (men?) who mutter about the error of correcting the past.

‘Positive discrimination’ is often mocked for its woke worthiness, but it does matter.

I sometimes teach groups of engineering students and out of a class of 15, there is never more than a couple of women.

Gender stereotypes still linger. In some ways, we have not made much progress since Eiffel’s time.

Another case of positive discrimination was provided by this year’s municipal elections in which lists of candidates were required to be balanced between men and women, as far as possible.

This can be difficult in villages with very small populations and, of course, it necessitates enough women being willing to serve as councillors.

However well it works, it is a step in the right direction.

The next battle for equality is likely to be fought in the streets. Only 13% of roads and squares dedicated to someone famous are named after women. Campaigners say it is time to rectify this imbalance.

The question is: what can be done about it?

Ideally, town halls that create new roads will name them after women out of a sense of responsibility.

There may be a case for renaming some streets but it must be done with the consent of the populace because such an exercise would cost a lot of money and cause a lot of strife. 

When we look back to Eiffel’s time, we wonder how men could be so obsessed with each other to the point of treating women as decorative if not invisible.

In a hundred years’ time, let us hope the people of the future look back at us with admiration and judge us kindly.

We recognised an injustice and, despite the obstacles, we did something about it.