L'accès des femmes aux emplois supérieurs dans la fonction publique : avancées et résistances

Abstract

The Access of Women to Top-level Jobs in the Civil Service : Progress and Resistance. The Example of the Public Works Ministry The Public Works Ministry is an illustration of career discrimination between men and women in administrative positions, and therefore of the limited presence of women in top-level administration. The technical nature of its missions and the particularities of the rules governing promotion — linked to the need for geographical mobility as well as a career management plan at once extremely formalized on the statutory level but also dependent on heads of department and their choice of collaborators — create obstacles that women have to develop strategies to get round. Thus, the detailed analysis of the professional and family itineraries of women in administrative jobs as well as in the main corps giving access to such jobs shows that women’s careers are above all characterized by difference and originality : contrary to men, whose careers are more or less built on a generalist profile, women’s careers tend to be more specialized, thus at the same time more original. It is this uniqueness that enables them to rise in the ranks.