We are deeply concerned with gender in the profession, and have mostly been discussing the United States. (A very detailed blogpost on the situation in France by Sophie Roux, w. various links is here.)
But a somewhat different - and tragic - story was that of the brilliant young philosopher Marie-Claude Lorne, who was also a dear friend. She committed suicide in 2008 after being denied tenure at the U. de Brest after she had already been hired as a 'maître de conférences' (tenure in these cases is almost always automatic in France after 1 year, the année de stage). She left behind a letter saying philosophy was her life and if she couldn't do philosophy...
It became glaringly obvious that the tenure meeting was conducted in all kinds of procedurally (and perhaps legally) wrong ways, not least that the chair, who had a history of being opposed to her, arranged to call the meeting when he knew most of the committee members would be out of town; so the quorum became 2 people, him and a 'friendly' colleague. You can find an elegant and informative obituary in English that appeared in Biology and Philosophy here and more info and homages at the Institut Jean Nicod's page here.
Anyway, now (April 2011) this has become an official affair, with a government inquiry into the circumstances of her non-renewal, how the chair of the department waited an additional 3 months to inform her (just before the next academic year would have started), and so on. The inquiry is expected to look further at the hiring process in the humanities overall in France. Here are stories from Le Monde and L'Express on the current state of the inquiry.
We can hope that Marie-Claude's story continues to have an impact (in addition to the posthumous publication of her excellent papers and perhaps her thesis on biological functions).
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