Catherine Marry

Catherine MARRY is a sociologist and Director of Research Emeritus at the CNRS. After studying economics and sociology at the University of Aix-en-Provence, she began her career at LEST (Laboratoire d'Economie et de Sociologie du Travail) in Aix-en-Provence (in 1972) and continued it in Paris at LASMAS (Laboratoire d'Analyse secondaire et de méthodes appliquées à la sociologie). 

In 1986, the Centre Maurice Halbwachs was created, under the auspices of the CNRS, the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) and the ENS (Ecole Normale Supérieure). She defended her Habilitation à diriger des recherches in March 2002, entitled "L'excellence scolaire des filles: l'exemple des diplômées des grandes écoles scientifiques et d'ingénieurs".

Scientific responsibilities

Her main scientific responsibilities have been within her laboratory - the CMH - and in a research network, the MAGE ("Marché du travail et Genre"), a multidisciplinary and international network of researchers developing a gendered reading of inequalities in the world of work.

Within the CMH, she was in charge of the "PRO" team (Professions-Réseaux-Organisation) from 2004 to 2011. This team included some twenty researchers and teacher-researchers, and around thirty PhD students (7 of whom she supervised or co-supervised). A gender axis, which she initiated, has grown over the years thanks to the arrival in the team of talented young female sociologists and political scientists (such as Laure Bereni and Amélie Le Renard).

Since 1995, she has been involved in the creation and direction of the Mage network, in which she has regularly organized colloquia and study days - on men and the masculine or on executives in particular - and participated in the writing of articles and books that have emerged from them. The most recent work was published in 2017 under the direction of Margaret Maruani under the title "Je travaille donc je suis" (La Découverte, 2017).

Her other scientific activities include responsibility for collective research projects, such as that on "Parcours de vie et approches longitudinales" (2003-2008) or on the glass ceiling in a biology section of the CNRS (2002-2005) then in the financial and social ministries (2011-2013) and, most recently at the Ministry of Culture (2019-2020) .

She is also involved in representative bodies of the scientific community, participating in recruitment and promotion commissions for researchers - at the CNRS (section 40 "Politique pouvoirs et organisations"), at the INED (Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques) and for teacher-researchers (in universities).

Research topics

Her research lies at the crossroads of the sociology of education, work and gender. Her research focuses on the professional integration of young people, the career paths of science graduates and, more broadly, the relationship between education, employment and work.

Since the mid-1980s, the gender dimension has played a central role in her reflections, from a historical perspective and in terms of generational comparisons. In particular, she has studied the "improbable" trajectories of women in the male-dominated world of industrial technicians and engineers, and since the 2000s, in academia and the senior civil service. Her most recent interests focus on the sociology of culture, particularly music. From 2011 to 2013, she led a project on amateur musical practices through a gender lens (2011-2013), and helped set up a symposium on "Sexe et genre de la culture : Production, médiation et consommation" (2015-2017). This colloquium gave rise to two books, currently being published.

In January 2019, she will be starting a survey on the glass ceiling at the Ministry of Culture: the aim is to see whether a milieu that attracts many women to its schools (Ecole du Louvre, Archives, Beaux-Arts...) and among its executives, limits their access to the highest spheres less than the very masculine milieu of Finance. This survey extends the one carried out on financial and social ministries and published under the title "Le plafond de verre et l'Etat" (Marry C. with Laure Bereni, Alban Jacquemart, Sophie Pochic and Anne Revillard, A. Colin, 2017).

In all her research projects, she uses both questionnaire surveys and biographical interviews. International comparisons, particularly between France and Germany, are a central heuristic tool for her.

Teaching

She regularly teaches and supervises students (Master's, PhD, HDR) in the doctoral program in sociology at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, where she taught an introductory seminar in gender studies for 7 years (2001-2007).

She has also been a guest professor at the Université de Montréal in the first half of 2006, at the Université de Fribourg (Switzerland) in 2010 and 2011 (master's course on Professions and Gender), at the Centre Universitaire de France in Moscow in November 2012, and in Saint-Petersburg in November 2013 (modules of 28 hours or more).

In recent years, she has been invited to lecture at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, at the Universities of Bonn, Barcelona and Warsaw, and at the 100-year colloquium of the DFG (German Sociological Association) in Frankfurt (2010), where she delivered a plenary lecture in German.

She presented the latest book she coordinated (Le plafond de verre et l'Etat, A. Colin, 2017) (see above) at the University of Sao Paulo in 2016, at the University of Liège in November 2017, at the invitation of Caire Gavray, and finally at ULB in 2018 (invited by Pierre Desmarez).

Expertise and promotion

She is involved in a number of projects (ANR, Fonds suisse et québécois de la recherche), journals and laboratories (AERES), as well as in the promotion and continuing education of her research topics, in particular as part of the Mission pour la place des femmes au CNRS.

Awards

• Irène Joliot Curie Prize (2008), awarded by the French Ministry of Research and funded by the EADS Foundation, with a special mention for mentoring. This prize is awarded each year to women scientists who have made a commitment to gender equality.
• Medal of merit (June 2010)
• Légion d'honneur (January 2017)