Interview with Xin Ya (10/02/2012)

1st PART: Woman’s history comprehension/understanding

• ‭    ‬Can you present yourself in a few words and explain us what is your job/responsibilities‭?

‭My job is engineer of environment, health and safety, my daily work is about industrial lost prevention. Every year the group St Gobain have an evaluation of the plant and according to this evaluation, the plant has a score, this score determines the amount of the assurance. This score is done by another company and after every survey we receive a recommendations list, I follow up these recommendations to improve our score. Like this we can reduce the cost of the assurance. In China St Gobain has have 5 plants, 3 in Shanghai, 1 in Suzhou and 1 in Handan.

• ‭    How did you come to engineering and sciences?

‭We choose it during our high school, you can choose sciences or literature. If we choose sciences we study math, biology, chemistry... and pass the tests in these courses to enter the university. In China actually it depends on your scores, if you have better scores in math and physics you will choose sciences. We haven’t much chance to choose like in France or other countries because in China more often if you are good at sciences you will choose sciences because there are more universities in science part and then you have more job opportunities. In China it’s not because I like sciences very much that I would choose sciences. There will be some reasons like this. For example in my family my parents all studied sciences and my father is an engineer, I grow up in a factory which produced iron so I’m very familiar with the environment of the factories. And in my home town the environment pollution is very serious so maybe for those reasons I studied environmental engineering. My mother is a teacher of mathematics, it’s an other reason.

• ‭    Did you have to face any difficulty as a woman in your studies/in your job? Or do you think being a woman facilitated it?

‭In my school of environmental engineering we were as many girls as boys. In other fields of engineering, for example in physics, there were more boys but not in mine. In fact there was no difficulty in the study part but there was difficulty in the job research. In China usually the people prefer to hire a boy to be an engineer, it’s very serious. In China people think that a girl can’t do engineering better than a boy because sometimes you should go to the sites and because the working condition is not good they think a boy is better. In some work you could need body strength, boys are better in this. 

• ‭    How do you conciliate professional and personal life?

‭The girls are equal to the boys in the professional part but the girls should find a balance between the family life and the profession. Actually I do things like this but I’m young so I don’t have a husband nor a child. I spoke with an older women who is a manager in an international company and she told me that finally the women in China should return to the family because once her work is developed to a high step they will start to pay more attention to the family instead of the work, they can’t do like the men who focus on the job and will go to higher level. Women try to find a balance between the profession and the family but more often it’s very hard to find this balance and we pay a lot of attention to the family.  For my future, I haven’t thought a lot about the family part, I think that I’m going to get married very late. I want first to improve my career and then to think about my family. Whatever I have in mind I think it will change according to my development, but I think I will first keep focused on my career and try to reach a high level. Family in China always put pressure on the child so maybe one day my parents will say that I should quickly find a husband and get married. I don’t know, situations always change! My best situation in 15 years would be to have developed my career and of course to have a family so I have to find a husband who would understand me. I would like my husband to take care of my child as much as me. Now in China usually family has one child, my parents have only me so I should not only earn money for myself but also for my parents. In China, once the man is retired, the social assurance is not very good. We have to pay ourself so as I’m the only child of the family I should also earn money for my parents, especially in case they get sick. There is not enough money for that if I stay at home and if only my husband works, I should also work to support my parents. My parents don’t live in my city so they won’t be able to take care of my child.

• ‭    Could you tell us professional realizations you are proud of?

‭Maybe to get in the group of St Gobain after my graduation. As I studied in France for one year, I always wanted to work in a french company and in the field of EHS there are not many companies here in China: there are Total, St Gobain and Michelin. Actually these 3 companies have relations with my university. My master program is in cooperation with those companies.

‭2nd PART:  General debate on woman engineer: differences and new things a woman can bring in a male team

• ‭    ‬Do you think men and women work differently‭? ‬Could you give us concrete examples‭ (‬personal works,‭ ‬project works‭)?

‭Of course there are differences. But actually I don’t think it’s because one is a man and the other is a woman, it’s more because they are different persons. In the Chinese society some people think that the men have a different way of working than the women, but me I don’t understand this difference they are talking about and I think there is no difference. But people always say there are differences. People think that men can support more pressure than the women, in emergency cases or things like this, men would be cooler, would come down quicker than women. In communication people always say that women are better than the men I think, I think there are differences in the way of communication of the men and the women but we can’t say who is better. For example if there is a problem in the plant, women would maybe say things softer, more gently, and men would be more direct, sometimes the softer way is better to solve the problem but actually I haven’t seen many cases like this, this is only what people are always talking about, the common conscious. I don’t think that men and women are organized differently. I don’t think that the characteristics of a girl like me are different from the characteristics of a boy. I think it’s the same! People always think that boys are faster than girls but me I don’t think so. I think it’s the same, it depends on the person. In fact people always talk about differences between boys and girls but I think there is no difference.

• ‭    Do you think that gender diversity in a team is helpful for working atmosphere and/or is linked to team performance?

‭It also depends on the situation and the work they have to do. Sometimes it’s more convenient to have only boys, for example in commercial teams, if they have to develop the business with a male customer, sometimes it’s more convenient and more easy for the guys to seat down together and to talk. But actually sometimes in other groups which have both girls and boys, they will think that the working condition is better because they will enjoy to work together. Boys will enjoy to work with girls and girls will enjoy to work with boys. Concerning the performance of the team, as I told you I think that there is no difference in the way of working of the boys and the girls so I think the performance of the team would be the same with or without girls. If they are typical boys and typical girls maybe it’s better to have both of them in the team. I think it’s good to have girls in plants because I like my job and if there was no girls in factories I could not do this job, I like to work in industry. I think it’s good to have girls in factories for the equality between men and women. And because the majority of the boys are typical boys and the majority of the girls are typical girls and they may have different characteristics so it’s better to have both of them for the productivity. But me I think that I’m not a typical girl so I think that with me there is no difference. When I say a typical girl I think about someone who pays really attention to the details, who is not as innovative and creative as the boys, who does things more gently, especially in the communication and the cooperation, in the relationships.  

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‭ 3rd PART:  Video

• ‭    Short representation

‭Bonjour, je m’appelle Sylvia, j’ai fait mes études à l’école des mines de Paris dans la gestion des risques industriels et maintenant je travaille pour Saint Gobain en tant qu’ingénieur en hygiène, sécurité et environnement. 

• ‭    ‬Which advice would you give to any young women who hesitate to start engineering studies‭?

‭Je pense que c’est très sympa pour une fille de travailler en tant qu’ingénieure, je suis moi-même contente d’être une ingénieure,  je suis contente de la décision que j’ai prise et je pense que vous le seriez aussi.

• ‭    What has been your biggest difficulty as a women engineer?

‭En fait, ma plus grande difficulté a été ma recherche d’emploi en Chine, les chinois préfèrent embaucher des hommes à des postes d’ingénieur, je pense que ce ne sera plus un problème dans le futur.

• ‭    What has been your best satisfaction as a women engineer?

‭Chaque jour je fais des choses intéressantes et ca c’est très aggréable.

• ‭    What is your next challenge?

‭Mon prochain challenge, comme je viens d’intégrer Saint Gobain, est de montrer que je suis une bonne ingénieure et qu’ils ont pris une bonne décision en m’embauchant.