*This study investigates the pathways to Maître de Conférences (MCF) positions in French academia, focusing on potential gender disparities in the transition from PhD graduation to permanent academic employment. It leverages a novel dataset that combines information on theses defended in French universities, bibliometric data from Scopus, and records from the Conseil National des Universités (CNU). I plan to examine whether the period between thesis completion and obtaining an MCF position affects men and women differently across all research disciplines and to what extent this delay penalizes women more than men in their academic career trajectories.

**This study examines how exposure to the opposite gender during schooling affects long-term outcomes by exploiting the gradual switch from single-sex to co-educational instruction in French elementary schools during the 1960s. While mixed-gender education was historically limited to small rural villages, a nationwide shift began in 1958, with implementation varying across schools before becoming compulsory in 1975. This provides a natural experiment to study how early-life exposure to the opposite gender can shape key life outcomes. Using data on the number of single-sex and co-educational schools at the departmental level by year, I plan to estimate the effect of exposure to co-education on education, occupation and family composition.