The IAU and French women astronomers

The research about women in astronomy began in 1988 following a request received from Wilfried Schröder, now deceased but, at that time, in charge of the Interdivision Commisssion on History, which was included in the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA) attached to the IUGG International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. The results obtained concerning "Astronomy, Geophysics and Women", presented at the symposium "The history of geomagnetism and aeronomy", were published (Débarbat 1989) in Advances in Geosciences in the form of a short paper. The IAU began to publish, in 1992, membership statistics in its Information Bulletin IB 68, including percentages of women and men, and several papers were published on the subject up to the last one Statistics on Women in IAU Membership (Débarbat 1989). Recent results are given including examples from the past.