In recent years, the importance of knowledge has tremendously increased in a wide array of economic activities. In parallel, employment relationships seem to have become more instable than they used to do be. The question we want to tackle in this project is: are these two changes related in any way? What is the impact of faster knowledge accumulation on the length of careers? More specifically, to what extent have long careers within firms (characteristic of internal labour markets) decreased in favour of short-term contracts implying frequent hiring and firing of workers on the external labour market? In order to investigate the dynamics of internal and external labour markets in a context in which innovation and knowledge are becoming key production factors, we will proceed through three steps. First, we will investigate the impact of technological and organisational innovations upon the relative importance of internal versus external labour market adjustments. Following the adoption of new technologies and innovative work practices, firms face higher skill requirements. They may either hire the new skills on the external labour market or promote and train their own workers, thus relying on the working of the internal labour market. Our research will permit to assess the relative importance of each of these strategies. Moreover, one may wonder how exemplary the French situation may be. France is well-known for having rather rigid labour market institutions: employment protection legislation (EPL) is more stringent than in many OECD countries and wage compression is strong, at least compared to Anglo-Saxon countries. This raises the question of whether the relative scope of internal versus external labour markets may be in some way related to labour market institutions. In order to investigate this issue, we will try to apply the same methodology as mentioned above to a country with much weaker EPL than France in order to see whether the same trends are at work, in countries characterised by different labour market institutions. A second part of the analysis will consider the potential impact of human resources upon firms' innovative capacity. This question has two dimensions, one related to the external labour market, while the second one has to do with the role of the internal labour market as a skill provider. A first line of analysis will consider the influence of the supply of education at the local level upon the adoption of new technologies and new forms of work organisation by firms. The second way for firms to get the skills they need to innovate is to rely on the internal labour market. This dimension of the relationship between human capital and technological adoption has not been investigated so far in the literature. However, it is likely to be an important determinant of firms' ability to innovate. In this second part of the research, we will try to disentangle the respective role of the external and internal supply of skills in forging firms' capacity to innovate. In the third part of the research, we will consider not only the flows of new knowledge, but also the role of the stock of knowledge itself. It is presumably an important production factor and the forms of knowledge management chosen by firms are likely to affect both their productive efficiency and their choice in terms of human resource strategies. A first line of research will investigate the determinants of knowledge management. To what extent do firms codify their knowledge in rules and procedures rather than keeping it tacit? How does this relate to the adoption of new technologies and to the increasing competitive pressure? What is the impact of this choice in terms of employment relations? These are the questions we will try to answer as a first step. As a second step, we will consider a more indirect mechanism through which knowledge management could affect the balance between internal versus external labour markets. If tacit knowledge is particularly important in the production process, the assets of the firms are likely to be intangible. In this case, access to external finance may be a problem which is likely to affect, in turn, the forms of human resource management chosen by firms. Overall, with this research, we expect to improve our understanding of the dynamics of employment relations and of the working of labour markets in a context of deep economic changes and increasing market competition.

In a context of quasi unexisting legal scholarship on gender issues in France -a situation which contrasts greatly with the dynamism of such approaches abroad- REGINE aims at anchoring feminist legal theory within the French academic landscape. On a overall duration of 36 months, REGINE is structured around three main axes: 1. First, REGINE offers to be an importer/translator and thus to acculturate the French scientific debate in the legal field to theoretical elaborations on what a gender perspective reveals of the Law -elaborations that, to this day, have mainly proliferated in foreign academic settings and received an echo in international more than national legal arenas. REGINE thus aims at disseminating the main theoretical "acquis" of feminist legal theory as it has developed in anglo-american contexts. Simultaneously, it aims at complementing the presentation of that theoretical acquis with an analysis of its impact in a number of international and European arenas, thus providing with an study of the normative impact of the feminist paradigm within legal studies. 2. REGINE will then analyze a number of branches of French law with a gendered perspective; it thus aims at revealing, be it the case, the extent to which French legal norms, categories and/or institutions uphold or foster gender equality. The research template will thus include a census of situations in which French law distinguishes between sexes, as well as one of the rules and principles that structurally disadvantage women despite their facially neutral semantics. Studies of the kind will unfold in the fields of: labour law, social protection law, health and bioethics law, sex law, tax law, civil law (family, persons, obligations), business law, tort law, institutional/constitutional law, administrative law (civil service especially). This will be allowed by the sheer complementarity between the three partners involved in REGINE (the CREDOF, the CRD&P and the Chair Droit de la Santé at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales). 3. Finally, REGINE wishes to cultivate the critical potential of feminist legal theory, throughout tentative reconceptualizations and redefinitions of some concepts to contemporary legal thought such as: democracy, liberty, citizenship, « droit subjectif », responsability... This theoretical output of REGINE will be complemented by the proposal (and actual experimentation) of a redefinition of teaching modes and methods in legal curricula. This inclusion of a reflection on teaching within the modes of research dissemination also goes hand in hand with seminars of research-action, aimed at associating civil society associations and NGOs to the reflection on Gender and the law, and to the overall findings of the research project.