Final Report Summary - GENIS LAB (The Gender in Science and Technology LAB – GENIS LAB)
Executive Summary:
The GENIS LAB project aimed to implement structural changes in a group of selected scientific organisations in order to overcome the factors that limit the participation of women in research. The project focused on the creation of a synergy among scientific partners promoting common actions and best practices exchange in order to defeat gender discrimination, and technical partners providing innovative tools and methodologies for gender mainstreaming in science. The six scientific partners are: ICTP/CSIC - Spanish Superior Council for Scientific Research/Institute for Polymer Science and Technology, Spain; IPF - Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden, Germany; FTM UB - Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy, University of Belgrade, Serbia; NIC - National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia; INFN - National Institute for Nuclear Physics, Italy; BTH - Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden. The three technical partners are: FGB - Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, Italy (project coordinator); ITC/ILO - International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization, UN Agency, International; ADS – Italian women in science organization, Italy. GENIS LAB operated on three levels: the organisational level (identification of management tools and definition of self tailored action plans aimed to promote internal structural changes); the social/environmental level (promotion of a communication and awareness campaign aimed at fighting gender in science stereotypes); the trans - national European level(promotion of networking/mutual learning among involved scientific organisation to support the exchange of experiences, practices, efficient management tools.
The definition of Tailored Action Plans, has been structured around three organisational dimensions, interacting together: 1) Organizational culture and stereotypes, focused on identifying gender stereotypes undermining scientific organisation, pointing out the negative inter-correlation between gender and science stereotypes and giving evidence on how these stereotypes influence organisational resistance to change; 2) HRM policies and practices, resulted in the identification and implementation of a set of policies and practices tailored to organizational challenges, as emerged from the gender assessment phase. 3) Financial dimensions and gender budgeting, focused on how financial choices reflect the dominating culture with related power relationships, as power is created through the concentration of resources. At the end of the 4 year process, some general conclusions have been included in the “Achieving gender balance on the top of scientific research – guidelines and tools for institutional change” available on project web site. Genis Lab has shown that it is very important to start the change/innovation process from the creation of a baseline in order to be able to monitor developments concerning change and gender equality. Involving organizations since the beginning in creating the base line is already part of the process of change. It is also important to recognize that scientific research institutions can rarely count on internal change management or sociological capacities. Since the outset, it should be clear that internal project teams need to be established with full and continued management support, and specific capacity development actions should be foreseen in support of internal change agents. All organizational change initiatives face resistance, and this is expressed in multiple ways. In the case of Genis Lab, many partners found it difficult to accept that gender disparities may be related to the negative interplay between gender and science stereotypes. Finding internal and external alliances with the right stakeholders, planning negotiating steps and procedures, engaging and building on common interests of different groups within the organization are all crucial elements for success. Monitoring and evaluation indicators also are of the utmost importance.
Project Context and Objectives:
In the past two decades, various initiatives have been developed at European level to promote greater gender equality in research. These initiatives were mainly focusing on empowering women instead of acting on the organizational context. However, the results have been extremely limited and have not overcome discriminatory structural and cultural barriers. Statistics show that women are still under represented in the top of scientific careers. Moving from the convincement that systemic interventions within the organisations implementing scientific research are needed in order to overcome the under-representation of women in science GENIS LAB main idea has been to define and implement a strategy based on the collaboration among scientific partners (research centres and universities) and technical partners in the identification of actions to promote organisational and cultural change in order to defeat gender discrimination. In Genis Lab, scientific partners present a focus area on nanotechnologies and an already set network; besides, two other STEM areas (physics and ITC) are represented in order to provide a comparative assessment as well as best practices. Despite their different contexts, influenced by country specific legal and cultural dimensions, they all shared since the beginning an interest, at least at the level of key actors promoting the project, in investigating how to promote structural change to support women careers in science. Technical partners, on their side, shared a common background of gender expertise and complementary competences when it comes to organisational change dimensions: FGB is competent for gender budgeting; ADS is competent for organisational culture and stereotypes; ITC-ILO is competent for Participatory Gender Audit and Human Resources Management policies and practices.
In this framework Genis Lab’s main objectives were:
- to improve women researchers’ working conditions;
- to improve women researchers’ career opportunities in research organisations;
- to improve the organisation’s environment and workplace, acting on the organisational culture’s pattern;
- to fight against negative stereotypes within the research organisations, but also in a more wide and general context;
- to contribute to the creation of positive profiles of and for women
In order to achieve these objectives GENIS-LAB operated on three main levels:
- the organisational level via the identification of specific management tools and definition of self tailored action plans aimed to promote internal structural changes;
- the social/environmental level via the promotion of a communication and awareness campaign aimed at fighting against stereotypes and de-constructing the stereotyped relation between women and science;
- the trans - national European level via the promotion of networking/mutual learning among involved scientific organisations to support the exchange of experiences, practices, efficient management tools
In concrete, project implementation moved from the analyses of the state of the art of each organisation from a gender perspective, in order to identify priority areas of actions and to define plans of activities, including a list of objectives to reach at mid and long terms and a list of suitable indicators. Each scientific organisation started its journey towards a greater gender equality from a participatory gender assessment. The methodology adopted to implement this phase was the Participatory Gender Audit (PGA) implemented by ITC ILO, which, over the last 10 years, has been successfully applied by the ILO (The International Labour Organisation is the UN Specialized Agency dedicated to the promotion of social justice in the world of work. Gender equality is a cross-cutting objective of the ILO guiding policy framework, the “Decent Work Agenda”) internally and across a broad range of public sector institutions, employers’ organisations and trade union organisations.
A participatory gender audit is an action-research methodology that helps “mapping” an organisation from a gender equality perspective.
While a traditional audit checks the factual compliance of an organisation to a set of pre-defined rules, the PGA combines the objective observation of facts and data with a more in-depth and qualitative reflection on individual and collective rules, behaviors and beliefs, and their impact on gender equality. For this reason, the team of the PGA is made of “facilitators” rather than “auditors”. Through a process of data collection, direct observation and intense interaction with the staff of an organisation, a “Gender Audit Facilitators’ Team” produces a collectively agreed report that describes the capacity of an organisation to promote and sustain gender equality in its daily operations, as well as the gaps that still need to be filled in. The reasons for gender disparities in organisations are rarely explicit, but more frequently are hidden in the rules, modes of functioning and culture of an organisation. PGA helps improving performance in relation to gender equality. The PGA essentially is a journey of self-reflection that the Gender Audit Team undertakes together with the organisation to assess and transform its social dimension. The PGA by definition is not simply a method to acquire baseline data in an organsation, but the initial step of a change strategy, starting from within. Although it does provide a relatively objective and measurable “picture” of an organisation from a gender perspective, it bases its analytical strength on the knowledge created through individual and collective dialogue with its staff. Organisations are complex realities, and for this reason change towards gender equality cannot be planned in a linear way or simply imposed through policies and top-down action plans. Social change can take big leaps forward, thanks to a new policy or law, and then live moments of stall, or even regression, when the law is not enforced, or top decision-makers change. This is extremely visible in organisations. The PGA explores the multiple formal and informal dimensions that constitute the life of an organisation and invites staff – at all levels – to participate in an iterative and self-reflective process of change of mind-sets, behaviors and, when necessary, rules and policies, to make their organisation a truly good workplace for women and men (“gender-friendly” or even “gender-transformative”). In the framework of Genis Lab the PGA was mostly limited on “Structures” and “Staffing”, with particular focus on project three dimensions: Organizational culture and stereotypes, Human Resource Management policies and practices and Financial dimensions and gender budgeting. These were the key questions raised by technical partners to the staff of scientific organizations during the PGAs.
Genis Lab dimension: Organizational Culture and Stereotypes
- Does the organizational culture challenge or reinforce stereotypes related to gender and science?
- How far does a stereotypical vision of science influence gender inequalities?
- To what extent do these stereotypes have an influence on scientific excellence?
In the context of “post-academic science”, can we think of new, more equitable and efficient criteria for scientific excellence?
Genis Lab dimension: Human Resources Management policies and practices
- To what extent is the organization able to translate its formal commitments to gender equality in its human resource management policies, rules, practices and working arrangements?
- To what extent is the organization able to meet the different work-life conciliation needs of its staff, women and men?
Are there structural obstacles to women’s scientific careers and if so, how can they be tackled?
Genis Lab dimension: Financial dimensions and gender budgeting
- Are there gender differences in the allocation of financial resources?
- If so, are there structural/organizational causes for these differences?
- What are the impacts?
- How does access to financial resources impact access to other resources?
Which of these have an impact on career differentials?
For what concerns the first dimension, the PGA helped giving evidence to the stereotypes affecting science, its statute and its relationship with society; women scientists are specifically troubled by various and more “fitting” stereotypes. One is not being able to elaborate high levels of abstraction, due to the prevalence of emotional aspects (feelings) in their reasoning. The second one is that they cannot fully cope with the mission of science, which asks full-time engagement. The family burden is perceived as a hard obstacle to overcome if total devotion to research is the main assumption. The impact of gender stereotypes, activated by sex categorization in these social relations, is sufficient to create gender inequality in work’s outcomes. In addition to this aspect, biased bureaucratic practices (lack of information and transparency, selection criteria and so on) are activated.Gender stereotypes in science go hand in hand with “scientific culture stereotypes”. This results as ineffective in order to change stereotypes, unless the traditional ways of conceiving work in science change. In this sense, the pattern of such a culture in the different organizational structures has to be analyzed in detail.
Four points of reference emerged during the initial phase of the project, which are transversal to different organisations: the first one is the existence of a specific type of discrimination against women in the scientific world. This is demonstrated by the fact that even in EU countries where the number of women holding high institutional and government positions is consistent, the presence of women at the top levels of scientific careers is scarce and equivalent to very low numbers recorded all over Europe. The second point is that all researchers do not easily recognize this discrimination, since they feel that science cannot be affected by this kind of bias. It is in fact considered an outstanding activity, generally accepted as neutral, practiced by highly educated people, continuously confronting themselves at an international level. The third point is that, concerning women and science, we should be aware of the so called “double absence”, meaning that feminism has poorly influenced women scientists in their working life and viceversa their alarming situation in science has not been foreseen in the list of the feminist claims. The fourth point is resistance to change, which has several causes, starting from the general economical situation of research ending to personal and subjective feelings. If we explore the Human Resources Management dimension of intervention, the following stereotypes can be found:
- Women not suitable to management and to leadership;
- Women less available, due to family burden;
- Women’s caring model endorsed also in the work environment;
- Women have biased evaluations in careers and calls.
Among the Gender Budgeting dimension, stereotypes can be found, hidden in different resource areas such as:
- TIME. Women aren’t fully committed;
- SPACE. As women do not consider space as a symbol of power, they don’t claim it and therefore it seems they don’t need it!
- STUDENTS and PhDs. Men use juniors to empower their position, women perceive them as a major responsibility and do not use ad libitum: again they do not need many of them.
- MONEY. managing finances is perceived by women as a major responsibility, thus it is interpreted as poor commitment in found/grant research
Moving in this general framework, Genis Lab Tailored Action Plan (Gender Equality Plans) have been structured around these three main organisational dimensions, interacting together. The first dimension, Organizational culture and stereotypes, focused on identifying gender stereotypes undermining scientific organisation, pointing out the negative inter-correlation between gender stereotypes and science stereotypes and giving evidence on how these stereotypes influence organisational resistance to change. The second dimension, Human Resource Management policies and practices, resulted in the identification and implementation of a set of policies and practices tailored to organizational challenges, as emerged from the gender assessment phase. The third dimension, Financial dimensions and gender budgeting, focused on how financial choices reflect the dominating culture with related power relationships, as power is created through the concentration of resources.
Project Results:
Genis Lab is a support action funded by the European Commission DG Research within the 7th Framework Programme (2011-2014) aiming to promote the implementation of structural changes in a group of selected scientific organizations in order to overcome factors that limit the participation of women in research. As such, Genis Lab produced a set of results at organisation and European level.
A first most relevant result is the definition of a systemic approach for the promotion of organizational change in the view of achieving greater gender equality in science and in supporting women in science careers. This approach is widely described in Achieving gender balance at the top of scientific research: guidelines and tools for institutional change (Genova Angela, De Micheli Barbara, Zucco Flavia, Grasso Claudia, Magri Benedetta, (2014). Genis Lab project. Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, Rome), available on project website in English, Italian, Spanish, Slovenian, Swedish, German and Serbian languages. The publication describes the methodology, the tools and the actions implemented and shows how, while implementing specific actions in each organization involved in the partnership, Genis Lab Consortium constant concern has been, despite challenges deriving from organizational contexts, the attempt to define, maintain and promote a holistic and systemic approach supporting each organization in the definition of comprehensive and Tailored Gender Equality Plans. Furthermore, this approach issuitable to be replicated, adapted and used in organisations implementing scientific research different from the ones directly involved in Genis Lab. Thus, the Guidelines offer an overview of the approach as well as of the tools tested and implemented by Genis Lab six scientific organisations, including an overview on most relevant case studies and achievements.
A second type of results can be seen in the definition of tailored approaches and tools, resulting from the adaptation to the specific characteristics of organisations implementing scientific research of approaches and tools successfully used in other contexts as means for organisational assessment and/or transformative change. This is the case of the approaches and tools used for organisational analysis and contrast of gender stereotypes (see below), for the adaptation of the Participatory Gender Audit (see below) and for the Gender Budgeting (see below).
A third type of results is linked to the activation and implementation of structural change processes in each of the six scientific organisations involved. The structural change process, defined in terms of objectives, actions and result indicators in the framework of Tailored Action Plans, has lead to the achievement of concrete results varying from one organisation to the other. Despite the variability of Tailored Action Plans, which reflect the differences in the starting conditions as well as in the level of commitment in partners’ organisations, the process of change has been activated in all contexts with the immediate result of building a baseline of data on the gender dimension of each organisation, defining a set of actions aimed at promoting women’s careers via a progressive institutional change, preparing a team of gender and institutional change experts. More detailed insights on partners activities can be found in the Tailored Acton Plans, accessible in Genis Lab intranet. Confidentiality reasons covering the sensitiveness of the information contained in the TAPs have motivated partners to prefer a limited dissemination of the complete version of the TAPs.
A fourth type of results is linked to the production, at organisational level, of papers and documents with the aim of disseminating the results achieved and or to promote aware raising on the issue of gender mainstreaming and institutional change. This is the case, for instance, of the BTH, Sweden, and its national dissemination report presenting Genis Lab achievements at organisational level. It is also the case of INFN, Italy, which has produced, as an output of its own TAP, additional Guidelines on non-discriminatory recruitment and management in organisations implementing scientific research. All these documents can be found on project website
A fifth type of results can be seen in the scientific papers issued from the transnational debates within the Genis Lab community on transversal issues such as gender and science stereotypes, how to overcome cultural resistances to change, and how to redefine excellence in science. This is the case of the article Breaking the vicious cycle of gender stereotypes and science, by Flavia Zucco and Francesca Molfino, as well as of the paper “Assessing excellence” by Flavia Zucco, both available on Genis Lab website.
Finally a sixth type of results can be seen in the awareness raising and dissemination activities which aimed, to diffuse the initiatives and the results implemented in the framework of Genis Lab as a way to contribute to the debate arising around women careers in science. Genis Lab was presented in several workshops and conferences all over Europe, among others in the EU Gender Summit in Brussels, the RRI conference in Rome in October 2014 and Genis Lab final conference in Dresden in December 2014. Genis Lab used its periodic newletter to collect and share achievements and results in different organisations as well as it used local workshops and seminars implemented in partners’ organisations to gather consensus around project initiatives. Genis Lab also used the social networks as means to participate in the debate through its facebook page https://www.facebook.com/GenisLab?fref=ts and it Linkedin group.
Following a synthetic presentation of the most relevant results described above.
The Genis Lab Approach
Despite challenges deriving from organizational contexts, a main concern for the Genis Lab consortium has been, , the attempt to define, maintain and promote a holistic and systemic approach supporting each organization in the definition of comprehensive and Tailored Gender Equality Plans and suitable to be replicated, adapted and used in organisations implementing scientific research different from the ones directly involved in Genis Lab. In this view, a significant effort was spent in the definition of a common approach and a common set of tools: a four step approach common to all partners for the definition of the TAP in each scientific organisation, combining the three dimensions (HRM, GB and OCS) and the three levels.1) The first phase, Assessment, was dedicated to implementing the PGAs in each organization; to collect all main outputs emerging from the PGAs, from in-depth further investigations, from the Gender Budgeting and Stereotype Perspectives, and from additional information collected by FGB and ADS.
2) The second phase, Planning, brought each scientific organisation to define their own TAP tackling what emerged from the assessment phase and following a jointly defined common structure. Each plan was officially approved by the internal top management of each organisation before implementation started. Each TAP contains a detailed description of activities for the period January 2013- December 2014. These activities are coherent with the emerging issues identified in the Assessment phase.
3) The third phase, Implementation, started in month 25 and, even if Genis Lab has finished in December 2014 (month 48), the implementation of each TAP can be still considered as an ongoing process, with a view of sustainability after the end of the project.
4) The fourth phase, Monitoring, started with the release of the TAPs and it is also still an ongoing process. It is a periodical assessment of TAPs using qualitative and quantitative indicators included in the plans.
The Tailored Action Plans (TAPs) represent a milestone in Genis Lab’s implementation and express a level of complexity which is higher than the sum of the activities in the three dimensions. They have been crucial in order to achieve Genis Lab’s objective of structural change in scientific organizations, since they contain, for each organisation:
- A synthesis of the results of the qualitative gender assessment, focusing on the 3 Genis Lab dimensions (PGAs reports + focus groups/interviews/mapping on Gender budgeting and Organizational Culture and Stereotypes);
- a description of challenges selected for intervention;
- a definition of an implementation strategy;
- an operational description of specific actions with related tools;
- a provision of quantitative and qualitative indicators for monitoring and evaluation of the process.
Each scientific organization tailored the TAP on its specific necessities, with the support of the technical partners; nevertheless, they all followed a similar structure in designing their TAPs. TAPs include a division in three dimensions GB, OCS and HRM; they also list a number of activities to be implemented and a related timetable, the sustainability of each action, the objective/s, methods involved, expected outputs, human resources involved, other resources needed, process indicators and result indicators.
Tools to promote Organizational scientific culture and fight gender sterotypes
Stereotypes are affecting science, its statute and its relationship with society. Science has moved from the Olympus to the Agora and the Ivory Tower is not anymore existent. Scientists have to face a strong interrelationship with markets and society, thus the scientific world representation is radically changed. Women are also penalized by the usual stereotypes that affect them in society at large. However, women scientists are specifically troubled by various and more “fitting” stereotypes. One is not being able to elaborate high levels of abstraction, due to the prevalence of emotional aspects (feelings) in their reasoning. The second one is that they cannot fully cope with the mission of science, which asks full-time engagement. The family burden is perceived as a hard obstacle to overcome if total devotion to research is the main assumption. The impact of gender stereotypes, activated by sex categorization in these social relations, is sufficient to create gender inequality in work’s outcomes. In addition to this aspect, biased bureaucratic practices (lack of information and transparency, selection criteria and so on) are activated. Gender stereotypes in science go hand in hand with “scientific culture stereotypes”. This results as ineffective in order to change stereotypes, unless the traditional ways of conceiving work in science change. In this sense, the pattern of such a culture in the different organizational structures was analyzed in detail. The analysis was conducted through a series of planned steps, common to all the scientific research institutions:
a) Participatory Gender Audits (local interviews);
b) Mutual learning activities (virtual labs, on-line forum on the project’s intranet).
c) Maps of each scientific institution detecting the specific areas where stereotypes may be nested, as they strongly affect women’s careers from the distribution of resources to the evaluation of excellence, including gender differences in external responsibilities and duties.
d) Dragging out automatic stereotypes and proposing issues, that can produce displacement, provocation, distraction, heterogeneity, because these reactions can tackle the implicit levels where stereotypes are formed. This kind of objective can be pursued by:
- pointing out the positive and negative benefits for men in order to change mentality;
- pointing out positive and negative benefits for women to change mentality;
- exploring to which extent participants want to deal with male and female confrontation and/or with gender identity challenges ( i.e. family versus work);
- enquiring to which extent participants are ready to advocate conflicts with male or female colleagues in interpersonal relationships, including sex harassment;
- investigating participants’ level of awareness of the traditional “scientific culture”.
Once the analysis phase was completed, different kinds of actions were proposed to be implemented, namely:
- Actions focusing on how to stimulate awareness of discrimination at a cultural level and how to help the overcome of possible existing stereotypes
Through the awareness campaign consisting of circulation of relevant existing documents on the topic, three actions were proposed:
a) a “daily stereotype diary” kept by each employee registering suffered gender discrimination on a daily basis,
b) the “white sheet paper” held by the employees in labs collecting all the invisible work in order to make it visible,
c)the interactive Implicit Association online Test https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/.
Special mention goes to the theatre of the oppressed - which we call “Re-Act” as act again, re-do. Contents of the show were based on the outcomes of local workshops held at the institution gathering the major number of employees possible (especially top management). www.theatreoftheoppressed.org. Last but not least again, through the use of gender-sensitive language in documents whenever possible (internal communication skills).
- Actions fighting resistance to change
Three levels for action can be identified:
A. Individual: will affect the identity and behavior. The change of each others’ status quo alarms people and frightens them of a job loss possibility, a loss of earnings, humiliations, negative assessments, unrecognized work.
B. Institutional and structural: implies a social re-organization. Hidden traps usually obstacle changes. The most obvious trap is when you don’t start implementing tailored gender action plans correctly: in other words when there is no link between theory and practice. When tailored actions are implemented, but the people involved are not skilled or motivated for such specific actions, results will not be effective and may even go against the objective of the action. When action plans are too generic or vague and the objectives are not clear and achievable and also when actions are not supported by suitable tools for their implementation, including adequate funding and other required resources, results tend to failure.
C. Symbolic and cultural: languages, norms, values (this level is crucial: no positive action has long-lasting effects without changes at this level).
- Actions redefying the evaluation of excellence
Recruitment at the beginning of careers is the very moment in which several stereotypes concerning science and women take place, such as not full devotion to the job (the possibility of starting up/having a family), scarce availability in mobility (conference, stages etc.), not very versed on or gifted in hard sciences. In advancement in careers and leadership strong scientific CVs (measured according to parameters fixed by men) must be presented, where hard skills such as assertiveness, single mindedness provide high evaluation, and soft skills such as flexibility, diplomacy, curiosity, motivation and dedication have low evaluation.The first step is to fix the concept of excellence. Scientific excellence is the ability of a scientist or an institution to impact on a field of study producing a major change, leading other scientists towards the asking of new questions, producing new, important, useful contributions to knowledge, and using new methodologies. The quality of excellence must be proven by a number of means such as publications, citations, funding, students and must be recognized by the peers and by the bestowing of various honors, prizes and other awards. The second step is to show available data demonstrating that the previously mentioned assumptions (prejudices) are not correct. The third step is to state the importance of soft skills that are functional to the advancement of contemporary science, like, for instance, covering a role with a service attitude, working towards a careful and responsible research, transferring the model role of a responsible and creative researcher to the younger generation, collaborating towards a more equal work environment.
The participatory Gender Audit as a tool for organizational change towards gender equality
The methodology used in GENIS-LAB is an adaptation of a well tested tool for organizational change, the “ILO Participatory Gender Audit” (ILO 2012, rev.: Participatory Gender Audit: A Manual for Facilitators ), which, over the last 10 years, has been successfully applied by the ILOinternally and across a broad range of public sector institutions, employers’ organisations and trade union organisations. A PGA is an action-research methodology that helps “mapping” an organisation from a gender equality perspective.
While a traditional audit checks the factual compliance of an organisation to a set of pre-defined rules, the PGA combines the objective observation of facts and data with a more in-depth and qualitative reflection on individual and collective rules, behaviors and beliefs, and their impact on gender equality. Through a process of data collection, direct observation and intense interaction with the staff of an organisation, a “Gender Audit Facilitators Team” produces a collectively agreed report that describes the capacity of an organisation to promote and sustain gender equality in its daily operations, as well as the gaps that still need to be filled in. The reasons for gender disparities in organisations are rarely explicit, but more frequently are hidden in the rules, modes of functioning and culture of an organisation. PGA helps improving performance in relation to gender equality. The PGA by definition is not simply a method to acquire baseline data in an organsation, but the initial step of a change strategy, starting from within. Although it does provide a relatively objective and measurable “picture” of an organisation from a gender perspective, it bases its analytical strength on the knowledge created through individual and collective dialogue with its staff. Organisations are complex realities, and for this reason change towards gender equality cannot be planned in a linear way or simply imposed through policies and top-down action plans. Social change can take big leaps forward, thanks to a new policy or law, and then live moments of stall, or even regression, when the law is not enforced, or top decision-makers change. This is extremely visible in organisations. The PGA explores the multiple formal and informal dimensions that constitute the life of an organisation and invites staff – at all levels – to participate in an iterative and self-reflective process of change of mind-sets, behaviors and, when necessary, rules and policies, to make their organisation a truly good workplace for women and men (“gender-friendly” or even “gender-transformative”).
Gender disparities in workplaces and more specifically in scientific organisations may be dependent on external factors (for instance, scarcity of qualified female researchers) or on lack of interest on women’s side (“they opt out”, “they need to strengthen their leadership potential”), however there is no doubt that gender disparities in workplaces are largely dependent on the needs and expectations of a stereotypical “male worker/decision maker/scientist” who is available 24/24 hours and 7/7 days and does not need to reconcile his dedication to science with other conflicting priorities, such as family. Also, hidden biases still influence career progression mechanisms, evaluation and resource allocation processes. The participatory gender audit navigates through the detail of organisational structures and culture, untangles stereotypes and unconscious biases from behaviours and rules, and initiates a change process from within. Through focused self-reflection on individual and organisational practices, PGA workshops and interviews offer opportunities to learn about gender equality in a contextualized way. This applies both to the individual and to the organisation. “Positive deviance” behaviours at an individual level (E.g. mentoring, work-life solutions, knowledge sharing mechanisms) can be systematized and, through management support, institutionalised. The gender analysis framework adopted by the PGA is inspired from Kabeer’s social relations gender analysis framework (Kabeer, N. Kabeer, Naila; Subramanian, Ramya (1999). Institutions, relations and outcomes: A framework and case studies for gender-aware planning). This framework looks at gender relations in the interaction of three inter-dependent systems:
- macro : laws, policies, macro-economic context. Policies and rules: are there equality policies at national/sectoral or organisational level? Are they reflected in the organisation’s policies and rules?
- meso : institutional policies, service delivery, rules, regulations at the workplace. Work organization practices and structures: what do they show about gender equality? Are good policies translated into good practices? Are there existing good practices that can be better institutionalized and shared? What are the expressed common organisatonal values?
- micro: individual behaviours. How do they “fit” the rules? What are the non-expressed organizational values? How are they translated in working relations between women and men? Are they influenced by stereotypes?
In the framework of Genis Lab the PGA was mostly limited on “Structures” and “Staffing”, with particular focus on project three dimensions: Organizational culture and stereotypes, Human Resource Management policies and practices and Financial dimensions and gender budgeting. The PGA helped to identify a list of evidence based indicators of gender performance. The participatory process resulted particularly useful as most of the recommendations were acceptable for institutions as they either built on existing schemes or proposed changes that had been discussed with management and staff. Recommendations served the institutions to start an internal discussion on how to develop the tailord action plan. An additional effort was made to organise the results of the audits in a systematic and comparative manner. This allowed the 6 partners to benchmark themselves on the basis of a set of “evidence based indicators of gender performance” and, on this basis, organise their responses to the audit recommendations in a systematic manner. Technical partners encouraged the scientific partners to adopt result-based planning techniques, which in some cases were adopted. The resulting Action Plans are not simply a list of activities but include medium-term strategic result areas.
Gender Budgeting as a gender mainstreaming tool
While gender budgeting has been used as tool for gender mainstreaming at administrative levels, such as regions and municipalities, there is limited literature on implementation of gender budgeting in scientific organizations, therefore, the proposal for a theoretical and methodological approach to implement gender budgeting in these organizations has been drawn up through active discussions with several representatives of these organizations and international experts taking part in the project. Budget is considered as a gender-neutral policy instrument because its data, expenditure and revenue do not mention women and men either. Budget appears gender neutral, but the issue is that budget usually ignores the different, socially determinate roles, responsibilities and capabilities of men and women (Diane Elson (1997a), ‘Gender-neutral, gender-blind, or gender-sensitive budgets? Changing the conceptual framework to include women’s empowerment and the economy of care’). This gender neutral approach is taken for a granted framework that brings about unequal gender outcome. Although the provisions in a budget may appear to be gender neutral, they actually affect men and women differently because their roles, responsibilities and capabilities in any organization are never the same. Therefore more than neutral gender budget has to be considered gender blind (Debbie Budlender, Diane Elson, Guy Hewitt and Tanni Mukhopadhyay Gender Budgets Make Cents. Understanding gender responsive budgets. The Commonwealth Secretariat, 2002). Gender budgeting aims at mainstreaming gender into the decision process of resource allocation in organizations. The generally accepted definition of gender budgeting emerges from the report of the special group of the Council of Europe, which in 2005 reached the conclusion that: “Gender budgeting is an application of gender mainstreaming in the budgetary process. It means a gender-based assessment of budgets, incorporating a gender perspective at all levels of the budgetary process and restructuring revenues and expenditures in order to promote gender equality.” The overall aim of gender budgeting is not the mechanical division of financial means into equal parts or in equal proportion to the existing number of men and women, but rather an overall concept, based on solid analyses, for the financing and distribution of available resources according to the needs of both genders so that they can be used by both men and women, as far as possible equally. If one of the groups is disadvantaged it would be possible to rectify such a situation by equalizing measures or redevelop the specific needs of the given group in this direction. Financial choices reflect the dominating culture with related power relationships, as power is created through the concentration of resources. It is then important when addressing gender equality to understand and monitor how resources are distributed and what effects the assignment of resources has on each gender.
The experience of the Genis Lab project shows that gender budgeting is a crucial tool to contribute in tackling several issues to promote structural changes in research institutions towards gender equality. Gender budgeting, in fact, specifically contrasts opaqueness in decision making process that has been considered as the first main problem faced by research institutions towards structural changes for gender equality. Data from the Genis Lab project confirm that decision-making process is mostly concentrated within bodies and committees that do not adequately include women and that their processes and decision-making mostly fail to be gender-sensitive, in tune with the already available European data (European Commission, 2012, Structural change in research institutions: Enhancing excellence, gender equality and efficiency in research and innovation. Report of the Expert Group on Structural Change). Therefore, gender budgeting contributes in increasing transparency in processes contrasting the phenomenon of the “old boys” networks and patronage. Moreover, gender budgeting, as a tool of social accountability, contributes in increasing awareness of direct and indirect discrimination of systems and structures, policies, processes and procedures in scientific organizations. Therefore, Gender budgeting, despite does not directly work on stereotypes, aims to increase awareness on discrimination and therefore it is a crucial tool to be implemented as part of a broader strategy to foster women participation in science.
In tune with the main literature on gender budgeting (Elson, Diane. 2002. “Gender Responsive Budget Initiatives: Some Key Dimensions and Practical Examples”), gender budget implementation in scientific organizations has comprised two main phases:
1. Gender budget analysis aimed at assessing, from a gender perspective, the distribution of resources in the organization;
2. Gender budget programming aimed at changing the distribution of resources according to gender-aware criteria.
Gender budgeting analysis is the first phase towards gender budget programming. The gender budget analysis and gender budget programming have been each subdivided into several main steps, implemented by almost all partners.
The principle of Gender Budgeting contributes on one hand to the fair distribution of financial resources and on the other hand increases the transparency of budgetary expenses. In the final phase, this results in ensuring the maximum efficiency of the used means.
The phase of analysis is articulated in three main stages.
- The first aims to outline the context of the organization, along with its human resource elements, within a gender-aware perspective.
- The second stage analyzes policy and services aimed to support gender equality. It considers the activities and the related input invested, as well as the output and the long-term outcome of this policy. This is a crucial element, since, in most of the organizations, certain policies have already been developed to promote gender equality, however they have not been properly evaluated with regards to their impact yet (Timmers, Tanya Marie, Tineke M. Willemsen and Kea Gartje Tijdens. 2010. “Gender diversity policies in universities: A multi-perspective framework of policy measures.”). Organizations taking part in the process of implementing gender budgeting as a tool for achieving structural changes highlight the need for indicators to monitor and evaluate improvement in women’s participation in research activities, taking into account services that have been offered to facilitate the balance between family and work responsibilities. Therefore, gender budgeting represents the framework for collecting and monitoring such gender-disaggregated data.
- The third and final stage in the analysis phase consists in focusing on gender differences in the allocation of resources in the organization. The specific characteristics of scientific organizations have needed the extension of the concept of resource, allowing the analysis not only of the traditional economic resources available to the organization, but also of other two resources that are fundamental for carrying out research: time and space. According to the literature, time allocation among academic faculties presents gender differences, affecting scientific outputs (Winslow, Sarah. 2010. “Gender Inequality and Time Allocations Among Academic Faculty”). Regarding space, in 1999, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Committee on Women in Faculty brought to light the existence of discrimination, between women and men, relating it to space allocation (Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT. 1999. “A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT How a Committee on women Faculty came to be established by the Dean of the School of Science, what the Committee and the Dean learned and accomplished, and recommendations for the future.”). Therefore, in investigating resource allocation in scientific organizations, time and space were considered as important elements to be analyzed.
For an organization devoted to research activity, economic resources are certainly important. The application of gender budgeting includes the analysis, from a gender perspective, of the allocation and management of the economic resources, mainly distinguishing between internal resources allocated by boards within the scientific organization, and external ones that are allocated through competition with other organizations. EU projects, governmental and non-governmental national projects, and some private enterprises, are examples of external funds. These external funding sources have enjoyed increased attention in recent decades, becoming a crucial source of economic resources.
Time and space are other resources of fundamental importance in carrying out research activities. Therefore, the application of gender budgeting in scientific organizations requires an analysis of time and space management from a gender perspective. The analysis of time management not only focuses on the distribution, between genders, of housework, family care and work, but also, regarding the time dedicated to work, it looks in detail at time management procedures for the various activities required in doing research. An analysis of gender differences in the use of time devoted to research and to many other activities required such as teaching is therefore carried out. Data collection concerning time and space requires the introduction of innovative tools. For the main three types of resource — funds, time and space — different sub-dimensions to be investigated have been outlined, and for each of these a specific item to be analyzed has been defined. In order to make the process clearer, leading questions have been presented, and actions and methodologies suggested in order to obtain the outlined output and related indicators.
Based on the results of the first phase, the second phase in the gender budgeting implementation consists of programming changes in resource allocation within the organization, in order to foster equal opportunities. In the programming phase, gender equality objectives,strategies, and gender impact assessment tools, were developed according to the allocated resources. Changes were monitored and reanalyzed periodically, to determine whether adjustments are needed. Adequate dissemination of the results of the gender budgeting analysis was recommended, in order to increase gender awareness and implement further gender-focused structural changes.
Moreover, a certain selection of actions has to be considered crucial and common to both phases:
1) The collection and publication of gender-disaggregated data is a fundamental element in revealing gender discrimination and debunking the apparent gender neutrality of the budget. As the experiences on gender budget show all over the world, the publishing and discussing of gender-disaggregated data, as part of the gender budgeting process, raise awareness about gender discrimination and inequalities (Sharp, Rhonda and Ray Broomhill. 2002. “Budgeting for Equality: The Australian Experience”). However, obtaining disaggregated data may well represent the first serious operational challenge. Gender-disaggregated data were not available in all of the scientific organizations involved in the project. Therefore, to facilitate the process of introducing a system to collect gender-disaggregated data, the following steps have been defined: (1) check whether gender-disaggregated data were already collected in the organization, even if they had not yet been analyzed; (2) if data were not still collected, it was checked whether it was possible to add gender-disaggregated information to the existing data-collection system, or to introduce a new system; (3) where necessary, update or replace data-collection systems, ensuring that resources were adequate to the task, and that responsibilities concerning the gender-disaggregated data were well defined.
2) The whole process of implementing gender budgeting must be supported by actions to raise awareness of gender discrimination. Most of the organizations have a consolidated experience in gender equality campaigns and actions. However, stereotypes remain the most difficult aspect to tackle.
3) Institutions specifically aimed at promoting equal opportunities should be extensively involved in the process of implementation of gender budgeting in scientific organizations. In all of the studied organizations, these institutions have a weak role, although there are relevant differences between northern and eastern organizations, on one hand, and southern organizations, on the other.
4) Action should be taken to guarantee gender-fair participation and full transparency at all stages of the budgeting process. The main challenge is to make the fund allocation process explicit, considering the formal and informal elements.
5) Gender analysis must be part of the whole accounting and quality-accreditation system. In recent decades there has been an increasing attention paid to the quality accreditation system in all scientific organizations. Attention to the gender dimension is part of the system in the northern and eastern countries, but is not considered in the southern ones yet.
6) Another action to be considered is a system of financial incentives together with an implementation of gender-sensitive measures for a modified personnel recruiting strategy. This is a rather controversial issue. Neutrality of science would not allow any kind of explicit discrimination in favor of women that thereby undermine male prospects.. Nevertheless, the experience of Sweden during the 1970s highlights the effect that positive discrimination actions have had on increasing the number of women in science.
The Tailored Action plans, main achievements per partner
FTM UB – Serbia
Here follows a summary of the concrete actions per dimensions, as defined in FTM UB’s TAP, in order to produce tangible and measurable gender-focused structural changes within the organization.
a. Gender Budgeting
The FTM UB, as a result of the project and as defined in the TAP, regularly collects employees data by gender. The FTM UB, as a result of the project and as defined in the TAP, regularly collects financial and project data by gender. Data for the period 2011-2014 is presented.
The shift in gender distribution at the FTM UB has gradually led to change in leadership of projects. In the case of well established project programs, female researchers are firmly established and well represented. In the case of shorter international and domestic commercial projects, a clear change may be seen in favor of female project leaders. On the other hand, when new types of international or domestic projects were introduced (for example Eureka or domestic integrated projects), female project leaders were not as active as their male counterparts.
The financial data on the projects indicate that male researchers tend to apply for more funds the female project heads. The numbers of engaged researchers show that women are well accepted as project leaders. The FTM UB informs the staff on annual financial performance and supports female researchers by recognizing their achievements. This action will be supplemented by recognizing the contribution of researchers by scientific performance. The FTM UB keeps regular records on the number of papers published annually in international scientific journals. The data are provided in Table 6.
There is an ongoing debate how to present this data by gender. There are several possibilities such as analysis by first author, corresponding author or by the contribution of all authors. This debate also reflects the dilemma in the interpretation of the contribution of junior and senior researchers.
The outcomes of the project regarding the dimension Gender Budgeting
1. regular institutional analysis of employees by gender
2. regular institutional analysis of finances by gender
3. regular institutional analysis of published papers by gender
b. Organizational Culture and Stereotypes
The FTM UB tested the three Gender Management Tools proposed within the dimension Organizational Culture and Stereotypes (IAT test, white sheet paper: how to make invisible work visible, and weekly diary). The results were modest and confirmed a deeply embedded subconscious level of prejudice. It is evident that the FTM UB will and must tackle the issue of gender stereotypes long after the project is completed, even though the staff is of the common opinion that there are no gender issues at the FTM UB. The best approach at the FTM UB seems to be that of positive role models. The promotion of role models will be carried out by recognizing outstanding achievements.
The FTM UB will lobby intensively to take the addressing of gender issues at the University of Belgrade to the next level. Together with the Center for Gender & Politics, Political Science of the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Belgrade and the Mihajlo Pupin Institute of the University of Belgrade (project partner on the FP7 project GenderTIME), the FTM UB will initiate the introduction of a University level Gender Equality Policy. The FTM UB continues to modify its documents in the sense of using gender-sensitive language. This is an ongoing process.
The outcomes of the project regarding the dimension Organizational Culture and Stereotypes:
1. promotion of positive role models
2. use of gender–sensitive language in FTM UB documents
c. Human Resources Management and Gender
The Equal Opportunities Committee of the FTM UB is expected to continue its activities upon the completion of the project. The issue of re-entry for parents also continues to be an important one for the FTM UB. Improved support mechanisms for returning (predominantly female) researchers are continuously considered. The organization of workshops on basic gender issues had to be postponed to the first quarter of 2015. Another key activity for the long-term success of the project is related to training programs for junior researchers in soft skills and empowering assistant and associate professors for leadership.
The FTM UB, under the supervision of the vice-dean for doctoral studies, continuously organizes various lectures, seminars and workshops for students and staff. In order to complete his/her doctoral studies, a student at the FTM UB must attend a minimum of ten lectures, seminars or workshops, of which at least two must be related to Intellectual Property protection or entrepreneurship during their studies. The University of Belgrade organizes individual training sessions for younger associates and staff. The TRAIN structured professional development training program consists of seven modules for new academics (PhD students, assistants, junior professors, post-docs with no more than three years work experience). The 7 modules are: 1. Research Methodology, Scientific Writing and Result Presentation, 2. Higher Education Didactics, 3. Preparing Funding Applications & Project Management, 4. Presentation & Research Skills, 5. Entrepreneurial Skills, 6. Networking & Teamwork, 7. Designing Higher Education Curricula. The TRAIN program is complementary with the goals of the GENIS LAB project and will provide the FTM UB with a permanent training program for young academics.
The outcomes of the project regarding the dimension Human Resources Management and Gender:
1. sustainable Equal Opportunities Committee
2. organization of soft skills seminars for junior academic staff
3. awareness raising on gender issues
4. publication “Achieving gender balance at the top of scientific research – Guidelines and tools for institutional change” in Serbian
ICTP/CSIC – Spain
ICTP management has decided to adopt a practical, gradual, bottom up approach. GENIS LAB is focusing on those actions that fall within the direct competence of ICTP management and that are likely to produce stronger institutional capacities (both in governance and monitoring of the implementation of the relevant EO policies), changes in organisational culture, and pilot testing innovative ways to assess scientific excellence. The idea is to “start from ICTP” to gain a better internal and shared understanding of what could be brought to the attention and discussed with CSIC central management structures. Thanks to the GENIS-Lab project, ICTP was able to establish an internal committee to promote and monitor the effective implementation of the Spanish Equality Law as well as the related policies on EO for women in science.
More specifically the Committee operates in three main areas:
1) Gender Budgeting:
1.1 Gender analysis of scientific outputs: papers publication, projects, patents
1.2 Institution of local gender equality committee with the aim to support gender data collection at local level and to promote gender equality
1.3 Gender analyses of funds allocation criteria
1.4 Collaboration with Mujeres y Ciencia
1.5 Gender equality allocation of labs and offices
2) Organizational Culture and Stereotypes
2.1 Collection data and analysis of all projects presented and approved and evaluation of public announcements (check some inconsistencies not only in gender equality but in general).
2.2 Internet forum for gender problems discussion (e-mentoring)
2.3 Collaboration with Mujeres y Ciencia (role modelling)
3) Human Resources Management and Gender
3.1 Establish internal committee to promote and monitor the effective implementation of the Spanish Equality Law
3.2 Increase transparency in personnel recruitment and career development
3.3 Start from ICTP to reach to CSIC, developing strong links with Mujeres y Ciencia and, eventually, “exporting” the ICTP gender equality activities.
The “Gender analysis of scientific outputs: papers, projects, patents” was developed thanks to the official ICTP report for the 2009-2014 years. As indicators, ICTP used the study based on the percentage of women in each parameter. In January 2014, the Committee discussed these data within the official meeting of ICTP February 2014. All data will be included in the annual report of 2014. The analysis of the allocation of funds was carried out thanks to the information given in the annual report of ICTP in specific entry “projects” .
The Collaboration with “Mujeres y Ciencia” (Women and science) Association is an action in common with the other dimension “Organizational Culture and Stereotypes”. In April 2013, ICTP started periodical meetings with Mujeres y Ciencia and in particular with the president of the Association, Ms. Pilar Lopez Sancho. Together, they organized periodic seminars led by scientific Spanish women, the first in June 2013 with Inés Sánchez de Madariaga, director of the Women and Science Unit (UMYC) of the Spanish Minister's Office for Science and Innovation. On 11 February 2014, the seminar was led by Consuelo del Cañizo, former director of L’OREAL Foundation, presenting the lecture “Ciencia y Cosmética” (“Science and cosmetics”). Rosa Menendez was the researcher leading the conference on 06 April 2014, titled “Revolución científica y tecnológica en los materiales de carbon” (“Scientific and technology revolution in carbon materials”) and on 8 may 2014, there was the last seminar with Dra. Concepció Rovira Angulo (Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Barcelona CSIC). The conferences took place in the ICTP and the participation was quite good. All speakers divided their talk in two parts: the first part was focused on their careers, in particular women’s career problems and the personal problems that they have during their work life. During the second part, they talked about their scientific works. This activity was also used as dissemination of the project.
In September 2013, ICTP implemented the Internet forum for gender problem discussion in the website of the institute (link available from the homepage). The active participation from ICTP staff is an indicator of the good impact of this action. The last action that will be the final step of all actions is “Start from ICTP to reach to CSIC” developing strong links with Mujeres y Ciencia.
IPF – Germany
a) Gender Budgeting:
According to the Gender Budgeting dimension, it was planned “To develop gender budgeting as a conceptual and operative framework to measure inequalities through rigorous empirical analysis” The institute gets its basic financing (internal funding) from public funds with a share of 50 per cent each from the German federal states and the federal government. In addition, the institute acquires third party funds (external funding) through project and industrial contracts. In general the IPF is bound by on agreement of tariffs. That means males and females are fully equally paid according to their qualifications. However, it is an aim of IPF to reduce the lower representation of women in higher pay groups; nevertheless this has to depend on the qualifications of external job candidates.
Internal funds (governmental budget)
The internal funds allocation procedure consists of several steps:
- First, negotiation between the Board of Directors (BoD) and the States and Federal Ministries take place.
- Afterwards, the BoD (1 female, 1 male) allocates the budget to the institute leaders (1 female, 3 males).
- Then, the institute leaders allocate the budget to the department leaders (4 females, 9 males).
- Altogether, 5 females (29.4%) and 12 males (70,6%) leaders are involved in the internal budget allocation process.
The only criteria for internal funds allocation is the research quality that means the performance (Excellence) of the researchers/departments/Programmbereiche in terms of publications, patents, presentations, etc. in accordance with the gender-oriented guidelines of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Leibniz-Gemeinschaft (WGL). Within the internal budget, IPF has Gender equality funds for the EO.
External funds (third party funds)
The gender analysis of the external funds was based on the data on ongoing funded projects for the years 2010-2013 from the Department of Research Planning and Cooperation. The allocation of external funds has been analysed in terms of:
- Number and percentage of projects with female project leaders,
- Number and percentage of projects from gender-oriented funding programmes and
- Number and percentage of projects from gender-oriented programmes with female project leaders.
IPF is partner of the only gender related project involved (it is Genis Lab). However, for other proposals (the national and international funding agency) it is necessary to describe gender aspects.
Time Management
A new institution agreement concerning working time was prepared and implemented on 11.01.2012. Concrete changes implemented are related to:
- Core working time (§4 of the institution agreement),
- Compensatory time-off in case of illness of children or family members: 12 days within a period of 6 months (§8 of the institution agreement).
The members of staff will be trained on an ongoing basis.
Space: gender differences in allocation of space and in accessing laboratories
IPF has set up a map of working places and analysed it in terms of gender allocation. In conclusion, it can be said that IPF provides for measures to reconcile work and private life. The females have flexible working hours; different part time models; partial retirement; family friendly meeting dates; offers for health promotion (back care, massages); child care offers (agreements with nearby child care facilities; child care possibilities during time off work); room for nursing and swaddling at IPF.
b) Organizational Culture and Stereotypes
The first challenge related to the OCS dimension was “Primary child minders and caregivers for the family remain women”. The first action related to this challenge was to “Make capability of the parent child room fully operational”. Indeed, the parents / children room was opened in 2008 as a breast-feeding room (Still-/Wickelraum) and have been converted in a parents/children/working room in 2012. The parent child room should be used by young mothers who returned part time to work early after the birth of the child and by parents in the case of need. An online-booking tool for the use od the room in IPF intranet is working. Guidelines for using the room was prepared. In 2014, this room was used for longer periods by 1 mother who returned early after childbirth. From January to April 2014 the feedback of the users was analysed. It was decided to optimise room facilities and to have a better interior (toys, nappies) as well as a baby`s high chair for the dining room. Since June 2014 the interior and the baby`s high chair are available.
The second action was the increase of “Kinderbetreuungsplätze” (Childcare places) for children 0-6 years old”. Strengthened institutional provisions were put in place so that male and female researchers could better reconcile their research work with their family responsibilities. Since the need for childcare places has been permanently increasing, IPF has bought additional places in 2012 for the next 10 years. Thus, the childcare places increased from 2010 until 2013 from 5 up to 10 places (0-3 years) and up to 10 places (1-6 years). The IPF signed 12 contracts in April 2014 12 and 4 new ones wererequested for 2015. The third action was to “Promote active fatherhood through guidance on paternity / parental benefits”. The researchers are continuously informed of news concerning paternity/parental benefits, e.g. on periodically employees meetings. Guidance on parental leave is implemented on internal EO website and it is continuously updated to encourage more fathers to share the parental leave with their partners. Parental leaves of fathers in IPF increased from: 5 fathers in 2010 and 2011 to 6 fathers in 2012, 7 fathers in 2013, 6 fathers in 2014. The time range of parental leave of fathers is 1 to 6 months. The average time for leaving is 3 months. The fourth action was the “identification of stereotypes and targeted contribution to a gender friendly work environment”. IPF organises workshops periodically for staff members at different levels:
Activities promoting gender awareness were thought and used in other events, both internal and external.
The second challenge in relation to Organizational Culture and Stereotypes was: “Maternity leave perceived as putting a break on women’s career; the first action related to this challenge is to “Ensure a minimum percentage of women in relevant levels of research (“Kaskadenmodell”) (Cascade Model)”
An action thought to enhance the rate of female researchers in the higher salary levels (Entgeltstufen), the so-called “Kaskadenmodell”, has been implemented at the IPF. For that purpose, a certain target rate (Zielquote) for higher salary levels has been defined. “Kuratorium” and Board of Directors of IPF have agreed upon accountable targets (abrechenbareZiele) for the period until 2017: 50% of new positions from a certain salary level should be staffed by women taking into consideration the selection process for the best.
The analysis has showed first successes in increasing the number of female researchers in leading positions from 2012 to 2013. In the Scientific Technical Advisory Body (WTR = Wissenschaftlich-technischer Rat), the number of women increased from 1 in 2012 to 4 in 2013. Since 2013, the chairman of WTR is a woman.
The number of women in leading positions (Heads of institutes, Heads of departments); from salary level (Entgeltstufe) EG 15 upwards) increased from 3 (21,5%) in 2010 up to 5 (29,4%) in 2013
Furthermore, a group of 16 young researchers at the IPF was defined as “young academics”. This group proves a high level of potential for career development and for the introduction of new innovative research topics at the IPF. Currently an official paper of the Board of Directors is being executed to define certain promotion possibilities for this group. The total number of female researchers of this group is 8.
The new Leibniz-Mentoring program was presented by the EO-officer to the Teaching Staff Council (“Kollegium”) on 26.03.2014. Afterwards, the program was introduced to all staff during the department meetings. A female candidate with a defined career plan (completion of post-doctoral lecturing qualification) applied for the Leibniz-Mentoring program 2014/2015. Dr. Alla Synytska, who is an IPF-junior researcher in the Genis Lab project, was elected from the Leibniz association to attend the Leibniz-Mentoring programme.
IPF will also define funding regulations for the “young academics”. The “Junior research group leaders” will be provided with start-up funding with the aim of applying for projects. In all job applications for IPF positions, it is stipulated that a woman will be preferred if she has the same qualifications as a male candidate. Furthermore, the EO must be involved in the recruitment of professors. The process must be organised very transparently and the EO has the possibility of pointing out aspects which are not gender conform. In addition, the EO also has the possibility of becoming involved in recruitments for leading personnel at IPF (e.g. department leader). The Gender and Diversity committee was not established until 2014, but it is planned in future. The requirement to establish this committee is the signature of the Charter of Diversity. This was executed in October 2014. Thus, the IPF Board of Directors and the work council now have to discuss how the charter will be implemented in the institute connected with the discussion of establishment of a committee. The second action was to: “develop and periodically revise career plans for young / mid-career women with the support of their supervisors”
IPF is continuously working on long term mentoring and post-maternity support. Under the responsibility of the personnel department, career plans for young and mid-career women have been developed and periodically revised with the support of their supervisors. Prospective mothers and fathers have been offered talks about adapting their employment contract for the parental leave period, together with their supervisors. They received an offer for an extension of their fixed-term employment contract for the planned parental leave period. This action has not only been related to women working on their post-doctoral lecturing qualification (2012:2; 2013:1) or belonging to the group of “Junior Research Group Leaders” (7 female) but also to female PhD-students. Mentoring and post-maternity support (PMS) have been periodically discussed during meetings of the network of the Dresden Leibniz institutes and the meetings of the network “berufundfamilie”.
The third action was to: “Increase women’s representation in “higher wages groups”
IPF promotes young female researchers for higher wages groups by preparing / coaching them for appropriate openings at IPF or research partner organisations. For that, an appropriate recruitment strategy has been developed (See source: “IPF – BerichtzurGleichstellung 2009 bis 2012 und Gleichstellungsplan 2013 bis 2016“ from 12/2013“). For example, in February and March 2014, the workshop “Women only – ErfolgskniggefürWissenschaftlerinnen” (Women only - Success manual for female scientists”) took place on 12./13.02.2014 and on 18./19.03.2014. 24 women participated. One important topic, which was discussed during the workshop, was time management.
The fourth action was to: “Implement an easy-to-use confidential feedback system on equal opportunities for staff members and students” The feedback system has been in place since 05.08.2013. It consists of the feedback item added to the EO webpage and includes an anonymous feedback system. Feedback received through the established mechanism is regularly analysed and discussed with the Board of Directors and the Human Resources Management (HRM). Up to now, this anonymous feedback system has not been used by staff members and students. All feedbacks in 2014 were received per mail or personally during the interviews. The HR department is permanently involved in the meetings on “berufundfamilie” and Genis Lab internal meetings. Department leaders were informed during the quarterly meetings. The fifth action was to: “Increase participation of female researchers (mothers) in international networks of women in research”
A lot of female researchers are members of national and international scientific networks with and without the gender aspect. Below several examples are summarised:
- Participation in EU projects with (Genis Lab) and without the gender aspect;
- Memberships in organisations, including leading positions;
- Working within international contractual cooperation both with universities and other research institutions as well as with industrial partners.
However, other possibilities for obtaining visibility in networks are the increasing international recognition of female researchers of IPF.
The sixth action was to: Increase the use of the EO webpage to improve the understanding by the staff members of the equality measures that are applicable by IPF”.
Last update was made on June 6, 2014. It was planned to establish a mentoring system to achieve a number of visits. Depending on the preparation of the IPF evaluation it was not possible for the IPF IT-department to establish such a system until now. But IPF will continue working on it. At IPF, Intranet site the link “Hints for upcoming parents” can be found (in German). This link will be translated in English in the near future. Researchers keep regularly informed about equality measures and opportunities.
c) Human Resources Management:
The challenge related to HRM and gender was:“Women frequently are unable to reconcile the pressure of quantitative performance in terms of publications, projects and patents with family life”
Data collected and analysed covers the period from 2009 – 2013 and are summarised in Fig. 7. Although the number of female and male employees in total at IPF is well-balanced, female researchers and female management personnel are slightly underrepresented:
- female PhDs and Postdocs: 42.4%
- female scientific and management personnel: 34.8%
- females among the trainees (lab assistants): 80%
Due to the fact that few female researchers worked only part-time, the data was normalised to the full-time equivalent for reliable comparison. As regards to the publications and patents applied by female researchers, an incremental consistency can be detected over the years. Data are represented in yearly IPF reports and are available on the Equality Office (EO) website. It should be noted that the data collection activity in terms of the quantitative and qualitative performance of female and male researchers is a new action that has been implemented by the Genis Lab project.
INFN – Italy
a) Gender Budgeting
Action 1: Fund allocation to research groups: Gender analyses of beneficiaries
The objective was to analyse the fund allocation to research groups focusing on the following dimensions:
• Gender composition of research groups
• Funded research groups
• Gender analyses of groups’ leaders.
INFN has finalized the analyses of gender composition of research groups, and groups’ leaders and the fund allocation to research groups taking in account various inputs from technical partners of the project. The action was successfully completed.
Action 2: Gender provisional budget and research composition for each of the 5 national scientific committees
The objective was to introduce gender data concerning research teams and funded projects in the provisional budget (2014). Based on the results of action 1, INFN has chosen the items sensible to the gender dimension in order to introduce gender data on research teams and funded projects in the provisional budget (2015). Since, there was not enough time to include the data in the provisional budget for the year 2014, the INFN team is planning to introduce the breakdown of costs divided by gender to the annual financial statement for the ministry.
Action 3: Gender pay gap
The objective was to analyse gender pay gap through the following two variables:
• key rewarded tasks/services/responsibilities
• financial support for missions
Methodologies for measuring the gender pay gap, almost without bias, need many data and sophisticated statistical methods, so INFN has completed action 3 providing a preliminary system of collecting and processing gender remuneration data, a more simple ‘remuneration gap analysis’ which gave an insight to differences in salaries among different professional profiles and education levels of employees. In particular, INFN has found a typical example of a horizontal segregation referring to the existence of, usually lower-paid, ‘women’s jobs’.
Action 4: Observatory for monitoring and evaluating women participation in research.
The objective was to establish a permanent observatory for monitoring and evaluating women participation in research, appointed by the INFN Executive board, formed by: a CUG working group specifically involved in Equal Opportunity, the team of Genis Lab project, representatives of the HR department, components of internal and external evaluation committees (CIV, CVI), coordinated by S. Falciano (member of the Executive Committee and past INFN Vice President).
b) Human Resources Management and Gender
Action 1: Alignment of HR strategies and management tools to EU policies (ECR and Minerva Code)
The objective was to comply with existing EU policies and tools to promote excellence and gender equality in research. The implementation of the ECR and Minerva code in the procedures of the institution implies an awareness that has not been gained yet. Genis Lab tried to collaborate with its contacts in the management (GE) to raise awareness of importance of fair and transparent procedures in order to ensure excellence. The Genis Lab team is aware of the commitment that CUG has also made in this direction. It is clear that it is a procedural change that takes time and the full implementation of the CUG commitment will be crucial in the coming years to accomplish it.
Action 2: Develop and adopt HR procedures to promote transparency in recruitment, performance, promotion criteria
During the first half of 2014, the GENIS LAB team focused on the objective to develop a competency-based HRM Model to improve fairness, objectivity and transparency of HR procedures. After preliminary analyses of competency models and the organization of meetings and seminars aiming at raising awareness and promoting an INFN competency model inspired by CERN competency model (CCM) held in the end of 2013, the project team has continued working on the implementation of the INFN competency model. INFN has organized a training course titled: “Change Management - The Competency Model and Organizational Change Management”, in Frascati (RM) on February 25 with Sudeshna Datta, where both top management and employees were involved. Technical partner Benedetta Magri (ITC/ILO) supported and also conducted the course. They have discussed what is the most effective and sustainable strategy to adopt a competency based model, as well as the effective benefits that can be brought about. Following the training course, INFN has proceeded to create a database of technical competencies with the help of Genis Lab facilitators (Giovanni Mazzitelli and Daniela Ferrucci of Frascati National Labs and Roberto Gomezel and Alessandra Filippi from INFN Trieste). On March 20, a meeting with the Director of the INFN National Laboratories of Frascati, Umberto Dosselli, was organized to discuss the work plan in order to proceed with a survey about technical competencies and with the focus groups helping us to explore the INFN core values and the relative behavioral competencies. At the beginning of May, the project team has organized a series of interviews with senior staff about technical competencies of the personnel in the institute and about core values, further explored during two Focus Groups meetings held on May 6 and 7 2014 with representatives of different professional profiles. An online survey about technical competencies of two pilot structures of the INFN (National Laboratories of Frascati and INFN Trieste) was prepared, which has been completed by 158 employees of both structures (36% of LNF and 67% of Trieste employees). The analysis of the survey results is available on the INFN Genis Lab website. The INFN Trieste Site director Silvia Dalla Torre agreed to present the work on INFN Competency Model in Trieste. Data collected during both focus groups and seminars have been analysed and a proposal document for the management about INFN’s core values and relative behavioral competencies was prepared. The work done to develop an INFN Competency Model and its application on education and training has been presented during the National Training Committee meeting that was held on June 19 in Trieste.
Action 3: Development and dissemination of Guidelines on non-discriminatory recruitment and management
The objective was to ensure that all competitions and promotions processes were checked against discriminatory stereotypes and carried out in discriminatory-free ways. A first draft (focused on the evaluation assessment process: criteria, evaluation, procedures, and on overview on peer review processes) was shared and discussed with technical partners Donne e Scienza and ITC-ILO. A document about core guidelines was completed in November 2014 and is available on the INFN Genis Lab internal website.
Action 4: Organize training/awareness activities for managers and members of selection committees on the Competency-based model
The objective was to ensure that the model is understood and tested appropriately and that the managers responsible for recruitment and performance evaluation are aware of bias free selection and performance management practices. The team has organized a training course titled: “Change Management - The Competency Model and Organizational Change Management”, in Frascati (RM) on February 25th.
c) Organizational Culture and Stereotypes
Action 1: Soft-skills training for managers
The objective was to upgrade managerial competences and ensure HRM practices which are free from gender bias. In September 2013, the soft-skills training for managers, titled: “Gender balance: the development and management of human resources through the promotion of gender equity” was proposed to the National Training Committee for the National training program 2014. The training was held on December 4 and 5 2014 in Frascati (LNF). 15 participants attended the course. The course conceived an INFN core values review and gender awareness exercises prepared by our technical partner Benedetta Magri (ITC/ILO).
Action 2: knowledge and awareness raising activities on stereotypes and non-discrimination at all levels
The objective was to raise awareness on the negative impact of stereotypes at the different levels of the INFN. A seminar titled “Why to promote women in science”, held by Flavia Zucco, was organized in collaboration with Donne e Scienza on October 7th 2013 at the Roma INFN Section of Sapienza University. On December 10th 2013, INFN organized a Re-ACT play at Frascati (the largest INFN Laboratory), proposed by Donne e Scienza, that involved employees together with actors in a collective research to investigate and deconstruct gender stereotypes in the scientific community. The play was based on the INFN most representative stereotypes identified during an experiential workshop held on December 3rd 2013 which 13 INFN employees voluntarily joined. The play was attended by 30 participants including the INFN HR director and the Frascati National Laboratories director.
BTH – Sweden
a) Gender Budgeting
The objective of highlighting funding, both internal faculty funds and external funds, is to increase the transparency of gender balance in the procedures and beneficiaries. The expectation for outcome is a report on gender differences in the procedures and a change of strategy to improve gender balance in fund allocation.
Funding
For 2012, the preliminary allocation to BTH from the Ministry of Education was 81.4 million. All schools of BTH were asked to report regarding how the funds were allocated for the fiscal year 2012 in relation to the academic position and the sex in the three categories faculty fund, approved external funding and applied external project funding.
As evidenced women have less access to the internal faculty funds than men. Women’s research is to a larger extent funded by external sources than men’s. On average women were awarded half as much of the internal faculty resources compared to men during the same period of time. The majority of the internal faculty funds go to graduate students, regardless of sex. However, there are differences in the residual distribution of funds, where internal faculty funds go to male lecturers and professors.
Applied external funding in 2012 was reported by DSN. HAL reported there was no reliable documentation for these questions. The result for applied external funding strengthens the result that women are dependent on external funding. During the financial year 2012, the distribution of internal faculty funds and external project grants shows a significant misallocation. Men receive a significantly larger share of the internal faculty funds than women. On the other hand, the research activities by women are funded by external resources. taking into account the background of the Swedish Research Council report, which states that women are awarded research grants to a lesser extent than men in the field of natural and engineering sciences, it seems that it is a demanding financial situation for female researchers. Due to the lack of data from the other schools at BTH, it is difficult to make any far-reaching analysis. However, the result confirms misallocation of resources to such an extent that there is no equal opportunity for men and women in doing research or for career development. The review of research strategies and interviews with heads of schools confirms a lack of gender perspectives.
Time
Every two years statistics are presented on income and full-time equivalents for the higher education sector by the Statistics Sweden. Full-time equivalents are based on the result of a survey, where the academic staff rates the time spent on activities for R&D, teaching, administration work, expertise consultation and positions and other work-related activities. In 2011, men performed overall the highest proportion of full-time equivalents in all higher education in Sweden. At BTH the proportion was 62% for men and 38 % for women. As for distribution of working hours, the statistics also show differences between the sexes. Men had a slightly higher proportion of their time spent on R & D activities than women had.
The study for GenisLab Time was designed as a pilot study for MAM and DSN at BTH, during the period June to November 2013. The group selected for the survey was the academic staff, namely graduate students, lecturers, associate professors and full professors. The survey was sent out via a web-based survey tool by e-mail to a total of 51 people. The survey was followed up by interviews with lecturers at each school. The questions in the survey were based on the issues regarding working hours at the national level. The questions were focused on estimated working hours and not the actual hours. The response rate in the survey was 55% (28 of 51), and the respondents represented a relatively equal distribution between women (46%) and men (54%). Women estimated time allocated to research to a slightly higher degree than men (women 32% and men 28%) and women estimated to a significantly higher degree time spent on teaching undergraduates, 43%, than men 36%. However, there were large differences in the response group. A handful of the respondents did not allocate any time to research activities, while others spent a majority of their time on research activities.
Men estimated overall to a higher degree working time spent on administrative tasks than women. This does not mean men actually spend more time on administrative tasks than women, but the responding men, consider administrative tasks as a task separate from other activities, such as research or teaching.
Overall, the vast majority of respondents are unanimous regarding time allocated to research activities. There is too little time for research and too much time is spent on teaching at the undergraduate level and administrative tasks. Women experience to a higher degree (69%) than men (57%) that time allocated to research is not satisfactory. Another significant difference was the experience of the women to a lower degree than men being able to influence their work planning. Almost 30% of the women felt they could to a lesser extent influence their planning, with only 14 % of the men experiencing the same situation. The differences between the results from the survey and the interviews that were undertaken show the importance of additional data and not "just counting heads" as in the survey. It is clear that the majority of the respondents are satisfied with their situation regarding teaching, but very unsatisfied with the situation to conduct research. More than half of the responses marked to some degree the workplace to have flaws of such nature that it affects the work negatively.
The stories emerging in the comments and interviews described the work environment experienced as being unhealthy or unstimulating. Several respondents experienced a lack of transparency, between the management and the staff, and between colleagues from different schools. This questions the creativity and innovative capacity at BTH.
There are also clear differences between women’s and men’s opportunities for research and career development. The men in interviews responded that it rarely led to any consequences or reprimands (in addition to themselves) not doing extra work, for women it seemed to be the opposite. The women worked well over their 40 h per week for catching up and they missed compensation like sharing the burden or opportunity to leave. This makes a clear example of how men's and women's contributions are valued and handled differently in the organization. Regarding allocation of working hours and tasks there seemed to be a discrepancy between actual reported time.
Space
The third part of the Gender budgeting activities was a study of possible differences between space allocation for women and men. A pilot study was made of the spatial resources of MAM. The main focus was to collect data on square meters per person and if it was possible to find differences between gender and position. Questions were also made of the patterns in typology as access to the views, position or the proximity to other spatial premises. The collection of data was done with a blue print of MAM’s offices and an interview with the school coordinator.
Results
Economic cutbacks at the department had led to a reorganisation ofthe office space. Efforts had been made for all staff to have their office space more “united” in order to free up space for another school at BTH. It was unclear how many of the employees who actually had moved offices and to which extent each individual had the opportunity to influence which room to be assigned to. During the time of the study, there were 48 employees with an office, including 28 women (59%) and 20 men (41%). All offices, the front help desk, conference rooms and the staff room were located on the same floor. The majority of the rooms were in a line, side by side. The department was open for students during "office hours". There was no "open space" with sofas or standing tables that could be used for more spontaneous meetings. This indicates most of the work to be done in the offices. The majority of the offices were of the same size (in number of square meters). The biggest rooms (per square meter) were held by the dean of school (a man) and the school administrator (a woman). Four men shared two large rooms due to their half- time employment. Two other men had extra space in addition to their offices. The distribution of square meters differed between men and women. Men had a slightly higher proportion of square meters per person than women. The women had 8.5 m2/ person, and the men 10.5 m2/ person. No distinct relation in the distribution of square meters to a position was found, however the postgraduate student’s offices were placed close together. Two men had access to an additional room for their work respectively. This is the main reason why men on average had more square meters. If these rooms were not included, the gap between women and men would be 0.2 m2 in advantage of men. The reason to why these men had this extra space is due to their research and teaching activities requiring more space. It is striking how the rooms standing out at the school are held by men as they hold the rooms with the worst view and proximity to other office resources such as staff rooms, copying room, and nearness to other colleagues. Another pattern that can be distinguished is the majority has offices next to another person of the same sex as themselves. Women sit side by side with women, men sit with men. The result of Gender Budgeting Space was reported to the Equality committee. During the discussion with the committee many explanations and arguments in space allocation were revealed. However there seems to be a lack of a comprehensive strategy at BTH for space allocation from gender perspectives. In the discussion the history and culture of each school and department became clear playing a significant role in the space allocation, despite mergers and reorganisations.
b. Human Resources Management and gender
The dimension of Human Resources is based on implementing gender perspectives in career and career development in the academy. The focus is on three areas of Human Resources, namely: recruitment (selection, induction and orientation), retention (performance management, pay and conditions, adapting work to family and private life, and career development) and release (conflicts and exit strategies). Data for what is currently in place in the cycle of Human Resources (HR) was collected in a interview with the HR Manager at BTH and from reviewed documents and policies, selected by the department of HR.
Results
Except for the work of the Equality Committee and BTH Equal Treatment Plan, there is a lack of explicit strategies of human resources with gender perspectives. The HR Manager argues this is an issue of resources. He gave examples of the lack of structure for future leaders, that the perspective on academic career development does not always include leadership. There is a large collection of documents and policies of staff issues, such as the Handbook for HR, an Accounting Manual and other regulatory documents. These documents are published at the BTH website and seem to be updated continuously, which facilitates transparency for the academic staff. The management at BTH has prepared policies for recruitment and career development. But there is an overall lack of monitoring and revision of these policies. The responsibility to manage and interpret the instructions lies in the hands of the management of each school, which could cause the schools to follow the culture of their own organisation, which in turn may be in conflict with overall strategies or visions. All of the reviewed documents are at the surface gender-neutral, with gender-neutral language, but they seem to be missing an underlying understanding of the concepts. The formulations may seem exclusionary. In one of the guidelines, there are several formulations requiring the reader to understand certain concepts and terms, without definition of these words. This does not take into consideration newly hired staff or language problems.
Recruitment
There are several documents concerning the recruitment process, such as instructions by experts for selections, interview guides and position profiles. As mentioned above, there is non-existing gender perspectives throughout the cycle of recruitment. The success of recruitment seems to depend on individual aspects, from the selection of the employee to introduction to the workplace. According to the HR Manager, there is a lack of transparency in how the introduction is performed at each school, except for the formalities of hiring. A strategy of supporting in-house recruitments seems to be absent. New employees are supposed to “know what to do” as they are already working in the organisation. This approach gives no opportunity for the employees to ask questions concerning their new position or limited access to the support, which is currently in place. This may create uncertainty for the employees.
Retention
In the cycle of career and career development, none of the documents supports gender perspectives. The issues regarding facilitation of family and personal life is fully supported by government commitments. Sweden has parental benefits for a total of 480 days including sickness benefits. There is no systematic work at BTH on how the parental leave affects the ability of work or whether a parental leave creates barriers in career development.
Release
In the area of conflict and exit strategies, there is a complete lack of data. Minor conflicts are managed locally at each school. More extensive conflicts are managed by the occupational health service and the HR department. Deans and heads of departments have some training in conflict management, but there is no information, if this training is given with gender perspectives. Upon release of staff, all governmental employees are contacted by the Security Foundation, which is supportivein both preventive measures and getting a new employment.
Analysis
The different aspects of HR take a comprehensive grasp of an organisation and perhaps particularly in an academic organisation. Without a focus on the research staff, there is a risk of not being taken seriously as a university. The Gender screening tool highlights that the staff issues at BTH is not supporting gender equality. Each document reviewed in HR had initially a high ambition but seems to end up as paper products. The lack of insight from management in several areas allows the staff to create their own strategies and priorities without a perspective of gender equality. All areas concerning Human Resources should not only have a clear focus on gender equality, but also be linked to BTH overall strategies, in order to secure a continuous monitoring and evaluation taking place. It is obvious that it is not only necessary to document the process of strategies and visions; there is also a need of continuous training and on-going discussion on gender issues. It is important to give account to the fact that the head of HR department found the Genis Lab Gender screening tool relevant and valuable for BTH and want to implement that tool at BTH.
c) Organisational culture and stereotypes
The GenisLab BTH team is actively involved in the development of feminist technoscience as a knowledge and culture transforming agent at a technical university. The history of feminist technoscience situated at faculties of technology and engineering has proceeded from the practice of counting heads (how many women) to fostering and advancing understandings and practices of knowledge production. This is not a linear process but more of a process in parallel. The academic story in Sweden within a period of more than three decades shows that Sweden has moved from the gender equality question over the woman question to the science question. This refers to the Harding turn (Harding, 1991) moving from the question of what science can do for women to what feminists can do for science. BTH has chosen to exemplify the Genis Lab organizational culture dimension by giving its story being embedded in the development of a new university campus at the technical university BTH. Starting a new campus was a result of negotiations between the leadership of the university and the local Government of the town, where the campus was to be located. At the same time, an innovation node or innovation system called NetPort was established. NetPort became later on an organization co-owned by the university, the local Government and the business sector of the three focus areas chosen. The development of the campus and of NetPort started in the year 2000. Developing a new campus for a university of technology in a Triple helix context needs at least 4 starting conditions, namely:
After almost 15 years the university campus is firmly established mainly thanks to the sustainability strategy of NetPort and an understanding of Triple Helix collaboration to be dynamic, to pass different phases during expansion and the necessity to be nurtured all the time in continuous dialogues. One may ask why is gender research a knowledge and culture transforming agent at a university campus formation. Some answers are to be found in the theoretical and methodological work of the actual feminist technoscientific research in:
• expanding the knowledge frames and practices for technology development in increasingly complex realities
• opening up preferential rights of interpretation in selections of e.g. standards, which are always reality producing activities
• emphasizing the importance of power relations and their impacts, including complex understanding of gender structures
• process-oriented development through a broader understanding of transformation practices
• enforcement and integration of situated knowledge and technology development
• developing epistemological infrastructures relevant to a society heavily dependent on research and technology
• establishing new arenas for developing understanding of relations between research, political sector and industry.
NIC – Slovenia
In accordance with GenisLab TAP the following activities per dimension have been implmeneted
a) Gender Budgeting
A basis for a final synthesis of gender-based organizational assessments has been made, i.e. assessment of professional performance for the year 2013 which consists of data on budgeting and scientific excellence by gender in 2013. As regards gender and existing budget in the year 2013, the number of male researchers in both grades was higher than the number of women researchers. In the Grade A, men had much more disposable funds in comparison to women from the title of the leadership of research programmes, basic projects and applicative projects. On the other hand women were more successful in gaining funds from collaboration with industry and other projects. In Grade B differences in funds regarding gender were not very big. Men and women are quite competitive, but in the leadership of basic projects women were more successful in gaining funding in comparison to men. A basis for a final synthesis of gender-based organizational assessments has been made in the period May-July 2014, i.e. assessment of professional performance for the year 2013, consisted of data on budgeting and scientific excellence by gender in the year 2013. Based on the overview of project applications to the Slovenian Research Agency's calls for basic, applicative and postdoctoral projects in the year 2013 and on the analysis of scientific excellence, investigation of professional performance in 2013 and the overview of the annual evaluation/assessment of researchers (these analyses were given in the previous report for the period January - April 2014) the synthesis of all these data was made. This synthesis of gender-based organizational assessments shows that budgeting is closely connected with scientific excellence and consequently with professional performance of researchers. The annual assessment of their work was carried out by heads of laboratories and consists of the assessment of their scientific performance, i.e. research accomplishments and assessment of their soft skills. The synthesis of all these data shows, as regards gender, men made more applications for basic projects than women, who on the other side made more applications for applicative projects than men. In the second phase of the selection procedure, men were more successful than women in regard to basic projects. On the other hand, women were more successful than men in applicative and postdoctoral project proposals. Regarding the final success rate women were more successful in all three categories (basic, applicative, postdoctoral projects) but the financial outcome was in favour of men in receiving funding for basic projects, however women received all funding (100 %) in applicative projects and in postdoctoral projects percentage of received funding was equally distributed among men (50%) and women (50 %).
b) Human Resources Management and gender
The analysis of scientific excellence and the overview of the annual evaluation/assessment of researchers shows that budgeting is closely connected with scientific excellence and consequently with professional performance of researchers (of Grades A and B). The annual assessment of their work has been carried out by heads of laboratories and consists of the assessment of their scientific performance/research accomplishments and of the assessment of their soft skills. Data on the yearly assessment of researchers show that researchers of all grades are assessed very high - the great majority was assessed between very good and excellent in the field of scientific performance/research accomplishments and also in the field of soft skills. Regarding the data on the number of employees (researchers in Grades A, B, C) and their comparison for the period from 2010 to 2013 the percentage of women researchers has been higher each year and the percentage of men researchers in all grades has been lower. As soon as we get the results of project applications to the Slovenian Research Agency's calls for basic, applicative and postdoctoral projects in the year 2013, we will be able to make a synthesis including these data. In the investigation of professional performance in 2013, data on overview of researchers on education abroad regarding gender and duration, overview of vertical promotion and overview of the period from the dissertation defense until the election to the scientific titles senior research associate /senior specialist advisor are included (besides the analysis of scientific excellence and the overview of the annual evaluation/assessment of researchers). All these data for the 2013 were compared with data for 2011 and 2012. The synthesis shows that the number of researchers on education abroad (regarding gender and duration) and the number of vertical promotion are lower in 2013 in comparison to previous two years, although the number of researchers in the top two levels (grades A and B) and early stage researchers (grade C) in 2013 has rised in 2013 in comparison to previous two years. Data on the period from the dissertation defense until the election to the scientific titles senior research associate/senior specialist advisor stayed the same in 2013 as in previous two years: the average period for women’s promotion is 10 years and the average for men’s promotion is 9.6 years.
Two new interviews about science, science career and the compatibility of family life and career were carried out: the interview with the researcher (senior research associate) in the Laboratory for analitical chemistry and the interview with the researcher in the Laboratory for Molecular Biology and Nanobiotechnology. From all Interviews with women at higher positions it can be concluded (based on contents of all performed interviews) that reconciliation of scientific career and family life is possible and in their cases successful, but sometimes difficult and requires support from a partner/family. All interviews are published in our Genis Lab webcorner (only in Slovenian language): http://www.ki.si/index.php?id=genis.
A review on data of Performance evaluation: Women underrepresented in senior posts has been made. It showed that the difference between the number of researchers (female and male) in the highest grade (Grade A) up to June 30th 2014 is not very big. The number of women in higher ranks is lower because the number of all female researchers is lower in comparison with the number of male researchers. Women and men have the same conditions and opportunities for advancement to a higher rank. NIC estimates there is no glass ceiling at NIC Slovenia. A review at what age men and women reach higher title showed that the age is almost the same in case of female and male researchers.
An investigation on the fluctuation of employees by titles, namely the gender analysis of dismissed employees was made for our researchers in Grades A, B and C. NIC collected data on arrivals and departures of our employees to and from NIC Slovenia in the year 2013 and data until July 31st 2014. Comparing the results of the first half of this year and the results of the year 2013, there were more arrivals and also departures in the year 2013 than in the year 2014. Comparing these data with data for previous years, we can conclude that arrivals to NIC Slovenia in 2013 were in the biggest favour of women among PhD students (female: 7, male: 2). The result in this grade for the year 2014 cannot be predicted at the moment, because the number of new PhD students will be known in autumn with the beginning of the new study year (2014/2015). Last year was also in favour in women in grades Technician and Research associate. The number of departures of employees in the year 2013 was lower in comparison to previous years (2011, 2012) and have been in all examined years due to expiry of the contract of employment for a specified period (fixed-term contracts) and departures among senior positions were due to retirements of those researchers.
c) Organizational Culture and Stereotypes
On the activity “Monitoring perceptions about active fatherhood” and perception how this is accepted at higher managerial levels, an interview with the researcher (senior research associate) in the Laboratory for polymer chemistry and technology about science, science career and the reconciliation of family life and career was carried out (the interview is published at: http://www.ki.si/index.php?id=genis). Based on all interviews carried out during the project and also on collected data on taking paternity leave in 2013, NIC Slovenia accepts the image of active fatherhood very well, since all newly-fathers at our institute took a paternity leave in the year 2013 and paternity leave is accepted as “normal” among our male researchers. Active fatherhood is also well accepted at higher managerial levels. It seems men’s careers and their scientific efficiency and excellence don't suffer in this respect. It can be concluded that NIC Slovenia is a family-friendly and unbiased working environment. NIC Slovenia’s Graphic campaign on stereotypes has been disseminated inside and outside NIC Slovenia with aims to encourage and spread awareness of the issues concerning gender in science and to encourage women in/for their scientific careers. On-going dissemination in terms of promoting awareness of the equality of women in science and increasing their role/importance has been performed the whole time of the project’s duration and its aim is to make a point of improvement of the image and capacity of NIC Slovenia as an institution that actively promotes gender equality and an inclusive working environment. NIC also collaborated with the representative in charge for the Occupational Safety and Health who is also a Staff union representative at the preparation (July – September 2014) of the Survey among employees on the satisfaction at the workplace.
Questions are similar to those in the previous survey in 2012, but since NIC Slovenia has formed and adopted the Policy on preventing violence, torture and harassment in the workplace in 2013, this topic has been included in the questionnaire which was distributed among all employees of NIC Slovenia at the end of July. The purpose of this repeated survey and especially of the additional part of questionnaire is to find out if employees find their work environment as safe, healthy and supportive and if they have been treated with respect, fairness and sensitivity. Opinion of employees could also confirm or reject if the work on considering improvement of informal and formal procedures for conflict prevention, mediation and resolution has been successful and established at the internal level. Data from both surveys (2012 and 2014) have been compared and could be used in the future (after the conclusion of Genis Lab project) to detect the trends and services that are most relevant / requested by male and female staff.
In October a Workshop on soft skills was organized (October 1st and 2nd 2014). The tool used is the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI), i.e. a self-assessment tool that helps people understand what gives them a sense of self-worth and what’s important to them when relating with others. Before attending the workshop every participant filled out the survey. Presentation of soft skills, their role and importance (SDI methodology) has been made, since effective relationships are essential to business success. In order to gain new knowledge and skills on developing soft skills, social dialogue and interpersonal relations among co-workers which are essential for achieving good collaboration and successful working results, our work consisted of workshop and discussions in groups. Aims of the workshop were to understand the importance of soft skills and their development, better interpersonal relations which are needed for successful collaboration among co-workers in performing their work and for delivering results. With this experience understanding and improvement of teamwork, services, relationships, conflict management, the increase of trust and the decrease of conflict have been achieved. This workshop was organized for all employees in the General Sector and it was very well accepted among participants. Therefore, a recommendation to the management would be to organize this kind of workshops also in the future for other employees of the Institute.
Dimensions GB, HRM, OCS
Before the end of the Genis Lab project the Genis Lab Ex-post Gender Survey was formed and performed among NIC Slovenia's employees (October – November 2014). The results represent together with the initial Genis Lab Gender Survey (March 2011) an important component of qualitative gender analysis of career, resource allocation and organizational culture. According to the Gender Survey 2011, 65% of respondents were not sure about the effectiveness of the initiatives to promote gender equality undertaken so far at NIC Slovenia. This was a confirmation that Genis Lab was timely initiative that could address some needs in this regard. In the Ex-post Gender Survey, employees were asked about their opinion if Genis Lab project changed the way in which gender equality is dealt with at NIC Slovenia – 49% of female and 45% of male respondents think that Genis Lab project had some effect on dealing with gender equality at the Institute. Concerning employees being acquainted with gender issues, the survey results show some progress in comparison to the survey 2011. When asked about Genis Lab project and its activities at NIC, respondents showed relatively great extent of acquaintance with that. 61% of women and 64% of men said to be aware of the campaign on women in science that was realized at NIC Slovenia. The comparison of their results will be of valuable assistance in further aspiration for implementation of gender equality at NIC Slovenia.
Potential Impact:
Genis Lab potential impact is strongly related to its main output and results. The definition of a systemic approach, suitable to be replicated, adapted and used in organisations implementing scientific research at European level different from the ones directly involved in Genis Lab for the promotion of organizational change in the view of achieving greater gender equality in science and in supporting women in science careers goes in the direction of a multiplier effect deriving from the adoption of the Genis Lab approach. In the occasion of several EU level events (EU Gender Summit, Genport stakeholders meeting, EU DG Research project coordinator and evaluator meeting) the Genis Lab approach has been discussed and a process of knowledge sharing has been activated in networks including potential users. The publication and distribution of Achieving gender balance at the top of scientific research: guidelines and tools for institutional change (Genova Angela, De Micheli Barbara, Zucco Flavia, Grasso Claudia, Magri Benedetta, (2014). Genis Lab project. Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, Rome), available on project web side in all English, Italian, Spanish, Slovenian, Swedish, German and Serbian, clearly goes in this direction and aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on how to sustain women carrers in science through institutional change processes.
It is to be noted that the potential impact of the Genis Lab approach is suitable to be extended from institutional change initiatives aiming at promoting greater gender balance in scientific research to institutional change processes activated in order to promote the adoption of a Responsible Research and Innovation approach. The participatory transformative approach, the organisational analysis means and tools as well as the systemic approach implemented are suitable to be adapted not only to different types of organisations involved in scientific research but also to organisational changes processes including greater number of dimensions that merely the gender perspective.
A strong potential impact, in terms of extended usability outside the Genis Lab community, can be recognised also to the tailored approaches and tools, resulting from the adaptation to the specific characteristics of organisations implementing scientific research of approaches and tools successfully used in other contexts as means for organisational assessment and/or transformative change. The “Genis Lab” tested versions of the approaches and tools used for organisational analysis and contrast of gender stereotypes the Participatory Gender Audit and of the Gender Budgeting are suitable to be implement as tailored tools not necessarly in the framework of the systemic approach. In the case of Gender Budgeting it is to be said that it is arising interest in the scientific community and other DG Research funded projects (FESTA; TRIGGER) are requesting information and support to implement it in the framework of their initiatives. The same can be said for the analysis of the interaction between gender and science stereotypes implemented in the framework of the project which has be presented in several conferences and has been used to generate a training module for the EUN Academy - STEM course for science educators.
If the impact of the first two types of results is suitable to have a trasnational dimension, the impact of the structural change processes started in each of the six scientific organisations involved in Genis Lab is more linked to the long terms effects of the pathway started in the framework and with the ressources of the project. As presented in the section above, each Tailored Action Plans, has lead to the achievement of concrete results varying from one organisation to the other. Despite the variability of Tailored Action Plans, which reflect the differences in the conditions of depart as well as in the level of commitment in partners’ organisations, in all contexts the process of change has been activated with the immediate result of building a baseline of data on the gender dimension of each organisation, defining a set of actions aimed at promoting women careers via a progressive institutional change, preparing a team of gender and institutional change experts. In all organisations the conditions have been placed to continue the process and to monitor its effects in a longer period than the project life cycle. Part of these conditions are the papers and documents issued at organisational level as part of a raising awareness process of change.
The potential impact of the fifth type of results is wider than the European Community and potentially addresses the Scientific International Community. Papers on gender and science stereotypes, how to overcome cultural resistances to change, and how to redefine excellence in science contribute to an ongoing debate taking place in the international community and concenrning the new paradigm of sicientific research, the role of scientists, the process of innovation and change that sees new competences emerging and the reflection on how the gender perspective has an impact on all these dimensions. International context as the EU gender Summit have been the occasion to share these papers and to start to build a platform and a critical mass of interestd stakeholders discussing them.
For what concerns the dissemination and exploitation activities, the three objectives of GENIS LAB were:
- to raise relevant stakeholders awareness on the need/possibility of structural organisational changes in scientific organisations in order to contrast the under representation of women in research institutes and universities;
- to create cooperative environments supporting structural changes in organisations;
- to disseminate intermediate and final project outputs, in the European Scientific Community.
With reference to the first objective, different dissemination tools have been designed, in order to raise awareness on relevant stakeholders.
Within the first six months of the project, the project consortium, represented mainly by IPF (WP6 leader) and FGB has launched a dedicated website. The GENIS LAB website presents the project aims, partners, activities and tools. It has a restricted access blog were partners interact, a news section, and collects all the dissemination tools. Moreover, a “library” session is available in the website, where participants and interested people can find documents, articles and information on gender in science, and updates on project activities.
Furthermore, a project brochure has been created, and disseminated in project and external events linked to women and science, e.g. European Gender Summit, EPWS Meetings, in order to reach the highest possible coverage of stakeholders.
As foreseen in the project, a periodic newsletter has been issued every six months. The newsletter is a web-tool aimed to inform stakeholders and partner institutions on project activities and on how and what Europe is actually carrying out in the promotion of gender equality in science. In the newsletters we launched the “Become a Genis Lab ambassador” campaign to encourage partners to present and promote the GENIS LAB project within their activities and networks using the dissemination tools. The 7 newsletters published in the framework of the project included almost the same structure, namely: a double interview with actors of the Genis Lab team, a presentation of a GENIS LAB tool, networking opportunities, a focus on a specific number in relation to a news or a story related to women and science (e.g. 15, which is the number of female winners of the Nobel Prize in scientific fields), a presentation of a partner and of Genis Lab member of the staff.
Furthermore, the GENIS LAB team led by FGB designed and constantly updated a Facebook page available at: https://www.facebook.com/GenisLab and a LinkedIn page available at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Genis-Lab-5171652
The useful tools for dissemination activities and exploitation of results, and more specifically for what concerns the awareness campaign, are contained in the “Guidelines for the gender awareness campaign” drafted by FGB and ADS. The guidelines present several communication instruments in order to provide scientific partners with a toolkit that allows them to implement a local awareness campaign.
The tools are:
- Graphic campaign: to address stereotypes that regard women’s productivity at work. It uses a motto, irony, visual perception to act at an unconscious and deep level.
- Diversity management course: to show that HRM is the key to excellence. It stresses the need for managers to achieve expected results and gain advantage over competitors thanks to a deep understanding of their external environments and a capacity to optimize internal staff’s talent.
- Management skill sharing: to create a formal moment of skill sharing among management and staff to help avoiding prejudice on women’s attitude towards power and responsibilities.
- Video clip, let’s have fun: to create a video clip to vehiculate messages against stereotypes by subverting a famous song.
Re-Act – participative laboratory: to point out negative stereotypes, name and comment them through discussions facilitated by experts in workshops and by using theatrical tools.
With reference to the second objective, all GENIS LAB scientific partners have organized a launching conference between March and April 2011, involving their top management and internal staff, in order to present GENIS LAB objectives and expected results, and commit all the organization to the project activities. The launching conferences were beneficial to create a cooperative and collaborative environment within the scientific organizations’ staff, which helped the smooth implementation of the Participative Gender Audits and for the rest of project activities.
Also the partners’ meeting, including Transnational conference and Thematic meetings were useful to increase the commitment of partners, especially the hosting ones. The following meetings took place:
• Transnational Conference in Madrid (September 2011). In particular, the second day of the Madrid Conference saw the participation of Vice President of CSIC and the director of ICTP/CSIC, with a view to increase awareness of the top management on the need of structural change in scientific organizations within ICTP/CSIC.
• First Thematic Workshop in Belgrade (July 2012). Among others, Angela Genova (FGB) introduced the concept of “Gender Budgeting” to the partners. She explained why an organization should do “gender budgeting”, e.g. to get inside the control room, and she described how the gender budgeting process concretely works. Flavia Zucco (ADS) introduced activities on the awareness campaign on stereotypes, through a presentation titled: “Rise and fall(?) of women stereotypes in science”. After her presentation, she proposed as one of the main elements for the upcoming awareness campaign on stereotypes to launch the “Theatre of the Oppressed” experience in the scientific organizations partners of the project.
• 2nd Thematic Workshop in Turin (September 2012). Within the workshop, each technical partner described the methodology to be applied within the TAPs for their own field of competence. Then, scientific and technical partners worked together for the definition of TAPs.. There was also a RE-Act Demonstration Workshop. Mr. Olivier Malcor and Ms. Cinzia Belmonte presented the Re-Act Methodology, adapted to the Genis Lab context. Re-Act consists in learning activities which use theatre techniques and methodology to promote reactions on sensitive issues concerning stereotypes in science.
• 2nd International Conference, Karshamn - Sweden (April 2013). Special guests were: the vice Chancellor of BTH, Dr. Anders Hederstjerna and the University Chancellor, Dr Lars Haikola. On Thursday 18 April 2013, BTH academics presented the situation of gender equality in Sweden; they also presented the work of BTH in “Gender Research as Knowledge Resource in Technology and Engineering”, the gender equality policies of BTH and the work of BTH on gender budgeting and space allocation. Then, all scientific partners presented their TAPs, describing in particular the process leading to its definition and the main challenges for their implementation. There was also a session on dissemination activities of Genis Lab.
• 3rd Transnational Conference, Ljubljana - Slovenia (November 2013). NIC’s staff presented figures on the presence of women in research organizations in Slovenia, the graphic campaign planned and carried out by the Institute. FGB presented the project activities for the last year of the project, together with the time plan. FGB also reviewed the scientific partners’ work on gender budgeting. ITC ILO focused on indicators in monitoring TAP’s implementation. Then, scientific partners presented the results of the first year of their TAPs’ implementation. The final session of the day was dedicated to dissemination and was held by FGB: the Facebook page and LinkedIn group were displayed, as well as the fourth newsletter. On Friday 26 November 2013, ADS gave a training session for scientific partners focused on excellence in science.
• Partners’ Meeting, Dresden (June 2014). The main objectives of this meeting were: to share among scientific partners the main achievements in the implementation of the TAPs (quantitative and qualitative data) and to define the last steps of dissemination strategy: how to disseminate effectively Genis Lab’s results, how to organize the final Conference.
With reference to the third objective, first of all it is worth mentioning the main two dissemination outputs of the project, namely the Final International Conference and the production of the guidelines of efficient gender management tools tailored for scientific institution
• Final International Conference, Dresden, 12th December 2014.
On 12th December 2014, the final international conference of the GENIS LAB project took place in Dresden.
The conference aimed at exploring the state of the art in the field of gender equality in research in Europe, focusing on the European Commission strategy on Gender Equality in research in FP7 and H2020 and on the new challenges and resources for tackling the issue. The conference started with a welcome by Brigitte Voit and by Eva-Maria Strange, The Saxon State Ministry for Higer Education, Research and Art. In the first session, several speakers from the academic and research field talked about the Gender Equality Policies in Public Research (Anke Lipinsky, GESIS, Center of excellence Women and Science) and Integer project (Anne Pépin, senior researcher at CNRS, specialist nanotechnology, scientific advisor at the “Mission pour la place des femmes au CNRS” since 2006). A second session was devoted to the discussion on the new role that women can acquire in research and on what are the tools, method and resources for reaching this objective. All the afternoon session has been devoted to the presentation of the GENIS lab results. All the partners had the possibility to present the objectives, methodology and outputs reached with the implementation of their own TAP. A final round table has been useful for exchanging experiences among the partners of the projects. The scientific partners presented a poster summarizing the methodology and the results of their activities. The European conference was addressed also to indirect beneficiaries – such as policy makers at local, national and European levels. 73 participants attended the conference, and a live tweeting of the Conference was implemented with the hashtag #GenisLab.
• Guidelines of efficient gender management tools tailored for scientific institution
The final guidelines of the project were presented to the final international conference in Dresden. The title of the document is: “Achieving gender balance at the top of scientific research – guidelines and tools for institutional change”. The guidelines offer an overview on the approach and describe the tools applied during the four years of the GENIS LAB project, with the wish they might be useful to start up and implement institutional change processes in similar organisations, either with the aim of promoting gender equality but also in view of fostering structural changes for Responsible Research and Innovation. They have been developed by the three technical partners of the project: Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini (coordinator of the project); Associazione Donne e Scienza (Italian women in science organizations); International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization (Gender Unit), UN Agency. In particular, the authors are: Genova Angela, De Micheli Barbara, Zucco Flavia, Grasso Claudia, Magri Benedetta. The final guidelines were written and published in English, and they were then translated in the six languages of the project, namely: Italian, Serbian, Slovenian, Swedish, Spanish, German. The guidelines are downloadable from the GENIS LAB project website.
GENIS LAB has been presented by technical partners (FGB, ADS and ITC ILO) in several international meetings related to the link between women and science, listed here below:
2011
-Poster presentation and participation at the first European Gender Summit by Barbara De Micheli and Manuelita Mancini (FGB) that networked key players from all sectors to initiate the much-needed changes in the culture of research and innovation. These joint discussions produced the first ever collective agreement on policy development on gender for innovation, the policy manifesto on “Integrated Action on the Gender Dimension in Research”. The conference was organized within the GENSET project in Brussels 8-9th of November 2011.
2012
-Lecture on the Genis Lab project and its methodological tools “Gender budgeting in scientific organizations: reframing the gender equality tool”, made by FGB researcher on the project, Dr. Angela Genova, at the IAFFE (International Association for Feminist Economics) Annual Conference, Barcelona June 27-29 2012;
-The project brochure was distributed at the 8th European Feminist Research Conference, The Politics of Location Revisited: Gender@2012 - Budapest, Hungary on May 17-20, an event organized by the Central European University, Department of Gender Studies and ATGENDER;
-Poster presentation and participation of Barbara De Micheli and Barbara Kenny (FGB) at the European Conference on Gender and Innovation - Maximising Innovation Potential Through Diversity in Research Organisations, 19th-20th March 2012, Stuttgart, Germany.
-Flavia Zucco from Associazione Donne e Scienza presented Genis Lab to the European Parliament during the “Towards a Gender Balanced Science Culture to Foster Innovation” meeting organized by the EPWS in January 2012 in Brussels;
-FGB, ADS and ITC ILO participated, to the Second European Gender Summit held at the European Parliament in Brussels, On November 29-30, 2012.
-ILO informed about Genis Lab activities in Brussels, on 29-30 November 2012 – “Developing Systematic Implementation Strategy to Advance EU Policy on Gender Equality in Science, as part of HORIZON 2020, European Research Area and Innovation Union”.
2013
-FGB and ADS presented Genis Lab project at the Padova University, in occasion of the opening event of the Gendertime project, on June 12, 2013;
-ADS presented Genis Lab project at the Naples University , in occasion of the launch of the new European project Genovate It’s Time For Gender Action In Research, on June 25, 2013;
-ADS gave a lecture on “Why promote women in science” at the University La Sapienza of Rome on October 7, 2013. The lecturer was Dr. Flavia Zucco;
-ADS promoted Genis Lab with a poster at the conference “Structural Changes Encouraging Gender Equality in Scientific Institutions” held in Vilnius on November 21-22, 2013;
-FGB and ILO informed about Genis Lab activities in Brussels, on 2 December 2013 “Gender Workshop. On the way to the top: providing equal opportunities for men and women in science and technology” organized by the European Research Council
2014
-On 24 and 25 March 2014, Barbara De Micheli and Flavia Zucco attended to the "Stages - Structural Transformation to Achieve Gender Equality in Science” FP7 project meeting in Brussels;
-on 30 June 2014, Barbara De Micheli presented GENIS LAB intermediate results to the EU Gender Summit
-on 4 September 2014, Angela Genova participated to the 8th European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education Participation and presented the gender budgeting metholodogy;
-on 11 September 2014, Barbara De Micheli participated to Workshop on evaluation of Gender Equality Plans organized in Brussels.
-production of articles related to the project published on the “inGenere” web magazine (www.ingenere.it).
-on April 2014, publication of the review “Assessing excellence” by Flavia Zucco retrievable online
-on 26-28 August 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab project by Flavia Zucco in the Gender issue session CMD25 - JMC14 see http://www.sfpnet.fr/index.php?page=tpage&id=21 in Paris;
-on 12 September 2014, reporting about GENIS Lab’s activities by Claudia Grasso at the internal meeting of ADS;
-on 20-21 November 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab by Flavia Zucco during the international conference RRI CNR “Science, Innovation and Society: achieving Responsible Research and Innovation”
-updating of GENIS Lab project in the internal newsletter “Gender Info” of the ITC-ILO;
-presentation of GENIS Lab project to the CERN top management and HR management;
-presentation of GENIS Lab project and results to INFN top management and staff in Frascati;
-on 1 January – 30 June 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in “Training support on gender responsive budgeting implementation in Haiti (year 2014)” in Port-au-Prince, Haiti;
-on 18 February 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in Advisory mission to INFN;
-on 31 March – 2 April, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in “Lear4Dev joint learning journey and expert meeting on EU resource package on gender mainstreaming in development cooperation” in Brussels;
-on 5-9 May 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in Advisory mission to Dresden;
-on 3-5 September 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in “Gender and employment policy course” in Turin;
-on 9-12 September 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in “Global workshop on sectoral experiences in gender-responsive planning and budgeting: increasing accountability in financing for gender equality” in Turin;
-on 20 November 2014 Barbara De Micheli presented Genis Lab in the World Café How to foster Institutional Changes for Responsible Research and Innovation? In the framework odf the SIS-RRI conference in Rome http://www.sis-rri-conference.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/programma-def_13112014.pdf;
-on 11-14 November 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in “Training for the NTT of the National Women's Employment Action Plan” in Ankara.
Here follows a summary of the dissemination activities carried on by each scientific partner. The activities implemented respond to the three objectives of WP6 by means of the above tools:
IPF - Germany
-The EO webpage is updated, an on-line feedback system and guidelines for parental leave are available.
-IPF-Intern is a three-month IPF-newsletter distributed among several partners and national/international networks of the IPF.
-Genis Lab project is publicized in the main building of IPF and through its Yearly Report.
-Guidance on parental leave on EO website (IPF intranet) together with the useful links on “Active fatherhood” with a special page for PhD students with children are already in place.
-Presentation of GENIS Lab in the frame of the Celebration of 20th Anniversary of Leibniz Association (WGL)
-On April 2014, presentation of the GENIS Lab poster in the Annual Reception of the IPF.
-Publication on the Annual Report of the IPF (www.ipfdresden.de/publications) of the activities carried out with GENIS Lab.
-On March and December 2014, report about the activities of GENIS Lab and “berufundfamilie” to the Managing Meeting of the IPF;
-On 13 October 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab in the Meetings of the Dresden EOs of the research and academia institutions;
-On November and December 2014, report about the activities of GENIS Lab to the Scientific Board of the IPF and to the General Meeting of the IPF;
-Organization by the IPF-EO Dr. Victoria Albrecht of an information event on GENIS Lab and “berufundfamilie” for manager positions at the IPF;
-Presentation by the IPF-EO Dr. Victoria Albrecht of the GENIS Lab activities during the meetings of the workforce (“Betriebsversammlung”) about news concerning paternity / parental benefits and GENIS Lab;
-Agreement with the Network “KinderMobil Familienhilfe- und Kinderbetreuungsverein” concerning the disposition of emergency assistance for children for unpredictable situations. This agreement was widely disseminated through the EO website (IPF Intranet) as well as in the meeting of the workforce. The telephone number for emergencies is available on the EO website as well as in the IPF-telephone index.
ICTP/CSIC – Spain
-The implementation of the forum in the website.
-The organization of a cycle of seminars from June 2013 to May 2014. The seminars took place in the ICTP and the participation was quite good. In each meeting a woman from the academic and scientific filed was invited. All speakers divided their talk in two parts, the first part was devoted to the careers and personal experiences. The second part was devoted more on the scientific works. Among others:
• 11 February 2014 with Consuelo del Cañizo (ex-director of the L’OREAL Foundation with title “Ciencia y Cosmética” “science and cosmetics”)
• 06 April 2014 with Rosa Menendez (Researcher) “Revolución científica y tecnológica en los materiales de carbon” “Scientific and technology revolution in carbon materials”
• 8 May 2014 with Dr. Concepció Rovira Angulo (Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Barcelona CSIC).
-Publication of the relevant information of the GENIS Lab Project in the organization website and diffusion of posters, flyers and save the date into the various institutes of the CSI and beyond. The promotion of the GENIS Lab Final Conference has been made also through the ICTP newsletter. Moreover, the association Mujeres y Ciencia has been involved in the dissemination activity tanks to the support given through its broadcast and web page.
INFN – Italy
INFN realized the following objectives:
-In March 2013 the INFN built its internal website of Genis Lab project;
-INFN made a presentation of Genis Lab during Genovate Seminar on June 25, 2013 in Naples;
-Seminar “Why to promote women in science” was organized with technical partner ADS on October 7, 2013;
-INFN made a presentation of Genis Lab project to CNF on October 16, 2013 in Naples;
-it organized a seminar about raising awareness on the issue of skills held on November 27, 2013 in INFN’s Trieste section;
-it organized a Re-ACT play on December 10, 2013 in Frascati. 30 participants attended;
-on 25th February 2014, organization of a training course titled: “Change Management - The Competency Model and Organizational Change Management”, in Frascati (RM) with Sudeshna Datta, Head of HR Diversity at CERN Ombdus and expert for the CCM, where both top management and employees were involved. 20 participants attended the course (5 GENIS Lab team members and 15 INFN employees).
-on 7-8 May 2014, a series of lectures hosted in Pisa on the subject: "Gender and science: an open issue", organized in the framework of promoting the change of the organizational culture and solution of the gender stereotypes objectives of the GENIS LAB TAP, and in close collaboration with the Donne e Scienza organization. The lectures focused, among others, on: a historical overview of women in academia in Italy (Prof. Paola Govoni, Univ. of Bologna); teaching of science, meritocracy and school choices (Prof. Patrizia Colella, Donne e Scienza);
-at the beginning of May has been organized a series of interviews with senior staff about technical competencies of the personnel in the institute and core values,
-online survey about technical competencies of two pilot structures of the INFN (National Laboratories of Frascati and INFN Trieste), which has been completed by 158 employees of both structures (36% of LNF and 67% of Trieste employees).
-on 10th July 2014, presentation of the INFN Competency Model by Oretta Di Carlo at the training course entitled “Measurement Systems and Performance Evaluation”, at the National Gran Sasso Laboratories which was attended by employees engaged in the Human Resources Management area throughout the INFN sites.
-on 31st October 2014, presentation of INFN Competency Model and its application on education and training by Sara Arnone at the National Training Committee meeting at INFN Perugia.
-on 12-14 November 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab activities by Maria Luigia Paciello during a convention organized by Donne e Scienza titled “Science, gender and society: where do we stand? Gender perspectives into a science that evolves” in Trento.
-on 4-5 December 2014, organization of training course titled: “Gender balance: the development and management of human resources through the promotion of gender equity” in Frascati.
BTH – Sweden
- the HR director has decided to include the Genis Lab HRM TAP in the ordinary development work at BTH;
- the introduction of the BTH score card is also an instrument for dissemination within the whole organization;
- Genis Lab Report From Blekinge Institute Of Technology, Sweden / Gender Budgeting, Human Resources, Organisational Culture - Development Of Methods;
- BTH Equality Strategy 2104 – 2016 Equal Rights and Possibilities (to be translated to English);
- report from the R&D&I project “A norm-critical game culture”;
- BTH score card (the new version after reorganisation of the whole university to be finalized);
- to be published the book titled Change @Campus Karlshamn / OUR STORY- CULTURE, NORMS and GENDER at Blekinge Institute of Technology.
NIC – Slovenia
- - Graphic campaign on stereotypes: four campaigns were presented and launched on November 25-26, 2013 at the Genis Lab Transnational Conference in Ljubljana.
- -A promotional video was published on the Youtube channel and spread via Facebook and LinkedIn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvwvMyZpqFE
- -A silicone wristband for gender awareness campaign was also produced.
- -It was carried out the Institute’s open day on October, 2012, attended by 20 primary school children. The NIC’s open day took place also on October 8-9, 2013. In this occasion, participants were around 300 children from elementary and high schools and visitors from the NIC’s industrial partners.
- -Genis Lab corner on the NIC Slovenia’s website has been continuously updated.
- - on 15 January 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab during the opening event of the project on balancing power relations between men and women, conducted by the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities of the Republic of Slovenia and co-financed by the Norwegian Financial Mechanism Programme 2009-2014, entitled“Gender Equality Pays Off!”;
- -on 7th march 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab project during the conference organized by the Slovenian Commission for Women in Science on the occasion of the upcoming International Women's Day;
- -on 7-8 October 2014, organization of NIC Slovenia's open day attended by 328 children from Slovenian elementary and high schools.
- -on 13-14 November 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab project during a conference organized by the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities of the Republic of Slovenia and the Women’s Lobby of Slovenia and co-financed by the Norwegian Financial Mechanism Programme 2009-2014, entitled “Women 20 years after Beijing”;
- -on December, distribution of GENIS Lab USB Key.
The GENIS LAB project aimed to implement structural changes in a group of selected scientific organisations in order to overcome the factors that limit the participation of women in research. The project focused on the creation of a synergy among scientific partners promoting common actions and best practices exchange in order to defeat gender discrimination, and technical partners providing innovative tools and methodologies for gender mainstreaming in science. The six scientific partners are: ICTP/CSIC - Spanish Superior Council for Scientific Research/Institute for Polymer Science and Technology, Spain; IPF - Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden, Germany; FTM UB - Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy, University of Belgrade, Serbia; NIC - National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia; INFN - National Institute for Nuclear Physics, Italy; BTH - Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden. The three technical partners are: FGB - Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, Italy (project coordinator); ITC/ILO - International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization, UN Agency, International; ADS – Italian women in science organization, Italy. GENIS LAB operated on three levels: the organisational level (identification of management tools and definition of self tailored action plans aimed to promote internal structural changes); the social/environmental level (promotion of a communication and awareness campaign aimed at fighting gender in science stereotypes); the trans - national European level(promotion of networking/mutual learning among involved scientific organisation to support the exchange of experiences, practices, efficient management tools.
The definition of Tailored Action Plans, has been structured around three organisational dimensions, interacting together: 1) Organizational culture and stereotypes, focused on identifying gender stereotypes undermining scientific organisation, pointing out the negative inter-correlation between gender and science stereotypes and giving evidence on how these stereotypes influence organisational resistance to change; 2) HRM policies and practices, resulted in the identification and implementation of a set of policies and practices tailored to organizational challenges, as emerged from the gender assessment phase. 3) Financial dimensions and gender budgeting, focused on how financial choices reflect the dominating culture with related power relationships, as power is created through the concentration of resources. At the end of the 4 year process, some general conclusions have been included in the “Achieving gender balance on the top of scientific research – guidelines and tools for institutional change” available on project web site. Genis Lab has shown that it is very important to start the change/innovation process from the creation of a baseline in order to be able to monitor developments concerning change and gender equality. Involving organizations since the beginning in creating the base line is already part of the process of change. It is also important to recognize that scientific research institutions can rarely count on internal change management or sociological capacities. Since the outset, it should be clear that internal project teams need to be established with full and continued management support, and specific capacity development actions should be foreseen in support of internal change agents. All organizational change initiatives face resistance, and this is expressed in multiple ways. In the case of Genis Lab, many partners found it difficult to accept that gender disparities may be related to the negative interplay between gender and science stereotypes. Finding internal and external alliances with the right stakeholders, planning negotiating steps and procedures, engaging and building on common interests of different groups within the organization are all crucial elements for success. Monitoring and evaluation indicators also are of the utmost importance.
Project Context and Objectives:
In the past two decades, various initiatives have been developed at European level to promote greater gender equality in research. These initiatives were mainly focusing on empowering women instead of acting on the organizational context. However, the results have been extremely limited and have not overcome discriminatory structural and cultural barriers. Statistics show that women are still under represented in the top of scientific careers. Moving from the convincement that systemic interventions within the organisations implementing scientific research are needed in order to overcome the under-representation of women in science GENIS LAB main idea has been to define and implement a strategy based on the collaboration among scientific partners (research centres and universities) and technical partners in the identification of actions to promote organisational and cultural change in order to defeat gender discrimination. In Genis Lab, scientific partners present a focus area on nanotechnologies and an already set network; besides, two other STEM areas (physics and ITC) are represented in order to provide a comparative assessment as well as best practices. Despite their different contexts, influenced by country specific legal and cultural dimensions, they all shared since the beginning an interest, at least at the level of key actors promoting the project, in investigating how to promote structural change to support women careers in science. Technical partners, on their side, shared a common background of gender expertise and complementary competences when it comes to organisational change dimensions: FGB is competent for gender budgeting; ADS is competent for organisational culture and stereotypes; ITC-ILO is competent for Participatory Gender Audit and Human Resources Management policies and practices.
In this framework Genis Lab’s main objectives were:
- to improve women researchers’ working conditions;
- to improve women researchers’ career opportunities in research organisations;
- to improve the organisation’s environment and workplace, acting on the organisational culture’s pattern;
- to fight against negative stereotypes within the research organisations, but also in a more wide and general context;
- to contribute to the creation of positive profiles of and for women
In order to achieve these objectives GENIS-LAB operated on three main levels:
- the organisational level via the identification of specific management tools and definition of self tailored action plans aimed to promote internal structural changes;
- the social/environmental level via the promotion of a communication and awareness campaign aimed at fighting against stereotypes and de-constructing the stereotyped relation between women and science;
- the trans - national European level via the promotion of networking/mutual learning among involved scientific organisations to support the exchange of experiences, practices, efficient management tools
In concrete, project implementation moved from the analyses of the state of the art of each organisation from a gender perspective, in order to identify priority areas of actions and to define plans of activities, including a list of objectives to reach at mid and long terms and a list of suitable indicators. Each scientific organisation started its journey towards a greater gender equality from a participatory gender assessment. The methodology adopted to implement this phase was the Participatory Gender Audit (PGA) implemented by ITC ILO, which, over the last 10 years, has been successfully applied by the ILO (The International Labour Organisation is the UN Specialized Agency dedicated to the promotion of social justice in the world of work. Gender equality is a cross-cutting objective of the ILO guiding policy framework, the “Decent Work Agenda”) internally and across a broad range of public sector institutions, employers’ organisations and trade union organisations.
A participatory gender audit is an action-research methodology that helps “mapping” an organisation from a gender equality perspective.
While a traditional audit checks the factual compliance of an organisation to a set of pre-defined rules, the PGA combines the objective observation of facts and data with a more in-depth and qualitative reflection on individual and collective rules, behaviors and beliefs, and their impact on gender equality. For this reason, the team of the PGA is made of “facilitators” rather than “auditors”. Through a process of data collection, direct observation and intense interaction with the staff of an organisation, a “Gender Audit Facilitators’ Team” produces a collectively agreed report that describes the capacity of an organisation to promote and sustain gender equality in its daily operations, as well as the gaps that still need to be filled in. The reasons for gender disparities in organisations are rarely explicit, but more frequently are hidden in the rules, modes of functioning and culture of an organisation. PGA helps improving performance in relation to gender equality. The PGA essentially is a journey of self-reflection that the Gender Audit Team undertakes together with the organisation to assess and transform its social dimension. The PGA by definition is not simply a method to acquire baseline data in an organsation, but the initial step of a change strategy, starting from within. Although it does provide a relatively objective and measurable “picture” of an organisation from a gender perspective, it bases its analytical strength on the knowledge created through individual and collective dialogue with its staff. Organisations are complex realities, and for this reason change towards gender equality cannot be planned in a linear way or simply imposed through policies and top-down action plans. Social change can take big leaps forward, thanks to a new policy or law, and then live moments of stall, or even regression, when the law is not enforced, or top decision-makers change. This is extremely visible in organisations. The PGA explores the multiple formal and informal dimensions that constitute the life of an organisation and invites staff – at all levels – to participate in an iterative and self-reflective process of change of mind-sets, behaviors and, when necessary, rules and policies, to make their organisation a truly good workplace for women and men (“gender-friendly” or even “gender-transformative”). In the framework of Genis Lab the PGA was mostly limited on “Structures” and “Staffing”, with particular focus on project three dimensions: Organizational culture and stereotypes, Human Resource Management policies and practices and Financial dimensions and gender budgeting. These were the key questions raised by technical partners to the staff of scientific organizations during the PGAs.
Genis Lab dimension: Organizational Culture and Stereotypes
- Does the organizational culture challenge or reinforce stereotypes related to gender and science?
- How far does a stereotypical vision of science influence gender inequalities?
- To what extent do these stereotypes have an influence on scientific excellence?
In the context of “post-academic science”, can we think of new, more equitable and efficient criteria for scientific excellence?
Genis Lab dimension: Human Resources Management policies and practices
- To what extent is the organization able to translate its formal commitments to gender equality in its human resource management policies, rules, practices and working arrangements?
- To what extent is the organization able to meet the different work-life conciliation needs of its staff, women and men?
Are there structural obstacles to women’s scientific careers and if so, how can they be tackled?
Genis Lab dimension: Financial dimensions and gender budgeting
- Are there gender differences in the allocation of financial resources?
- If so, are there structural/organizational causes for these differences?
- What are the impacts?
- How does access to financial resources impact access to other resources?
Which of these have an impact on career differentials?
For what concerns the first dimension, the PGA helped giving evidence to the stereotypes affecting science, its statute and its relationship with society; women scientists are specifically troubled by various and more “fitting” stereotypes. One is not being able to elaborate high levels of abstraction, due to the prevalence of emotional aspects (feelings) in their reasoning. The second one is that they cannot fully cope with the mission of science, which asks full-time engagement. The family burden is perceived as a hard obstacle to overcome if total devotion to research is the main assumption. The impact of gender stereotypes, activated by sex categorization in these social relations, is sufficient to create gender inequality in work’s outcomes. In addition to this aspect, biased bureaucratic practices (lack of information and transparency, selection criteria and so on) are activated.Gender stereotypes in science go hand in hand with “scientific culture stereotypes”. This results as ineffective in order to change stereotypes, unless the traditional ways of conceiving work in science change. In this sense, the pattern of such a culture in the different organizational structures has to be analyzed in detail.
Four points of reference emerged during the initial phase of the project, which are transversal to different organisations: the first one is the existence of a specific type of discrimination against women in the scientific world. This is demonstrated by the fact that even in EU countries where the number of women holding high institutional and government positions is consistent, the presence of women at the top levels of scientific careers is scarce and equivalent to very low numbers recorded all over Europe. The second point is that all researchers do not easily recognize this discrimination, since they feel that science cannot be affected by this kind of bias. It is in fact considered an outstanding activity, generally accepted as neutral, practiced by highly educated people, continuously confronting themselves at an international level. The third point is that, concerning women and science, we should be aware of the so called “double absence”, meaning that feminism has poorly influenced women scientists in their working life and viceversa their alarming situation in science has not been foreseen in the list of the feminist claims. The fourth point is resistance to change, which has several causes, starting from the general economical situation of research ending to personal and subjective feelings. If we explore the Human Resources Management dimension of intervention, the following stereotypes can be found:
- Women not suitable to management and to leadership;
- Women less available, due to family burden;
- Women’s caring model endorsed also in the work environment;
- Women have biased evaluations in careers and calls.
Among the Gender Budgeting dimension, stereotypes can be found, hidden in different resource areas such as:
- TIME. Women aren’t fully committed;
- SPACE. As women do not consider space as a symbol of power, they don’t claim it and therefore it seems they don’t need it!
- STUDENTS and PhDs. Men use juniors to empower their position, women perceive them as a major responsibility and do not use ad libitum: again they do not need many of them.
- MONEY. managing finances is perceived by women as a major responsibility, thus it is interpreted as poor commitment in found/grant research
Moving in this general framework, Genis Lab Tailored Action Plan (Gender Equality Plans) have been structured around these three main organisational dimensions, interacting together. The first dimension, Organizational culture and stereotypes, focused on identifying gender stereotypes undermining scientific organisation, pointing out the negative inter-correlation between gender stereotypes and science stereotypes and giving evidence on how these stereotypes influence organisational resistance to change. The second dimension, Human Resource Management policies and practices, resulted in the identification and implementation of a set of policies and practices tailored to organizational challenges, as emerged from the gender assessment phase. The third dimension, Financial dimensions and gender budgeting, focused on how financial choices reflect the dominating culture with related power relationships, as power is created through the concentration of resources.
Project Results:
Genis Lab is a support action funded by the European Commission DG Research within the 7th Framework Programme (2011-2014) aiming to promote the implementation of structural changes in a group of selected scientific organizations in order to overcome factors that limit the participation of women in research. As such, Genis Lab produced a set of results at organisation and European level.
A first most relevant result is the definition of a systemic approach for the promotion of organizational change in the view of achieving greater gender equality in science and in supporting women in science careers. This approach is widely described in Achieving gender balance at the top of scientific research: guidelines and tools for institutional change (Genova Angela, De Micheli Barbara, Zucco Flavia, Grasso Claudia, Magri Benedetta, (2014). Genis Lab project. Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, Rome), available on project website in English, Italian, Spanish, Slovenian, Swedish, German and Serbian languages. The publication describes the methodology, the tools and the actions implemented and shows how, while implementing specific actions in each organization involved in the partnership, Genis Lab Consortium constant concern has been, despite challenges deriving from organizational contexts, the attempt to define, maintain and promote a holistic and systemic approach supporting each organization in the definition of comprehensive and Tailored Gender Equality Plans. Furthermore, this approach issuitable to be replicated, adapted and used in organisations implementing scientific research different from the ones directly involved in Genis Lab. Thus, the Guidelines offer an overview of the approach as well as of the tools tested and implemented by Genis Lab six scientific organisations, including an overview on most relevant case studies and achievements.
A second type of results can be seen in the definition of tailored approaches and tools, resulting from the adaptation to the specific characteristics of organisations implementing scientific research of approaches and tools successfully used in other contexts as means for organisational assessment and/or transformative change. This is the case of the approaches and tools used for organisational analysis and contrast of gender stereotypes (see below), for the adaptation of the Participatory Gender Audit (see below) and for the Gender Budgeting (see below).
A third type of results is linked to the activation and implementation of structural change processes in each of the six scientific organisations involved. The structural change process, defined in terms of objectives, actions and result indicators in the framework of Tailored Action Plans, has lead to the achievement of concrete results varying from one organisation to the other. Despite the variability of Tailored Action Plans, which reflect the differences in the starting conditions as well as in the level of commitment in partners’ organisations, the process of change has been activated in all contexts with the immediate result of building a baseline of data on the gender dimension of each organisation, defining a set of actions aimed at promoting women’s careers via a progressive institutional change, preparing a team of gender and institutional change experts. More detailed insights on partners activities can be found in the Tailored Acton Plans, accessible in Genis Lab intranet. Confidentiality reasons covering the sensitiveness of the information contained in the TAPs have motivated partners to prefer a limited dissemination of the complete version of the TAPs.
A fourth type of results is linked to the production, at organisational level, of papers and documents with the aim of disseminating the results achieved and or to promote aware raising on the issue of gender mainstreaming and institutional change. This is the case, for instance, of the BTH, Sweden, and its national dissemination report presenting Genis Lab achievements at organisational level. It is also the case of INFN, Italy, which has produced, as an output of its own TAP, additional Guidelines on non-discriminatory recruitment and management in organisations implementing scientific research. All these documents can be found on project website
A fifth type of results can be seen in the scientific papers issued from the transnational debates within the Genis Lab community on transversal issues such as gender and science stereotypes, how to overcome cultural resistances to change, and how to redefine excellence in science. This is the case of the article Breaking the vicious cycle of gender stereotypes and science, by Flavia Zucco and Francesca Molfino, as well as of the paper “Assessing excellence” by Flavia Zucco, both available on Genis Lab website.
Finally a sixth type of results can be seen in the awareness raising and dissemination activities which aimed, to diffuse the initiatives and the results implemented in the framework of Genis Lab as a way to contribute to the debate arising around women careers in science. Genis Lab was presented in several workshops and conferences all over Europe, among others in the EU Gender Summit in Brussels, the RRI conference in Rome in October 2014 and Genis Lab final conference in Dresden in December 2014. Genis Lab used its periodic newletter to collect and share achievements and results in different organisations as well as it used local workshops and seminars implemented in partners’ organisations to gather consensus around project initiatives. Genis Lab also used the social networks as means to participate in the debate through its facebook page https://www.facebook.com/GenisLab?fref=ts and it Linkedin group.
Following a synthetic presentation of the most relevant results described above.
The Genis Lab Approach
Despite challenges deriving from organizational contexts, a main concern for the Genis Lab consortium has been, , the attempt to define, maintain and promote a holistic and systemic approach supporting each organization in the definition of comprehensive and Tailored Gender Equality Plans and suitable to be replicated, adapted and used in organisations implementing scientific research different from the ones directly involved in Genis Lab. In this view, a significant effort was spent in the definition of a common approach and a common set of tools: a four step approach common to all partners for the definition of the TAP in each scientific organisation, combining the three dimensions (HRM, GB and OCS) and the three levels.1) The first phase, Assessment, was dedicated to implementing the PGAs in each organization; to collect all main outputs emerging from the PGAs, from in-depth further investigations, from the Gender Budgeting and Stereotype Perspectives, and from additional information collected by FGB and ADS.
2) The second phase, Planning, brought each scientific organisation to define their own TAP tackling what emerged from the assessment phase and following a jointly defined common structure. Each plan was officially approved by the internal top management of each organisation before implementation started. Each TAP contains a detailed description of activities for the period January 2013- December 2014. These activities are coherent with the emerging issues identified in the Assessment phase.
3) The third phase, Implementation, started in month 25 and, even if Genis Lab has finished in December 2014 (month 48), the implementation of each TAP can be still considered as an ongoing process, with a view of sustainability after the end of the project.
4) The fourth phase, Monitoring, started with the release of the TAPs and it is also still an ongoing process. It is a periodical assessment of TAPs using qualitative and quantitative indicators included in the plans.
The Tailored Action Plans (TAPs) represent a milestone in Genis Lab’s implementation and express a level of complexity which is higher than the sum of the activities in the three dimensions. They have been crucial in order to achieve Genis Lab’s objective of structural change in scientific organizations, since they contain, for each organisation:
- A synthesis of the results of the qualitative gender assessment, focusing on the 3 Genis Lab dimensions (PGAs reports + focus groups/interviews/mapping on Gender budgeting and Organizational Culture and Stereotypes);
- a description of challenges selected for intervention;
- a definition of an implementation strategy;
- an operational description of specific actions with related tools;
- a provision of quantitative and qualitative indicators for monitoring and evaluation of the process.
Each scientific organization tailored the TAP on its specific necessities, with the support of the technical partners; nevertheless, they all followed a similar structure in designing their TAPs. TAPs include a division in three dimensions GB, OCS and HRM; they also list a number of activities to be implemented and a related timetable, the sustainability of each action, the objective/s, methods involved, expected outputs, human resources involved, other resources needed, process indicators and result indicators.
Tools to promote Organizational scientific culture and fight gender sterotypes
Stereotypes are affecting science, its statute and its relationship with society. Science has moved from the Olympus to the Agora and the Ivory Tower is not anymore existent. Scientists have to face a strong interrelationship with markets and society, thus the scientific world representation is radically changed. Women are also penalized by the usual stereotypes that affect them in society at large. However, women scientists are specifically troubled by various and more “fitting” stereotypes. One is not being able to elaborate high levels of abstraction, due to the prevalence of emotional aspects (feelings) in their reasoning. The second one is that they cannot fully cope with the mission of science, which asks full-time engagement. The family burden is perceived as a hard obstacle to overcome if total devotion to research is the main assumption. The impact of gender stereotypes, activated by sex categorization in these social relations, is sufficient to create gender inequality in work’s outcomes. In addition to this aspect, biased bureaucratic practices (lack of information and transparency, selection criteria and so on) are activated. Gender stereotypes in science go hand in hand with “scientific culture stereotypes”. This results as ineffective in order to change stereotypes, unless the traditional ways of conceiving work in science change. In this sense, the pattern of such a culture in the different organizational structures was analyzed in detail. The analysis was conducted through a series of planned steps, common to all the scientific research institutions:
a) Participatory Gender Audits (local interviews);
b) Mutual learning activities (virtual labs, on-line forum on the project’s intranet).
c) Maps of each scientific institution detecting the specific areas where stereotypes may be nested, as they strongly affect women’s careers from the distribution of resources to the evaluation of excellence, including gender differences in external responsibilities and duties.
d) Dragging out automatic stereotypes and proposing issues, that can produce displacement, provocation, distraction, heterogeneity, because these reactions can tackle the implicit levels where stereotypes are formed. This kind of objective can be pursued by:
- pointing out the positive and negative benefits for men in order to change mentality;
- pointing out positive and negative benefits for women to change mentality;
- exploring to which extent participants want to deal with male and female confrontation and/or with gender identity challenges ( i.e. family versus work);
- enquiring to which extent participants are ready to advocate conflicts with male or female colleagues in interpersonal relationships, including sex harassment;
- investigating participants’ level of awareness of the traditional “scientific culture”.
Once the analysis phase was completed, different kinds of actions were proposed to be implemented, namely:
- Actions focusing on how to stimulate awareness of discrimination at a cultural level and how to help the overcome of possible existing stereotypes
Through the awareness campaign consisting of circulation of relevant existing documents on the topic, three actions were proposed:
a) a “daily stereotype diary” kept by each employee registering suffered gender discrimination on a daily basis,
b) the “white sheet paper” held by the employees in labs collecting all the invisible work in order to make it visible,
c)the interactive Implicit Association online Test https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/.
Special mention goes to the theatre of the oppressed - which we call “Re-Act” as act again, re-do. Contents of the show were based on the outcomes of local workshops held at the institution gathering the major number of employees possible (especially top management). www.theatreoftheoppressed.org. Last but not least again, through the use of gender-sensitive language in documents whenever possible (internal communication skills).
- Actions fighting resistance to change
Three levels for action can be identified:
A. Individual: will affect the identity and behavior. The change of each others’ status quo alarms people and frightens them of a job loss possibility, a loss of earnings, humiliations, negative assessments, unrecognized work.
B. Institutional and structural: implies a social re-organization. Hidden traps usually obstacle changes. The most obvious trap is when you don’t start implementing tailored gender action plans correctly: in other words when there is no link between theory and practice. When tailored actions are implemented, but the people involved are not skilled or motivated for such specific actions, results will not be effective and may even go against the objective of the action. When action plans are too generic or vague and the objectives are not clear and achievable and also when actions are not supported by suitable tools for their implementation, including adequate funding and other required resources, results tend to failure.
C. Symbolic and cultural: languages, norms, values (this level is crucial: no positive action has long-lasting effects without changes at this level).
- Actions redefying the evaluation of excellence
Recruitment at the beginning of careers is the very moment in which several stereotypes concerning science and women take place, such as not full devotion to the job (the possibility of starting up/having a family), scarce availability in mobility (conference, stages etc.), not very versed on or gifted in hard sciences. In advancement in careers and leadership strong scientific CVs (measured according to parameters fixed by men) must be presented, where hard skills such as assertiveness, single mindedness provide high evaluation, and soft skills such as flexibility, diplomacy, curiosity, motivation and dedication have low evaluation.The first step is to fix the concept of excellence. Scientific excellence is the ability of a scientist or an institution to impact on a field of study producing a major change, leading other scientists towards the asking of new questions, producing new, important, useful contributions to knowledge, and using new methodologies. The quality of excellence must be proven by a number of means such as publications, citations, funding, students and must be recognized by the peers and by the bestowing of various honors, prizes and other awards. The second step is to show available data demonstrating that the previously mentioned assumptions (prejudices) are not correct. The third step is to state the importance of soft skills that are functional to the advancement of contemporary science, like, for instance, covering a role with a service attitude, working towards a careful and responsible research, transferring the model role of a responsible and creative researcher to the younger generation, collaborating towards a more equal work environment.
The participatory Gender Audit as a tool for organizational change towards gender equality
The methodology used in GENIS-LAB is an adaptation of a well tested tool for organizational change, the “ILO Participatory Gender Audit” (ILO 2012, rev.: Participatory Gender Audit: A Manual for Facilitators ), which, over the last 10 years, has been successfully applied by the ILOinternally and across a broad range of public sector institutions, employers’ organisations and trade union organisations. A PGA is an action-research methodology that helps “mapping” an organisation from a gender equality perspective.
While a traditional audit checks the factual compliance of an organisation to a set of pre-defined rules, the PGA combines the objective observation of facts and data with a more in-depth and qualitative reflection on individual and collective rules, behaviors and beliefs, and their impact on gender equality. Through a process of data collection, direct observation and intense interaction with the staff of an organisation, a “Gender Audit Facilitators Team” produces a collectively agreed report that describes the capacity of an organisation to promote and sustain gender equality in its daily operations, as well as the gaps that still need to be filled in. The reasons for gender disparities in organisations are rarely explicit, but more frequently are hidden in the rules, modes of functioning and culture of an organisation. PGA helps improving performance in relation to gender equality. The PGA by definition is not simply a method to acquire baseline data in an organsation, but the initial step of a change strategy, starting from within. Although it does provide a relatively objective and measurable “picture” of an organisation from a gender perspective, it bases its analytical strength on the knowledge created through individual and collective dialogue with its staff. Organisations are complex realities, and for this reason change towards gender equality cannot be planned in a linear way or simply imposed through policies and top-down action plans. Social change can take big leaps forward, thanks to a new policy or law, and then live moments of stall, or even regression, when the law is not enforced, or top decision-makers change. This is extremely visible in organisations. The PGA explores the multiple formal and informal dimensions that constitute the life of an organisation and invites staff – at all levels – to participate in an iterative and self-reflective process of change of mind-sets, behaviors and, when necessary, rules and policies, to make their organisation a truly good workplace for women and men (“gender-friendly” or even “gender-transformative”).
Gender disparities in workplaces and more specifically in scientific organisations may be dependent on external factors (for instance, scarcity of qualified female researchers) or on lack of interest on women’s side (“they opt out”, “they need to strengthen their leadership potential”), however there is no doubt that gender disparities in workplaces are largely dependent on the needs and expectations of a stereotypical “male worker/decision maker/scientist” who is available 24/24 hours and 7/7 days and does not need to reconcile his dedication to science with other conflicting priorities, such as family. Also, hidden biases still influence career progression mechanisms, evaluation and resource allocation processes. The participatory gender audit navigates through the detail of organisational structures and culture, untangles stereotypes and unconscious biases from behaviours and rules, and initiates a change process from within. Through focused self-reflection on individual and organisational practices, PGA workshops and interviews offer opportunities to learn about gender equality in a contextualized way. This applies both to the individual and to the organisation. “Positive deviance” behaviours at an individual level (E.g. mentoring, work-life solutions, knowledge sharing mechanisms) can be systematized and, through management support, institutionalised. The gender analysis framework adopted by the PGA is inspired from Kabeer’s social relations gender analysis framework (Kabeer, N. Kabeer, Naila; Subramanian, Ramya (1999). Institutions, relations and outcomes: A framework and case studies for gender-aware planning). This framework looks at gender relations in the interaction of three inter-dependent systems:
- macro : laws, policies, macro-economic context. Policies and rules: are there equality policies at national/sectoral or organisational level? Are they reflected in the organisation’s policies and rules?
- meso : institutional policies, service delivery, rules, regulations at the workplace. Work organization practices and structures: what do they show about gender equality? Are good policies translated into good practices? Are there existing good practices that can be better institutionalized and shared? What are the expressed common organisatonal values?
- micro: individual behaviours. How do they “fit” the rules? What are the non-expressed organizational values? How are they translated in working relations between women and men? Are they influenced by stereotypes?
In the framework of Genis Lab the PGA was mostly limited on “Structures” and “Staffing”, with particular focus on project three dimensions: Organizational culture and stereotypes, Human Resource Management policies and practices and Financial dimensions and gender budgeting. The PGA helped to identify a list of evidence based indicators of gender performance. The participatory process resulted particularly useful as most of the recommendations were acceptable for institutions as they either built on existing schemes or proposed changes that had been discussed with management and staff. Recommendations served the institutions to start an internal discussion on how to develop the tailord action plan. An additional effort was made to organise the results of the audits in a systematic and comparative manner. This allowed the 6 partners to benchmark themselves on the basis of a set of “evidence based indicators of gender performance” and, on this basis, organise their responses to the audit recommendations in a systematic manner. Technical partners encouraged the scientific partners to adopt result-based planning techniques, which in some cases were adopted. The resulting Action Plans are not simply a list of activities but include medium-term strategic result areas.
Gender Budgeting as a gender mainstreaming tool
While gender budgeting has been used as tool for gender mainstreaming at administrative levels, such as regions and municipalities, there is limited literature on implementation of gender budgeting in scientific organizations, therefore, the proposal for a theoretical and methodological approach to implement gender budgeting in these organizations has been drawn up through active discussions with several representatives of these organizations and international experts taking part in the project. Budget is considered as a gender-neutral policy instrument because its data, expenditure and revenue do not mention women and men either. Budget appears gender neutral, but the issue is that budget usually ignores the different, socially determinate roles, responsibilities and capabilities of men and women (Diane Elson (1997a), ‘Gender-neutral, gender-blind, or gender-sensitive budgets? Changing the conceptual framework to include women’s empowerment and the economy of care’). This gender neutral approach is taken for a granted framework that brings about unequal gender outcome. Although the provisions in a budget may appear to be gender neutral, they actually affect men and women differently because their roles, responsibilities and capabilities in any organization are never the same. Therefore more than neutral gender budget has to be considered gender blind (Debbie Budlender, Diane Elson, Guy Hewitt and Tanni Mukhopadhyay Gender Budgets Make Cents. Understanding gender responsive budgets. The Commonwealth Secretariat, 2002). Gender budgeting aims at mainstreaming gender into the decision process of resource allocation in organizations. The generally accepted definition of gender budgeting emerges from the report of the special group of the Council of Europe, which in 2005 reached the conclusion that: “Gender budgeting is an application of gender mainstreaming in the budgetary process. It means a gender-based assessment of budgets, incorporating a gender perspective at all levels of the budgetary process and restructuring revenues and expenditures in order to promote gender equality.” The overall aim of gender budgeting is not the mechanical division of financial means into equal parts or in equal proportion to the existing number of men and women, but rather an overall concept, based on solid analyses, for the financing and distribution of available resources according to the needs of both genders so that they can be used by both men and women, as far as possible equally. If one of the groups is disadvantaged it would be possible to rectify such a situation by equalizing measures or redevelop the specific needs of the given group in this direction. Financial choices reflect the dominating culture with related power relationships, as power is created through the concentration of resources. It is then important when addressing gender equality to understand and monitor how resources are distributed and what effects the assignment of resources has on each gender.
The experience of the Genis Lab project shows that gender budgeting is a crucial tool to contribute in tackling several issues to promote structural changes in research institutions towards gender equality. Gender budgeting, in fact, specifically contrasts opaqueness in decision making process that has been considered as the first main problem faced by research institutions towards structural changes for gender equality. Data from the Genis Lab project confirm that decision-making process is mostly concentrated within bodies and committees that do not adequately include women and that their processes and decision-making mostly fail to be gender-sensitive, in tune with the already available European data (European Commission, 2012, Structural change in research institutions: Enhancing excellence, gender equality and efficiency in research and innovation. Report of the Expert Group on Structural Change). Therefore, gender budgeting contributes in increasing transparency in processes contrasting the phenomenon of the “old boys” networks and patronage. Moreover, gender budgeting, as a tool of social accountability, contributes in increasing awareness of direct and indirect discrimination of systems and structures, policies, processes and procedures in scientific organizations. Therefore, Gender budgeting, despite does not directly work on stereotypes, aims to increase awareness on discrimination and therefore it is a crucial tool to be implemented as part of a broader strategy to foster women participation in science.
In tune with the main literature on gender budgeting (Elson, Diane. 2002. “Gender Responsive Budget Initiatives: Some Key Dimensions and Practical Examples”), gender budget implementation in scientific organizations has comprised two main phases:
1. Gender budget analysis aimed at assessing, from a gender perspective, the distribution of resources in the organization;
2. Gender budget programming aimed at changing the distribution of resources according to gender-aware criteria.
Gender budgeting analysis is the first phase towards gender budget programming. The gender budget analysis and gender budget programming have been each subdivided into several main steps, implemented by almost all partners.
The principle of Gender Budgeting contributes on one hand to the fair distribution of financial resources and on the other hand increases the transparency of budgetary expenses. In the final phase, this results in ensuring the maximum efficiency of the used means.
The phase of analysis is articulated in three main stages.
- The first aims to outline the context of the organization, along with its human resource elements, within a gender-aware perspective.
- The second stage analyzes policy and services aimed to support gender equality. It considers the activities and the related input invested, as well as the output and the long-term outcome of this policy. This is a crucial element, since, in most of the organizations, certain policies have already been developed to promote gender equality, however they have not been properly evaluated with regards to their impact yet (Timmers, Tanya Marie, Tineke M. Willemsen and Kea Gartje Tijdens. 2010. “Gender diversity policies in universities: A multi-perspective framework of policy measures.”). Organizations taking part in the process of implementing gender budgeting as a tool for achieving structural changes highlight the need for indicators to monitor and evaluate improvement in women’s participation in research activities, taking into account services that have been offered to facilitate the balance between family and work responsibilities. Therefore, gender budgeting represents the framework for collecting and monitoring such gender-disaggregated data.
- The third and final stage in the analysis phase consists in focusing on gender differences in the allocation of resources in the organization. The specific characteristics of scientific organizations have needed the extension of the concept of resource, allowing the analysis not only of the traditional economic resources available to the organization, but also of other two resources that are fundamental for carrying out research: time and space. According to the literature, time allocation among academic faculties presents gender differences, affecting scientific outputs (Winslow, Sarah. 2010. “Gender Inequality and Time Allocations Among Academic Faculty”). Regarding space, in 1999, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Committee on Women in Faculty brought to light the existence of discrimination, between women and men, relating it to space allocation (Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT. 1999. “A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT How a Committee on women Faculty came to be established by the Dean of the School of Science, what the Committee and the Dean learned and accomplished, and recommendations for the future.”). Therefore, in investigating resource allocation in scientific organizations, time and space were considered as important elements to be analyzed.
For an organization devoted to research activity, economic resources are certainly important. The application of gender budgeting includes the analysis, from a gender perspective, of the allocation and management of the economic resources, mainly distinguishing between internal resources allocated by boards within the scientific organization, and external ones that are allocated through competition with other organizations. EU projects, governmental and non-governmental national projects, and some private enterprises, are examples of external funds. These external funding sources have enjoyed increased attention in recent decades, becoming a crucial source of economic resources.
Time and space are other resources of fundamental importance in carrying out research activities. Therefore, the application of gender budgeting in scientific organizations requires an analysis of time and space management from a gender perspective. The analysis of time management not only focuses on the distribution, between genders, of housework, family care and work, but also, regarding the time dedicated to work, it looks in detail at time management procedures for the various activities required in doing research. An analysis of gender differences in the use of time devoted to research and to many other activities required such as teaching is therefore carried out. Data collection concerning time and space requires the introduction of innovative tools. For the main three types of resource — funds, time and space — different sub-dimensions to be investigated have been outlined, and for each of these a specific item to be analyzed has been defined. In order to make the process clearer, leading questions have been presented, and actions and methodologies suggested in order to obtain the outlined output and related indicators.
Based on the results of the first phase, the second phase in the gender budgeting implementation consists of programming changes in resource allocation within the organization, in order to foster equal opportunities. In the programming phase, gender equality objectives,strategies, and gender impact assessment tools, were developed according to the allocated resources. Changes were monitored and reanalyzed periodically, to determine whether adjustments are needed. Adequate dissemination of the results of the gender budgeting analysis was recommended, in order to increase gender awareness and implement further gender-focused structural changes.
Moreover, a certain selection of actions has to be considered crucial and common to both phases:
1) The collection and publication of gender-disaggregated data is a fundamental element in revealing gender discrimination and debunking the apparent gender neutrality of the budget. As the experiences on gender budget show all over the world, the publishing and discussing of gender-disaggregated data, as part of the gender budgeting process, raise awareness about gender discrimination and inequalities (Sharp, Rhonda and Ray Broomhill. 2002. “Budgeting for Equality: The Australian Experience”). However, obtaining disaggregated data may well represent the first serious operational challenge. Gender-disaggregated data were not available in all of the scientific organizations involved in the project. Therefore, to facilitate the process of introducing a system to collect gender-disaggregated data, the following steps have been defined: (1) check whether gender-disaggregated data were already collected in the organization, even if they had not yet been analyzed; (2) if data were not still collected, it was checked whether it was possible to add gender-disaggregated information to the existing data-collection system, or to introduce a new system; (3) where necessary, update or replace data-collection systems, ensuring that resources were adequate to the task, and that responsibilities concerning the gender-disaggregated data were well defined.
2) The whole process of implementing gender budgeting must be supported by actions to raise awareness of gender discrimination. Most of the organizations have a consolidated experience in gender equality campaigns and actions. However, stereotypes remain the most difficult aspect to tackle.
3) Institutions specifically aimed at promoting equal opportunities should be extensively involved in the process of implementation of gender budgeting in scientific organizations. In all of the studied organizations, these institutions have a weak role, although there are relevant differences between northern and eastern organizations, on one hand, and southern organizations, on the other.
4) Action should be taken to guarantee gender-fair participation and full transparency at all stages of the budgeting process. The main challenge is to make the fund allocation process explicit, considering the formal and informal elements.
5) Gender analysis must be part of the whole accounting and quality-accreditation system. In recent decades there has been an increasing attention paid to the quality accreditation system in all scientific organizations. Attention to the gender dimension is part of the system in the northern and eastern countries, but is not considered in the southern ones yet.
6) Another action to be considered is a system of financial incentives together with an implementation of gender-sensitive measures for a modified personnel recruiting strategy. This is a rather controversial issue. Neutrality of science would not allow any kind of explicit discrimination in favor of women that thereby undermine male prospects.. Nevertheless, the experience of Sweden during the 1970s highlights the effect that positive discrimination actions have had on increasing the number of women in science.
The Tailored Action plans, main achievements per partner
FTM UB – Serbia
Here follows a summary of the concrete actions per dimensions, as defined in FTM UB’s TAP, in order to produce tangible and measurable gender-focused structural changes within the organization.
a. Gender Budgeting
The FTM UB, as a result of the project and as defined in the TAP, regularly collects employees data by gender. The FTM UB, as a result of the project and as defined in the TAP, regularly collects financial and project data by gender. Data for the period 2011-2014 is presented.
The shift in gender distribution at the FTM UB has gradually led to change in leadership of projects. In the case of well established project programs, female researchers are firmly established and well represented. In the case of shorter international and domestic commercial projects, a clear change may be seen in favor of female project leaders. On the other hand, when new types of international or domestic projects were introduced (for example Eureka or domestic integrated projects), female project leaders were not as active as their male counterparts.
The financial data on the projects indicate that male researchers tend to apply for more funds the female project heads. The numbers of engaged researchers show that women are well accepted as project leaders. The FTM UB informs the staff on annual financial performance and supports female researchers by recognizing their achievements. This action will be supplemented by recognizing the contribution of researchers by scientific performance. The FTM UB keeps regular records on the number of papers published annually in international scientific journals. The data are provided in Table 6.
There is an ongoing debate how to present this data by gender. There are several possibilities such as analysis by first author, corresponding author or by the contribution of all authors. This debate also reflects the dilemma in the interpretation of the contribution of junior and senior researchers.
The outcomes of the project regarding the dimension Gender Budgeting
1. regular institutional analysis of employees by gender
2. regular institutional analysis of finances by gender
3. regular institutional analysis of published papers by gender
b. Organizational Culture and Stereotypes
The FTM UB tested the three Gender Management Tools proposed within the dimension Organizational Culture and Stereotypes (IAT test, white sheet paper: how to make invisible work visible, and weekly diary). The results were modest and confirmed a deeply embedded subconscious level of prejudice. It is evident that the FTM UB will and must tackle the issue of gender stereotypes long after the project is completed, even though the staff is of the common opinion that there are no gender issues at the FTM UB. The best approach at the FTM UB seems to be that of positive role models. The promotion of role models will be carried out by recognizing outstanding achievements.
The FTM UB will lobby intensively to take the addressing of gender issues at the University of Belgrade to the next level. Together with the Center for Gender & Politics, Political Science of the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Belgrade and the Mihajlo Pupin Institute of the University of Belgrade (project partner on the FP7 project GenderTIME), the FTM UB will initiate the introduction of a University level Gender Equality Policy. The FTM UB continues to modify its documents in the sense of using gender-sensitive language. This is an ongoing process.
The outcomes of the project regarding the dimension Organizational Culture and Stereotypes:
1. promotion of positive role models
2. use of gender–sensitive language in FTM UB documents
c. Human Resources Management and Gender
The Equal Opportunities Committee of the FTM UB is expected to continue its activities upon the completion of the project. The issue of re-entry for parents also continues to be an important one for the FTM UB. Improved support mechanisms for returning (predominantly female) researchers are continuously considered. The organization of workshops on basic gender issues had to be postponed to the first quarter of 2015. Another key activity for the long-term success of the project is related to training programs for junior researchers in soft skills and empowering assistant and associate professors for leadership.
The FTM UB, under the supervision of the vice-dean for doctoral studies, continuously organizes various lectures, seminars and workshops for students and staff. In order to complete his/her doctoral studies, a student at the FTM UB must attend a minimum of ten lectures, seminars or workshops, of which at least two must be related to Intellectual Property protection or entrepreneurship during their studies. The University of Belgrade organizes individual training sessions for younger associates and staff. The TRAIN structured professional development training program consists of seven modules for new academics (PhD students, assistants, junior professors, post-docs with no more than three years work experience). The 7 modules are: 1. Research Methodology, Scientific Writing and Result Presentation, 2. Higher Education Didactics, 3. Preparing Funding Applications & Project Management, 4. Presentation & Research Skills, 5. Entrepreneurial Skills, 6. Networking & Teamwork, 7. Designing Higher Education Curricula. The TRAIN program is complementary with the goals of the GENIS LAB project and will provide the FTM UB with a permanent training program for young academics.
The outcomes of the project regarding the dimension Human Resources Management and Gender:
1. sustainable Equal Opportunities Committee
2. organization of soft skills seminars for junior academic staff
3. awareness raising on gender issues
4. publication “Achieving gender balance at the top of scientific research – Guidelines and tools for institutional change” in Serbian
ICTP/CSIC – Spain
ICTP management has decided to adopt a practical, gradual, bottom up approach. GENIS LAB is focusing on those actions that fall within the direct competence of ICTP management and that are likely to produce stronger institutional capacities (both in governance and monitoring of the implementation of the relevant EO policies), changes in organisational culture, and pilot testing innovative ways to assess scientific excellence. The idea is to “start from ICTP” to gain a better internal and shared understanding of what could be brought to the attention and discussed with CSIC central management structures. Thanks to the GENIS-Lab project, ICTP was able to establish an internal committee to promote and monitor the effective implementation of the Spanish Equality Law as well as the related policies on EO for women in science.
More specifically the Committee operates in three main areas:
1) Gender Budgeting:
1.1 Gender analysis of scientific outputs: papers publication, projects, patents
1.2 Institution of local gender equality committee with the aim to support gender data collection at local level and to promote gender equality
1.3 Gender analyses of funds allocation criteria
1.4 Collaboration with Mujeres y Ciencia
1.5 Gender equality allocation of labs and offices
2) Organizational Culture and Stereotypes
2.1 Collection data and analysis of all projects presented and approved and evaluation of public announcements (check some inconsistencies not only in gender equality but in general).
2.2 Internet forum for gender problems discussion (e-mentoring)
2.3 Collaboration with Mujeres y Ciencia (role modelling)
3) Human Resources Management and Gender
3.1 Establish internal committee to promote and monitor the effective implementation of the Spanish Equality Law
3.2 Increase transparency in personnel recruitment and career development
3.3 Start from ICTP to reach to CSIC, developing strong links with Mujeres y Ciencia and, eventually, “exporting” the ICTP gender equality activities.
The “Gender analysis of scientific outputs: papers, projects, patents” was developed thanks to the official ICTP report for the 2009-2014 years. As indicators, ICTP used the study based on the percentage of women in each parameter. In January 2014, the Committee discussed these data within the official meeting of ICTP February 2014. All data will be included in the annual report of 2014. The analysis of the allocation of funds was carried out thanks to the information given in the annual report of ICTP in specific entry “projects” .
The Collaboration with “Mujeres y Ciencia” (Women and science) Association is an action in common with the other dimension “Organizational Culture and Stereotypes”. In April 2013, ICTP started periodical meetings with Mujeres y Ciencia and in particular with the president of the Association, Ms. Pilar Lopez Sancho. Together, they organized periodic seminars led by scientific Spanish women, the first in June 2013 with Inés Sánchez de Madariaga, director of the Women and Science Unit (UMYC) of the Spanish Minister's Office for Science and Innovation. On 11 February 2014, the seminar was led by Consuelo del Cañizo, former director of L’OREAL Foundation, presenting the lecture “Ciencia y Cosmética” (“Science and cosmetics”). Rosa Menendez was the researcher leading the conference on 06 April 2014, titled “Revolución científica y tecnológica en los materiales de carbon” (“Scientific and technology revolution in carbon materials”) and on 8 may 2014, there was the last seminar with Dra. Concepció Rovira Angulo (Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Barcelona CSIC). The conferences took place in the ICTP and the participation was quite good. All speakers divided their talk in two parts: the first part was focused on their careers, in particular women’s career problems and the personal problems that they have during their work life. During the second part, they talked about their scientific works. This activity was also used as dissemination of the project.
In September 2013, ICTP implemented the Internet forum for gender problem discussion in the website of the institute (link available from the homepage). The active participation from ICTP staff is an indicator of the good impact of this action. The last action that will be the final step of all actions is “Start from ICTP to reach to CSIC” developing strong links with Mujeres y Ciencia.
IPF – Germany
a) Gender Budgeting:
According to the Gender Budgeting dimension, it was planned “To develop gender budgeting as a conceptual and operative framework to measure inequalities through rigorous empirical analysis” The institute gets its basic financing (internal funding) from public funds with a share of 50 per cent each from the German federal states and the federal government. In addition, the institute acquires third party funds (external funding) through project and industrial contracts. In general the IPF is bound by on agreement of tariffs. That means males and females are fully equally paid according to their qualifications. However, it is an aim of IPF to reduce the lower representation of women in higher pay groups; nevertheless this has to depend on the qualifications of external job candidates.
Internal funds (governmental budget)
The internal funds allocation procedure consists of several steps:
- First, negotiation between the Board of Directors (BoD) and the States and Federal Ministries take place.
- Afterwards, the BoD (1 female, 1 male) allocates the budget to the institute leaders (1 female, 3 males).
- Then, the institute leaders allocate the budget to the department leaders (4 females, 9 males).
- Altogether, 5 females (29.4%) and 12 males (70,6%) leaders are involved in the internal budget allocation process.
The only criteria for internal funds allocation is the research quality that means the performance (Excellence) of the researchers/departments/Programmbereiche in terms of publications, patents, presentations, etc. in accordance with the gender-oriented guidelines of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Leibniz-Gemeinschaft (WGL). Within the internal budget, IPF has Gender equality funds for the EO.
External funds (third party funds)
The gender analysis of the external funds was based on the data on ongoing funded projects for the years 2010-2013 from the Department of Research Planning and Cooperation. The allocation of external funds has been analysed in terms of:
- Number and percentage of projects with female project leaders,
- Number and percentage of projects from gender-oriented funding programmes and
- Number and percentage of projects from gender-oriented programmes with female project leaders.
IPF is partner of the only gender related project involved (it is Genis Lab). However, for other proposals (the national and international funding agency) it is necessary to describe gender aspects.
Time Management
A new institution agreement concerning working time was prepared and implemented on 11.01.2012. Concrete changes implemented are related to:
- Core working time (§4 of the institution agreement),
- Compensatory time-off in case of illness of children or family members: 12 days within a period of 6 months (§8 of the institution agreement).
The members of staff will be trained on an ongoing basis.
Space: gender differences in allocation of space and in accessing laboratories
IPF has set up a map of working places and analysed it in terms of gender allocation. In conclusion, it can be said that IPF provides for measures to reconcile work and private life. The females have flexible working hours; different part time models; partial retirement; family friendly meeting dates; offers for health promotion (back care, massages); child care offers (agreements with nearby child care facilities; child care possibilities during time off work); room for nursing and swaddling at IPF.
b) Organizational Culture and Stereotypes
The first challenge related to the OCS dimension was “Primary child minders and caregivers for the family remain women”. The first action related to this challenge was to “Make capability of the parent child room fully operational”. Indeed, the parents / children room was opened in 2008 as a breast-feeding room (Still-/Wickelraum) and have been converted in a parents/children/working room in 2012. The parent child room should be used by young mothers who returned part time to work early after the birth of the child and by parents in the case of need. An online-booking tool for the use od the room in IPF intranet is working. Guidelines for using the room was prepared. In 2014, this room was used for longer periods by 1 mother who returned early after childbirth. From January to April 2014 the feedback of the users was analysed. It was decided to optimise room facilities and to have a better interior (toys, nappies) as well as a baby`s high chair for the dining room. Since June 2014 the interior and the baby`s high chair are available.
The second action was the increase of “Kinderbetreuungsplätze” (Childcare places) for children 0-6 years old”. Strengthened institutional provisions were put in place so that male and female researchers could better reconcile their research work with their family responsibilities. Since the need for childcare places has been permanently increasing, IPF has bought additional places in 2012 for the next 10 years. Thus, the childcare places increased from 2010 until 2013 from 5 up to 10 places (0-3 years) and up to 10 places (1-6 years). The IPF signed 12 contracts in April 2014 12 and 4 new ones wererequested for 2015. The third action was to “Promote active fatherhood through guidance on paternity / parental benefits”. The researchers are continuously informed of news concerning paternity/parental benefits, e.g. on periodically employees meetings. Guidance on parental leave is implemented on internal EO website and it is continuously updated to encourage more fathers to share the parental leave with their partners. Parental leaves of fathers in IPF increased from: 5 fathers in 2010 and 2011 to 6 fathers in 2012, 7 fathers in 2013, 6 fathers in 2014. The time range of parental leave of fathers is 1 to 6 months. The average time for leaving is 3 months. The fourth action was the “identification of stereotypes and targeted contribution to a gender friendly work environment”. IPF organises workshops periodically for staff members at different levels:
Activities promoting gender awareness were thought and used in other events, both internal and external.
The second challenge in relation to Organizational Culture and Stereotypes was: “Maternity leave perceived as putting a break on women’s career; the first action related to this challenge is to “Ensure a minimum percentage of women in relevant levels of research (“Kaskadenmodell”) (Cascade Model)”
An action thought to enhance the rate of female researchers in the higher salary levels (Entgeltstufen), the so-called “Kaskadenmodell”, has been implemented at the IPF. For that purpose, a certain target rate (Zielquote) for higher salary levels has been defined. “Kuratorium” and Board of Directors of IPF have agreed upon accountable targets (abrechenbareZiele) for the period until 2017: 50% of new positions from a certain salary level should be staffed by women taking into consideration the selection process for the best.
The analysis has showed first successes in increasing the number of female researchers in leading positions from 2012 to 2013. In the Scientific Technical Advisory Body (WTR = Wissenschaftlich-technischer Rat), the number of women increased from 1 in 2012 to 4 in 2013. Since 2013, the chairman of WTR is a woman.
The number of women in leading positions (Heads of institutes, Heads of departments); from salary level (Entgeltstufe) EG 15 upwards) increased from 3 (21,5%) in 2010 up to 5 (29,4%) in 2013
Furthermore, a group of 16 young researchers at the IPF was defined as “young academics”. This group proves a high level of potential for career development and for the introduction of new innovative research topics at the IPF. Currently an official paper of the Board of Directors is being executed to define certain promotion possibilities for this group. The total number of female researchers of this group is 8.
The new Leibniz-Mentoring program was presented by the EO-officer to the Teaching Staff Council (“Kollegium”) on 26.03.2014. Afterwards, the program was introduced to all staff during the department meetings. A female candidate with a defined career plan (completion of post-doctoral lecturing qualification) applied for the Leibniz-Mentoring program 2014/2015. Dr. Alla Synytska, who is an IPF-junior researcher in the Genis Lab project, was elected from the Leibniz association to attend the Leibniz-Mentoring programme.
IPF will also define funding regulations for the “young academics”. The “Junior research group leaders” will be provided with start-up funding with the aim of applying for projects. In all job applications for IPF positions, it is stipulated that a woman will be preferred if she has the same qualifications as a male candidate. Furthermore, the EO must be involved in the recruitment of professors. The process must be organised very transparently and the EO has the possibility of pointing out aspects which are not gender conform. In addition, the EO also has the possibility of becoming involved in recruitments for leading personnel at IPF (e.g. department leader). The Gender and Diversity committee was not established until 2014, but it is planned in future. The requirement to establish this committee is the signature of the Charter of Diversity. This was executed in October 2014. Thus, the IPF Board of Directors and the work council now have to discuss how the charter will be implemented in the institute connected with the discussion of establishment of a committee. The second action was to: “develop and periodically revise career plans for young / mid-career women with the support of their supervisors”
IPF is continuously working on long term mentoring and post-maternity support. Under the responsibility of the personnel department, career plans for young and mid-career women have been developed and periodically revised with the support of their supervisors. Prospective mothers and fathers have been offered talks about adapting their employment contract for the parental leave period, together with their supervisors. They received an offer for an extension of their fixed-term employment contract for the planned parental leave period. This action has not only been related to women working on their post-doctoral lecturing qualification (2012:2; 2013:1) or belonging to the group of “Junior Research Group Leaders” (7 female) but also to female PhD-students. Mentoring and post-maternity support (PMS) have been periodically discussed during meetings of the network of the Dresden Leibniz institutes and the meetings of the network “berufundfamilie”.
The third action was to: “Increase women’s representation in “higher wages groups”
IPF promotes young female researchers for higher wages groups by preparing / coaching them for appropriate openings at IPF or research partner organisations. For that, an appropriate recruitment strategy has been developed (See source: “IPF – BerichtzurGleichstellung 2009 bis 2012 und Gleichstellungsplan 2013 bis 2016“ from 12/2013“). For example, in February and March 2014, the workshop “Women only – ErfolgskniggefürWissenschaftlerinnen” (Women only - Success manual for female scientists”) took place on 12./13.02.2014 and on 18./19.03.2014. 24 women participated. One important topic, which was discussed during the workshop, was time management.
The fourth action was to: “Implement an easy-to-use confidential feedback system on equal opportunities for staff members and students” The feedback system has been in place since 05.08.2013. It consists of the feedback item added to the EO webpage and includes an anonymous feedback system. Feedback received through the established mechanism is regularly analysed and discussed with the Board of Directors and the Human Resources Management (HRM). Up to now, this anonymous feedback system has not been used by staff members and students. All feedbacks in 2014 were received per mail or personally during the interviews. The HR department is permanently involved in the meetings on “berufundfamilie” and Genis Lab internal meetings. Department leaders were informed during the quarterly meetings. The fifth action was to: “Increase participation of female researchers (mothers) in international networks of women in research”
A lot of female researchers are members of national and international scientific networks with and without the gender aspect. Below several examples are summarised:
- Participation in EU projects with (Genis Lab) and without the gender aspect;
- Memberships in organisations, including leading positions;
- Working within international contractual cooperation both with universities and other research institutions as well as with industrial partners.
However, other possibilities for obtaining visibility in networks are the increasing international recognition of female researchers of IPF.
The sixth action was to: Increase the use of the EO webpage to improve the understanding by the staff members of the equality measures that are applicable by IPF”.
Last update was made on June 6, 2014. It was planned to establish a mentoring system to achieve a number of visits. Depending on the preparation of the IPF evaluation it was not possible for the IPF IT-department to establish such a system until now. But IPF will continue working on it. At IPF, Intranet site the link “Hints for upcoming parents” can be found (in German). This link will be translated in English in the near future. Researchers keep regularly informed about equality measures and opportunities.
c) Human Resources Management:
The challenge related to HRM and gender was:“Women frequently are unable to reconcile the pressure of quantitative performance in terms of publications, projects and patents with family life”
Data collected and analysed covers the period from 2009 – 2013 and are summarised in Fig. 7. Although the number of female and male employees in total at IPF is well-balanced, female researchers and female management personnel are slightly underrepresented:
- female PhDs and Postdocs: 42.4%
- female scientific and management personnel: 34.8%
- females among the trainees (lab assistants): 80%
Due to the fact that few female researchers worked only part-time, the data was normalised to the full-time equivalent for reliable comparison. As regards to the publications and patents applied by female researchers, an incremental consistency can be detected over the years. Data are represented in yearly IPF reports and are available on the Equality Office (EO) website. It should be noted that the data collection activity in terms of the quantitative and qualitative performance of female and male researchers is a new action that has been implemented by the Genis Lab project.
INFN – Italy
a) Gender Budgeting
Action 1: Fund allocation to research groups: Gender analyses of beneficiaries
The objective was to analyse the fund allocation to research groups focusing on the following dimensions:
• Gender composition of research groups
• Funded research groups
• Gender analyses of groups’ leaders.
INFN has finalized the analyses of gender composition of research groups, and groups’ leaders and the fund allocation to research groups taking in account various inputs from technical partners of the project. The action was successfully completed.
Action 2: Gender provisional budget and research composition for each of the 5 national scientific committees
The objective was to introduce gender data concerning research teams and funded projects in the provisional budget (2014). Based on the results of action 1, INFN has chosen the items sensible to the gender dimension in order to introduce gender data on research teams and funded projects in the provisional budget (2015). Since, there was not enough time to include the data in the provisional budget for the year 2014, the INFN team is planning to introduce the breakdown of costs divided by gender to the annual financial statement for the ministry.
Action 3: Gender pay gap
The objective was to analyse gender pay gap through the following two variables:
• key rewarded tasks/services/responsibilities
• financial support for missions
Methodologies for measuring the gender pay gap, almost without bias, need many data and sophisticated statistical methods, so INFN has completed action 3 providing a preliminary system of collecting and processing gender remuneration data, a more simple ‘remuneration gap analysis’ which gave an insight to differences in salaries among different professional profiles and education levels of employees. In particular, INFN has found a typical example of a horizontal segregation referring to the existence of, usually lower-paid, ‘women’s jobs’.
Action 4: Observatory for monitoring and evaluating women participation in research.
The objective was to establish a permanent observatory for monitoring and evaluating women participation in research, appointed by the INFN Executive board, formed by: a CUG working group specifically involved in Equal Opportunity, the team of Genis Lab project, representatives of the HR department, components of internal and external evaluation committees (CIV, CVI), coordinated by S. Falciano (member of the Executive Committee and past INFN Vice President).
b) Human Resources Management and Gender
Action 1: Alignment of HR strategies and management tools to EU policies (ECR and Minerva Code)
The objective was to comply with existing EU policies and tools to promote excellence and gender equality in research. The implementation of the ECR and Minerva code in the procedures of the institution implies an awareness that has not been gained yet. Genis Lab tried to collaborate with its contacts in the management (GE) to raise awareness of importance of fair and transparent procedures in order to ensure excellence. The Genis Lab team is aware of the commitment that CUG has also made in this direction. It is clear that it is a procedural change that takes time and the full implementation of the CUG commitment will be crucial in the coming years to accomplish it.
Action 2: Develop and adopt HR procedures to promote transparency in recruitment, performance, promotion criteria
During the first half of 2014, the GENIS LAB team focused on the objective to develop a competency-based HRM Model to improve fairness, objectivity and transparency of HR procedures. After preliminary analyses of competency models and the organization of meetings and seminars aiming at raising awareness and promoting an INFN competency model inspired by CERN competency model (CCM) held in the end of 2013, the project team has continued working on the implementation of the INFN competency model. INFN has organized a training course titled: “Change Management - The Competency Model and Organizational Change Management”, in Frascati (RM) on February 25 with Sudeshna Datta, where both top management and employees were involved. Technical partner Benedetta Magri (ITC/ILO) supported and also conducted the course. They have discussed what is the most effective and sustainable strategy to adopt a competency based model, as well as the effective benefits that can be brought about. Following the training course, INFN has proceeded to create a database of technical competencies with the help of Genis Lab facilitators (Giovanni Mazzitelli and Daniela Ferrucci of Frascati National Labs and Roberto Gomezel and Alessandra Filippi from INFN Trieste). On March 20, a meeting with the Director of the INFN National Laboratories of Frascati, Umberto Dosselli, was organized to discuss the work plan in order to proceed with a survey about technical competencies and with the focus groups helping us to explore the INFN core values and the relative behavioral competencies. At the beginning of May, the project team has organized a series of interviews with senior staff about technical competencies of the personnel in the institute and about core values, further explored during two Focus Groups meetings held on May 6 and 7 2014 with representatives of different professional profiles. An online survey about technical competencies of two pilot structures of the INFN (National Laboratories of Frascati and INFN Trieste) was prepared, which has been completed by 158 employees of both structures (36% of LNF and 67% of Trieste employees). The analysis of the survey results is available on the INFN Genis Lab website. The INFN Trieste Site director Silvia Dalla Torre agreed to present the work on INFN Competency Model in Trieste. Data collected during both focus groups and seminars have been analysed and a proposal document for the management about INFN’s core values and relative behavioral competencies was prepared. The work done to develop an INFN Competency Model and its application on education and training has been presented during the National Training Committee meeting that was held on June 19 in Trieste.
Action 3: Development and dissemination of Guidelines on non-discriminatory recruitment and management
The objective was to ensure that all competitions and promotions processes were checked against discriminatory stereotypes and carried out in discriminatory-free ways. A first draft (focused on the evaluation assessment process: criteria, evaluation, procedures, and on overview on peer review processes) was shared and discussed with technical partners Donne e Scienza and ITC-ILO. A document about core guidelines was completed in November 2014 and is available on the INFN Genis Lab internal website.
Action 4: Organize training/awareness activities for managers and members of selection committees on the Competency-based model
The objective was to ensure that the model is understood and tested appropriately and that the managers responsible for recruitment and performance evaluation are aware of bias free selection and performance management practices. The team has organized a training course titled: “Change Management - The Competency Model and Organizational Change Management”, in Frascati (RM) on February 25th.
c) Organizational Culture and Stereotypes
Action 1: Soft-skills training for managers
The objective was to upgrade managerial competences and ensure HRM practices which are free from gender bias. In September 2013, the soft-skills training for managers, titled: “Gender balance: the development and management of human resources through the promotion of gender equity” was proposed to the National Training Committee for the National training program 2014. The training was held on December 4 and 5 2014 in Frascati (LNF). 15 participants attended the course. The course conceived an INFN core values review and gender awareness exercises prepared by our technical partner Benedetta Magri (ITC/ILO).
Action 2: knowledge and awareness raising activities on stereotypes and non-discrimination at all levels
The objective was to raise awareness on the negative impact of stereotypes at the different levels of the INFN. A seminar titled “Why to promote women in science”, held by Flavia Zucco, was organized in collaboration with Donne e Scienza on October 7th 2013 at the Roma INFN Section of Sapienza University. On December 10th 2013, INFN organized a Re-ACT play at Frascati (the largest INFN Laboratory), proposed by Donne e Scienza, that involved employees together with actors in a collective research to investigate and deconstruct gender stereotypes in the scientific community. The play was based on the INFN most representative stereotypes identified during an experiential workshop held on December 3rd 2013 which 13 INFN employees voluntarily joined. The play was attended by 30 participants including the INFN HR director and the Frascati National Laboratories director.
BTH – Sweden
a) Gender Budgeting
The objective of highlighting funding, both internal faculty funds and external funds, is to increase the transparency of gender balance in the procedures and beneficiaries. The expectation for outcome is a report on gender differences in the procedures and a change of strategy to improve gender balance in fund allocation.
Funding
For 2012, the preliminary allocation to BTH from the Ministry of Education was 81.4 million. All schools of BTH were asked to report regarding how the funds were allocated for the fiscal year 2012 in relation to the academic position and the sex in the three categories faculty fund, approved external funding and applied external project funding.
As evidenced women have less access to the internal faculty funds than men. Women’s research is to a larger extent funded by external sources than men’s. On average women were awarded half as much of the internal faculty resources compared to men during the same period of time. The majority of the internal faculty funds go to graduate students, regardless of sex. However, there are differences in the residual distribution of funds, where internal faculty funds go to male lecturers and professors.
Applied external funding in 2012 was reported by DSN. HAL reported there was no reliable documentation for these questions. The result for applied external funding strengthens the result that women are dependent on external funding. During the financial year 2012, the distribution of internal faculty funds and external project grants shows a significant misallocation. Men receive a significantly larger share of the internal faculty funds than women. On the other hand, the research activities by women are funded by external resources. taking into account the background of the Swedish Research Council report, which states that women are awarded research grants to a lesser extent than men in the field of natural and engineering sciences, it seems that it is a demanding financial situation for female researchers. Due to the lack of data from the other schools at BTH, it is difficult to make any far-reaching analysis. However, the result confirms misallocation of resources to such an extent that there is no equal opportunity for men and women in doing research or for career development. The review of research strategies and interviews with heads of schools confirms a lack of gender perspectives.
Time
Every two years statistics are presented on income and full-time equivalents for the higher education sector by the Statistics Sweden. Full-time equivalents are based on the result of a survey, where the academic staff rates the time spent on activities for R&D, teaching, administration work, expertise consultation and positions and other work-related activities. In 2011, men performed overall the highest proportion of full-time equivalents in all higher education in Sweden. At BTH the proportion was 62% for men and 38 % for women. As for distribution of working hours, the statistics also show differences between the sexes. Men had a slightly higher proportion of their time spent on R & D activities than women had.
The study for GenisLab Time was designed as a pilot study for MAM and DSN at BTH, during the period June to November 2013. The group selected for the survey was the academic staff, namely graduate students, lecturers, associate professors and full professors. The survey was sent out via a web-based survey tool by e-mail to a total of 51 people. The survey was followed up by interviews with lecturers at each school. The questions in the survey were based on the issues regarding working hours at the national level. The questions were focused on estimated working hours and not the actual hours. The response rate in the survey was 55% (28 of 51), and the respondents represented a relatively equal distribution between women (46%) and men (54%). Women estimated time allocated to research to a slightly higher degree than men (women 32% and men 28%) and women estimated to a significantly higher degree time spent on teaching undergraduates, 43%, than men 36%. However, there were large differences in the response group. A handful of the respondents did not allocate any time to research activities, while others spent a majority of their time on research activities.
Men estimated overall to a higher degree working time spent on administrative tasks than women. This does not mean men actually spend more time on administrative tasks than women, but the responding men, consider administrative tasks as a task separate from other activities, such as research or teaching.
Overall, the vast majority of respondents are unanimous regarding time allocated to research activities. There is too little time for research and too much time is spent on teaching at the undergraduate level and administrative tasks. Women experience to a higher degree (69%) than men (57%) that time allocated to research is not satisfactory. Another significant difference was the experience of the women to a lower degree than men being able to influence their work planning. Almost 30% of the women felt they could to a lesser extent influence their planning, with only 14 % of the men experiencing the same situation. The differences between the results from the survey and the interviews that were undertaken show the importance of additional data and not "just counting heads" as in the survey. It is clear that the majority of the respondents are satisfied with their situation regarding teaching, but very unsatisfied with the situation to conduct research. More than half of the responses marked to some degree the workplace to have flaws of such nature that it affects the work negatively.
The stories emerging in the comments and interviews described the work environment experienced as being unhealthy or unstimulating. Several respondents experienced a lack of transparency, between the management and the staff, and between colleagues from different schools. This questions the creativity and innovative capacity at BTH.
There are also clear differences between women’s and men’s opportunities for research and career development. The men in interviews responded that it rarely led to any consequences or reprimands (in addition to themselves) not doing extra work, for women it seemed to be the opposite. The women worked well over their 40 h per week for catching up and they missed compensation like sharing the burden or opportunity to leave. This makes a clear example of how men's and women's contributions are valued and handled differently in the organization. Regarding allocation of working hours and tasks there seemed to be a discrepancy between actual reported time.
Space
The third part of the Gender budgeting activities was a study of possible differences between space allocation for women and men. A pilot study was made of the spatial resources of MAM. The main focus was to collect data on square meters per person and if it was possible to find differences between gender and position. Questions were also made of the patterns in typology as access to the views, position or the proximity to other spatial premises. The collection of data was done with a blue print of MAM’s offices and an interview with the school coordinator.
Results
Economic cutbacks at the department had led to a reorganisation ofthe office space. Efforts had been made for all staff to have their office space more “united” in order to free up space for another school at BTH. It was unclear how many of the employees who actually had moved offices and to which extent each individual had the opportunity to influence which room to be assigned to. During the time of the study, there were 48 employees with an office, including 28 women (59%) and 20 men (41%). All offices, the front help desk, conference rooms and the staff room were located on the same floor. The majority of the rooms were in a line, side by side. The department was open for students during "office hours". There was no "open space" with sofas or standing tables that could be used for more spontaneous meetings. This indicates most of the work to be done in the offices. The majority of the offices were of the same size (in number of square meters). The biggest rooms (per square meter) were held by the dean of school (a man) and the school administrator (a woman). Four men shared two large rooms due to their half- time employment. Two other men had extra space in addition to their offices. The distribution of square meters differed between men and women. Men had a slightly higher proportion of square meters per person than women. The women had 8.5 m2/ person, and the men 10.5 m2/ person. No distinct relation in the distribution of square meters to a position was found, however the postgraduate student’s offices were placed close together. Two men had access to an additional room for their work respectively. This is the main reason why men on average had more square meters. If these rooms were not included, the gap between women and men would be 0.2 m2 in advantage of men. The reason to why these men had this extra space is due to their research and teaching activities requiring more space. It is striking how the rooms standing out at the school are held by men as they hold the rooms with the worst view and proximity to other office resources such as staff rooms, copying room, and nearness to other colleagues. Another pattern that can be distinguished is the majority has offices next to another person of the same sex as themselves. Women sit side by side with women, men sit with men. The result of Gender Budgeting Space was reported to the Equality committee. During the discussion with the committee many explanations and arguments in space allocation were revealed. However there seems to be a lack of a comprehensive strategy at BTH for space allocation from gender perspectives. In the discussion the history and culture of each school and department became clear playing a significant role in the space allocation, despite mergers and reorganisations.
b. Human Resources Management and gender
The dimension of Human Resources is based on implementing gender perspectives in career and career development in the academy. The focus is on three areas of Human Resources, namely: recruitment (selection, induction and orientation), retention (performance management, pay and conditions, adapting work to family and private life, and career development) and release (conflicts and exit strategies). Data for what is currently in place in the cycle of Human Resources (HR) was collected in a interview with the HR Manager at BTH and from reviewed documents and policies, selected by the department of HR.
Results
Except for the work of the Equality Committee and BTH Equal Treatment Plan, there is a lack of explicit strategies of human resources with gender perspectives. The HR Manager argues this is an issue of resources. He gave examples of the lack of structure for future leaders, that the perspective on academic career development does not always include leadership. There is a large collection of documents and policies of staff issues, such as the Handbook for HR, an Accounting Manual and other regulatory documents. These documents are published at the BTH website and seem to be updated continuously, which facilitates transparency for the academic staff. The management at BTH has prepared policies for recruitment and career development. But there is an overall lack of monitoring and revision of these policies. The responsibility to manage and interpret the instructions lies in the hands of the management of each school, which could cause the schools to follow the culture of their own organisation, which in turn may be in conflict with overall strategies or visions. All of the reviewed documents are at the surface gender-neutral, with gender-neutral language, but they seem to be missing an underlying understanding of the concepts. The formulations may seem exclusionary. In one of the guidelines, there are several formulations requiring the reader to understand certain concepts and terms, without definition of these words. This does not take into consideration newly hired staff or language problems.
Recruitment
There are several documents concerning the recruitment process, such as instructions by experts for selections, interview guides and position profiles. As mentioned above, there is non-existing gender perspectives throughout the cycle of recruitment. The success of recruitment seems to depend on individual aspects, from the selection of the employee to introduction to the workplace. According to the HR Manager, there is a lack of transparency in how the introduction is performed at each school, except for the formalities of hiring. A strategy of supporting in-house recruitments seems to be absent. New employees are supposed to “know what to do” as they are already working in the organisation. This approach gives no opportunity for the employees to ask questions concerning their new position or limited access to the support, which is currently in place. This may create uncertainty for the employees.
Retention
In the cycle of career and career development, none of the documents supports gender perspectives. The issues regarding facilitation of family and personal life is fully supported by government commitments. Sweden has parental benefits for a total of 480 days including sickness benefits. There is no systematic work at BTH on how the parental leave affects the ability of work or whether a parental leave creates barriers in career development.
Release
In the area of conflict and exit strategies, there is a complete lack of data. Minor conflicts are managed locally at each school. More extensive conflicts are managed by the occupational health service and the HR department. Deans and heads of departments have some training in conflict management, but there is no information, if this training is given with gender perspectives. Upon release of staff, all governmental employees are contacted by the Security Foundation, which is supportivein both preventive measures and getting a new employment.
Analysis
The different aspects of HR take a comprehensive grasp of an organisation and perhaps particularly in an academic organisation. Without a focus on the research staff, there is a risk of not being taken seriously as a university. The Gender screening tool highlights that the staff issues at BTH is not supporting gender equality. Each document reviewed in HR had initially a high ambition but seems to end up as paper products. The lack of insight from management in several areas allows the staff to create their own strategies and priorities without a perspective of gender equality. All areas concerning Human Resources should not only have a clear focus on gender equality, but also be linked to BTH overall strategies, in order to secure a continuous monitoring and evaluation taking place. It is obvious that it is not only necessary to document the process of strategies and visions; there is also a need of continuous training and on-going discussion on gender issues. It is important to give account to the fact that the head of HR department found the Genis Lab Gender screening tool relevant and valuable for BTH and want to implement that tool at BTH.
c) Organisational culture and stereotypes
The GenisLab BTH team is actively involved in the development of feminist technoscience as a knowledge and culture transforming agent at a technical university. The history of feminist technoscience situated at faculties of technology and engineering has proceeded from the practice of counting heads (how many women) to fostering and advancing understandings and practices of knowledge production. This is not a linear process but more of a process in parallel. The academic story in Sweden within a period of more than three decades shows that Sweden has moved from the gender equality question over the woman question to the science question. This refers to the Harding turn (Harding, 1991) moving from the question of what science can do for women to what feminists can do for science. BTH has chosen to exemplify the Genis Lab organizational culture dimension by giving its story being embedded in the development of a new university campus at the technical university BTH. Starting a new campus was a result of negotiations between the leadership of the university and the local Government of the town, where the campus was to be located. At the same time, an innovation node or innovation system called NetPort was established. NetPort became later on an organization co-owned by the university, the local Government and the business sector of the three focus areas chosen. The development of the campus and of NetPort started in the year 2000. Developing a new campus for a university of technology in a Triple helix context needs at least 4 starting conditions, namely:
After almost 15 years the university campus is firmly established mainly thanks to the sustainability strategy of NetPort and an understanding of Triple Helix collaboration to be dynamic, to pass different phases during expansion and the necessity to be nurtured all the time in continuous dialogues. One may ask why is gender research a knowledge and culture transforming agent at a university campus formation. Some answers are to be found in the theoretical and methodological work of the actual feminist technoscientific research in:
• expanding the knowledge frames and practices for technology development in increasingly complex realities
• opening up preferential rights of interpretation in selections of e.g. standards, which are always reality producing activities
• emphasizing the importance of power relations and their impacts, including complex understanding of gender structures
• process-oriented development through a broader understanding of transformation practices
• enforcement and integration of situated knowledge and technology development
• developing epistemological infrastructures relevant to a society heavily dependent on research and technology
• establishing new arenas for developing understanding of relations between research, political sector and industry.
NIC – Slovenia
In accordance with GenisLab TAP the following activities per dimension have been implmeneted
a) Gender Budgeting
A basis for a final synthesis of gender-based organizational assessments has been made, i.e. assessment of professional performance for the year 2013 which consists of data on budgeting and scientific excellence by gender in 2013. As regards gender and existing budget in the year 2013, the number of male researchers in both grades was higher than the number of women researchers. In the Grade A, men had much more disposable funds in comparison to women from the title of the leadership of research programmes, basic projects and applicative projects. On the other hand women were more successful in gaining funds from collaboration with industry and other projects. In Grade B differences in funds regarding gender were not very big. Men and women are quite competitive, but in the leadership of basic projects women were more successful in gaining funding in comparison to men. A basis for a final synthesis of gender-based organizational assessments has been made in the period May-July 2014, i.e. assessment of professional performance for the year 2013, consisted of data on budgeting and scientific excellence by gender in the year 2013. Based on the overview of project applications to the Slovenian Research Agency's calls for basic, applicative and postdoctoral projects in the year 2013 and on the analysis of scientific excellence, investigation of professional performance in 2013 and the overview of the annual evaluation/assessment of researchers (these analyses were given in the previous report for the period January - April 2014) the synthesis of all these data was made. This synthesis of gender-based organizational assessments shows that budgeting is closely connected with scientific excellence and consequently with professional performance of researchers. The annual assessment of their work was carried out by heads of laboratories and consists of the assessment of their scientific performance, i.e. research accomplishments and assessment of their soft skills. The synthesis of all these data shows, as regards gender, men made more applications for basic projects than women, who on the other side made more applications for applicative projects than men. In the second phase of the selection procedure, men were more successful than women in regard to basic projects. On the other hand, women were more successful than men in applicative and postdoctoral project proposals. Regarding the final success rate women were more successful in all three categories (basic, applicative, postdoctoral projects) but the financial outcome was in favour of men in receiving funding for basic projects, however women received all funding (100 %) in applicative projects and in postdoctoral projects percentage of received funding was equally distributed among men (50%) and women (50 %).
b) Human Resources Management and gender
The analysis of scientific excellence and the overview of the annual evaluation/assessment of researchers shows that budgeting is closely connected with scientific excellence and consequently with professional performance of researchers (of Grades A and B). The annual assessment of their work has been carried out by heads of laboratories and consists of the assessment of their scientific performance/research accomplishments and of the assessment of their soft skills. Data on the yearly assessment of researchers show that researchers of all grades are assessed very high - the great majority was assessed between very good and excellent in the field of scientific performance/research accomplishments and also in the field of soft skills. Regarding the data on the number of employees (researchers in Grades A, B, C) and their comparison for the period from 2010 to 2013 the percentage of women researchers has been higher each year and the percentage of men researchers in all grades has been lower. As soon as we get the results of project applications to the Slovenian Research Agency's calls for basic, applicative and postdoctoral projects in the year 2013, we will be able to make a synthesis including these data. In the investigation of professional performance in 2013, data on overview of researchers on education abroad regarding gender and duration, overview of vertical promotion and overview of the period from the dissertation defense until the election to the scientific titles senior research associate /senior specialist advisor are included (besides the analysis of scientific excellence and the overview of the annual evaluation/assessment of researchers). All these data for the 2013 were compared with data for 2011 and 2012. The synthesis shows that the number of researchers on education abroad (regarding gender and duration) and the number of vertical promotion are lower in 2013 in comparison to previous two years, although the number of researchers in the top two levels (grades A and B) and early stage researchers (grade C) in 2013 has rised in 2013 in comparison to previous two years. Data on the period from the dissertation defense until the election to the scientific titles senior research associate/senior specialist advisor stayed the same in 2013 as in previous two years: the average period for women’s promotion is 10 years and the average for men’s promotion is 9.6 years.
Two new interviews about science, science career and the compatibility of family life and career were carried out: the interview with the researcher (senior research associate) in the Laboratory for analitical chemistry and the interview with the researcher in the Laboratory for Molecular Biology and Nanobiotechnology. From all Interviews with women at higher positions it can be concluded (based on contents of all performed interviews) that reconciliation of scientific career and family life is possible and in their cases successful, but sometimes difficult and requires support from a partner/family. All interviews are published in our Genis Lab webcorner (only in Slovenian language): http://www.ki.si/index.php?id=genis.
A review on data of Performance evaluation: Women underrepresented in senior posts has been made. It showed that the difference between the number of researchers (female and male) in the highest grade (Grade A) up to June 30th 2014 is not very big. The number of women in higher ranks is lower because the number of all female researchers is lower in comparison with the number of male researchers. Women and men have the same conditions and opportunities for advancement to a higher rank. NIC estimates there is no glass ceiling at NIC Slovenia. A review at what age men and women reach higher title showed that the age is almost the same in case of female and male researchers.
An investigation on the fluctuation of employees by titles, namely the gender analysis of dismissed employees was made for our researchers in Grades A, B and C. NIC collected data on arrivals and departures of our employees to and from NIC Slovenia in the year 2013 and data until July 31st 2014. Comparing the results of the first half of this year and the results of the year 2013, there were more arrivals and also departures in the year 2013 than in the year 2014. Comparing these data with data for previous years, we can conclude that arrivals to NIC Slovenia in 2013 were in the biggest favour of women among PhD students (female: 7, male: 2). The result in this grade for the year 2014 cannot be predicted at the moment, because the number of new PhD students will be known in autumn with the beginning of the new study year (2014/2015). Last year was also in favour in women in grades Technician and Research associate. The number of departures of employees in the year 2013 was lower in comparison to previous years (2011, 2012) and have been in all examined years due to expiry of the contract of employment for a specified period (fixed-term contracts) and departures among senior positions were due to retirements of those researchers.
c) Organizational Culture and Stereotypes
On the activity “Monitoring perceptions about active fatherhood” and perception how this is accepted at higher managerial levels, an interview with the researcher (senior research associate) in the Laboratory for polymer chemistry and technology about science, science career and the reconciliation of family life and career was carried out (the interview is published at: http://www.ki.si/index.php?id=genis). Based on all interviews carried out during the project and also on collected data on taking paternity leave in 2013, NIC Slovenia accepts the image of active fatherhood very well, since all newly-fathers at our institute took a paternity leave in the year 2013 and paternity leave is accepted as “normal” among our male researchers. Active fatherhood is also well accepted at higher managerial levels. It seems men’s careers and their scientific efficiency and excellence don't suffer in this respect. It can be concluded that NIC Slovenia is a family-friendly and unbiased working environment. NIC Slovenia’s Graphic campaign on stereotypes has been disseminated inside and outside NIC Slovenia with aims to encourage and spread awareness of the issues concerning gender in science and to encourage women in/for their scientific careers. On-going dissemination in terms of promoting awareness of the equality of women in science and increasing their role/importance has been performed the whole time of the project’s duration and its aim is to make a point of improvement of the image and capacity of NIC Slovenia as an institution that actively promotes gender equality and an inclusive working environment. NIC also collaborated with the representative in charge for the Occupational Safety and Health who is also a Staff union representative at the preparation (July – September 2014) of the Survey among employees on the satisfaction at the workplace.
Questions are similar to those in the previous survey in 2012, but since NIC Slovenia has formed and adopted the Policy on preventing violence, torture and harassment in the workplace in 2013, this topic has been included in the questionnaire which was distributed among all employees of NIC Slovenia at the end of July. The purpose of this repeated survey and especially of the additional part of questionnaire is to find out if employees find their work environment as safe, healthy and supportive and if they have been treated with respect, fairness and sensitivity. Opinion of employees could also confirm or reject if the work on considering improvement of informal and formal procedures for conflict prevention, mediation and resolution has been successful and established at the internal level. Data from both surveys (2012 and 2014) have been compared and could be used in the future (after the conclusion of Genis Lab project) to detect the trends and services that are most relevant / requested by male and female staff.
In October a Workshop on soft skills was organized (October 1st and 2nd 2014). The tool used is the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI), i.e. a self-assessment tool that helps people understand what gives them a sense of self-worth and what’s important to them when relating with others. Before attending the workshop every participant filled out the survey. Presentation of soft skills, their role and importance (SDI methodology) has been made, since effective relationships are essential to business success. In order to gain new knowledge and skills on developing soft skills, social dialogue and interpersonal relations among co-workers which are essential for achieving good collaboration and successful working results, our work consisted of workshop and discussions in groups. Aims of the workshop were to understand the importance of soft skills and their development, better interpersonal relations which are needed for successful collaboration among co-workers in performing their work and for delivering results. With this experience understanding and improvement of teamwork, services, relationships, conflict management, the increase of trust and the decrease of conflict have been achieved. This workshop was organized for all employees in the General Sector and it was very well accepted among participants. Therefore, a recommendation to the management would be to organize this kind of workshops also in the future for other employees of the Institute.
Dimensions GB, HRM, OCS
Before the end of the Genis Lab project the Genis Lab Ex-post Gender Survey was formed and performed among NIC Slovenia's employees (October – November 2014). The results represent together with the initial Genis Lab Gender Survey (March 2011) an important component of qualitative gender analysis of career, resource allocation and organizational culture. According to the Gender Survey 2011, 65% of respondents were not sure about the effectiveness of the initiatives to promote gender equality undertaken so far at NIC Slovenia. This was a confirmation that Genis Lab was timely initiative that could address some needs in this regard. In the Ex-post Gender Survey, employees were asked about their opinion if Genis Lab project changed the way in which gender equality is dealt with at NIC Slovenia – 49% of female and 45% of male respondents think that Genis Lab project had some effect on dealing with gender equality at the Institute. Concerning employees being acquainted with gender issues, the survey results show some progress in comparison to the survey 2011. When asked about Genis Lab project and its activities at NIC, respondents showed relatively great extent of acquaintance with that. 61% of women and 64% of men said to be aware of the campaign on women in science that was realized at NIC Slovenia. The comparison of their results will be of valuable assistance in further aspiration for implementation of gender equality at NIC Slovenia.
Potential Impact:
Genis Lab potential impact is strongly related to its main output and results. The definition of a systemic approach, suitable to be replicated, adapted and used in organisations implementing scientific research at European level different from the ones directly involved in Genis Lab for the promotion of organizational change in the view of achieving greater gender equality in science and in supporting women in science careers goes in the direction of a multiplier effect deriving from the adoption of the Genis Lab approach. In the occasion of several EU level events (EU Gender Summit, Genport stakeholders meeting, EU DG Research project coordinator and evaluator meeting) the Genis Lab approach has been discussed and a process of knowledge sharing has been activated in networks including potential users. The publication and distribution of Achieving gender balance at the top of scientific research: guidelines and tools for institutional change (Genova Angela, De Micheli Barbara, Zucco Flavia, Grasso Claudia, Magri Benedetta, (2014). Genis Lab project. Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, Rome), available on project web side in all English, Italian, Spanish, Slovenian, Swedish, German and Serbian, clearly goes in this direction and aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on how to sustain women carrers in science through institutional change processes.
It is to be noted that the potential impact of the Genis Lab approach is suitable to be extended from institutional change initiatives aiming at promoting greater gender balance in scientific research to institutional change processes activated in order to promote the adoption of a Responsible Research and Innovation approach. The participatory transformative approach, the organisational analysis means and tools as well as the systemic approach implemented are suitable to be adapted not only to different types of organisations involved in scientific research but also to organisational changes processes including greater number of dimensions that merely the gender perspective.
A strong potential impact, in terms of extended usability outside the Genis Lab community, can be recognised also to the tailored approaches and tools, resulting from the adaptation to the specific characteristics of organisations implementing scientific research of approaches and tools successfully used in other contexts as means for organisational assessment and/or transformative change. The “Genis Lab” tested versions of the approaches and tools used for organisational analysis and contrast of gender stereotypes the Participatory Gender Audit and of the Gender Budgeting are suitable to be implement as tailored tools not necessarly in the framework of the systemic approach. In the case of Gender Budgeting it is to be said that it is arising interest in the scientific community and other DG Research funded projects (FESTA; TRIGGER) are requesting information and support to implement it in the framework of their initiatives. The same can be said for the analysis of the interaction between gender and science stereotypes implemented in the framework of the project which has be presented in several conferences and has been used to generate a training module for the EUN Academy - STEM course for science educators.
If the impact of the first two types of results is suitable to have a trasnational dimension, the impact of the structural change processes started in each of the six scientific organisations involved in Genis Lab is more linked to the long terms effects of the pathway started in the framework and with the ressources of the project. As presented in the section above, each Tailored Action Plans, has lead to the achievement of concrete results varying from one organisation to the other. Despite the variability of Tailored Action Plans, which reflect the differences in the conditions of depart as well as in the level of commitment in partners’ organisations, in all contexts the process of change has been activated with the immediate result of building a baseline of data on the gender dimension of each organisation, defining a set of actions aimed at promoting women careers via a progressive institutional change, preparing a team of gender and institutional change experts. In all organisations the conditions have been placed to continue the process and to monitor its effects in a longer period than the project life cycle. Part of these conditions are the papers and documents issued at organisational level as part of a raising awareness process of change.
The potential impact of the fifth type of results is wider than the European Community and potentially addresses the Scientific International Community. Papers on gender and science stereotypes, how to overcome cultural resistances to change, and how to redefine excellence in science contribute to an ongoing debate taking place in the international community and concenrning the new paradigm of sicientific research, the role of scientists, the process of innovation and change that sees new competences emerging and the reflection on how the gender perspective has an impact on all these dimensions. International context as the EU gender Summit have been the occasion to share these papers and to start to build a platform and a critical mass of interestd stakeholders discussing them.
For what concerns the dissemination and exploitation activities, the three objectives of GENIS LAB were:
- to raise relevant stakeholders awareness on the need/possibility of structural organisational changes in scientific organisations in order to contrast the under representation of women in research institutes and universities;
- to create cooperative environments supporting structural changes in organisations;
- to disseminate intermediate and final project outputs, in the European Scientific Community.
With reference to the first objective, different dissemination tools have been designed, in order to raise awareness on relevant stakeholders.
Within the first six months of the project, the project consortium, represented mainly by IPF (WP6 leader) and FGB has launched a dedicated website. The GENIS LAB website presents the project aims, partners, activities and tools. It has a restricted access blog were partners interact, a news section, and collects all the dissemination tools. Moreover, a “library” session is available in the website, where participants and interested people can find documents, articles and information on gender in science, and updates on project activities.
Furthermore, a project brochure has been created, and disseminated in project and external events linked to women and science, e.g. European Gender Summit, EPWS Meetings, in order to reach the highest possible coverage of stakeholders.
As foreseen in the project, a periodic newsletter has been issued every six months. The newsletter is a web-tool aimed to inform stakeholders and partner institutions on project activities and on how and what Europe is actually carrying out in the promotion of gender equality in science. In the newsletters we launched the “Become a Genis Lab ambassador” campaign to encourage partners to present and promote the GENIS LAB project within their activities and networks using the dissemination tools. The 7 newsletters published in the framework of the project included almost the same structure, namely: a double interview with actors of the Genis Lab team, a presentation of a GENIS LAB tool, networking opportunities, a focus on a specific number in relation to a news or a story related to women and science (e.g. 15, which is the number of female winners of the Nobel Prize in scientific fields), a presentation of a partner and of Genis Lab member of the staff.
Furthermore, the GENIS LAB team led by FGB designed and constantly updated a Facebook page available at: https://www.facebook.com/GenisLab and a LinkedIn page available at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Genis-Lab-5171652
The useful tools for dissemination activities and exploitation of results, and more specifically for what concerns the awareness campaign, are contained in the “Guidelines for the gender awareness campaign” drafted by FGB and ADS. The guidelines present several communication instruments in order to provide scientific partners with a toolkit that allows them to implement a local awareness campaign.
The tools are:
- Graphic campaign: to address stereotypes that regard women’s productivity at work. It uses a motto, irony, visual perception to act at an unconscious and deep level.
- Diversity management course: to show that HRM is the key to excellence. It stresses the need for managers to achieve expected results and gain advantage over competitors thanks to a deep understanding of their external environments and a capacity to optimize internal staff’s talent.
- Management skill sharing: to create a formal moment of skill sharing among management and staff to help avoiding prejudice on women’s attitude towards power and responsibilities.
- Video clip, let’s have fun: to create a video clip to vehiculate messages against stereotypes by subverting a famous song.
Re-Act – participative laboratory: to point out negative stereotypes, name and comment them through discussions facilitated by experts in workshops and by using theatrical tools.
With reference to the second objective, all GENIS LAB scientific partners have organized a launching conference between March and April 2011, involving their top management and internal staff, in order to present GENIS LAB objectives and expected results, and commit all the organization to the project activities. The launching conferences were beneficial to create a cooperative and collaborative environment within the scientific organizations’ staff, which helped the smooth implementation of the Participative Gender Audits and for the rest of project activities.
Also the partners’ meeting, including Transnational conference and Thematic meetings were useful to increase the commitment of partners, especially the hosting ones. The following meetings took place:
• Transnational Conference in Madrid (September 2011). In particular, the second day of the Madrid Conference saw the participation of Vice President of CSIC and the director of ICTP/CSIC, with a view to increase awareness of the top management on the need of structural change in scientific organizations within ICTP/CSIC.
• First Thematic Workshop in Belgrade (July 2012). Among others, Angela Genova (FGB) introduced the concept of “Gender Budgeting” to the partners. She explained why an organization should do “gender budgeting”, e.g. to get inside the control room, and she described how the gender budgeting process concretely works. Flavia Zucco (ADS) introduced activities on the awareness campaign on stereotypes, through a presentation titled: “Rise and fall(?) of women stereotypes in science”. After her presentation, she proposed as one of the main elements for the upcoming awareness campaign on stereotypes to launch the “Theatre of the Oppressed” experience in the scientific organizations partners of the project.
• 2nd Thematic Workshop in Turin (September 2012). Within the workshop, each technical partner described the methodology to be applied within the TAPs for their own field of competence. Then, scientific and technical partners worked together for the definition of TAPs.. There was also a RE-Act Demonstration Workshop. Mr. Olivier Malcor and Ms. Cinzia Belmonte presented the Re-Act Methodology, adapted to the Genis Lab context. Re-Act consists in learning activities which use theatre techniques and methodology to promote reactions on sensitive issues concerning stereotypes in science.
• 2nd International Conference, Karshamn - Sweden (April 2013). Special guests were: the vice Chancellor of BTH, Dr. Anders Hederstjerna and the University Chancellor, Dr Lars Haikola. On Thursday 18 April 2013, BTH academics presented the situation of gender equality in Sweden; they also presented the work of BTH in “Gender Research as Knowledge Resource in Technology and Engineering”, the gender equality policies of BTH and the work of BTH on gender budgeting and space allocation. Then, all scientific partners presented their TAPs, describing in particular the process leading to its definition and the main challenges for their implementation. There was also a session on dissemination activities of Genis Lab.
• 3rd Transnational Conference, Ljubljana - Slovenia (November 2013). NIC’s staff presented figures on the presence of women in research organizations in Slovenia, the graphic campaign planned and carried out by the Institute. FGB presented the project activities for the last year of the project, together with the time plan. FGB also reviewed the scientific partners’ work on gender budgeting. ITC ILO focused on indicators in monitoring TAP’s implementation. Then, scientific partners presented the results of the first year of their TAPs’ implementation. The final session of the day was dedicated to dissemination and was held by FGB: the Facebook page and LinkedIn group were displayed, as well as the fourth newsletter. On Friday 26 November 2013, ADS gave a training session for scientific partners focused on excellence in science.
• Partners’ Meeting, Dresden (June 2014). The main objectives of this meeting were: to share among scientific partners the main achievements in the implementation of the TAPs (quantitative and qualitative data) and to define the last steps of dissemination strategy: how to disseminate effectively Genis Lab’s results, how to organize the final Conference.
With reference to the third objective, first of all it is worth mentioning the main two dissemination outputs of the project, namely the Final International Conference and the production of the guidelines of efficient gender management tools tailored for scientific institution
• Final International Conference, Dresden, 12th December 2014.
On 12th December 2014, the final international conference of the GENIS LAB project took place in Dresden.
The conference aimed at exploring the state of the art in the field of gender equality in research in Europe, focusing on the European Commission strategy on Gender Equality in research in FP7 and H2020 and on the new challenges and resources for tackling the issue. The conference started with a welcome by Brigitte Voit and by Eva-Maria Strange, The Saxon State Ministry for Higer Education, Research and Art. In the first session, several speakers from the academic and research field talked about the Gender Equality Policies in Public Research (Anke Lipinsky, GESIS, Center of excellence Women and Science) and Integer project (Anne Pépin, senior researcher at CNRS, specialist nanotechnology, scientific advisor at the “Mission pour la place des femmes au CNRS” since 2006). A second session was devoted to the discussion on the new role that women can acquire in research and on what are the tools, method and resources for reaching this objective. All the afternoon session has been devoted to the presentation of the GENIS lab results. All the partners had the possibility to present the objectives, methodology and outputs reached with the implementation of their own TAP. A final round table has been useful for exchanging experiences among the partners of the projects. The scientific partners presented a poster summarizing the methodology and the results of their activities. The European conference was addressed also to indirect beneficiaries – such as policy makers at local, national and European levels. 73 participants attended the conference, and a live tweeting of the Conference was implemented with the hashtag #GenisLab.
• Guidelines of efficient gender management tools tailored for scientific institution
The final guidelines of the project were presented to the final international conference in Dresden. The title of the document is: “Achieving gender balance at the top of scientific research – guidelines and tools for institutional change”. The guidelines offer an overview on the approach and describe the tools applied during the four years of the GENIS LAB project, with the wish they might be useful to start up and implement institutional change processes in similar organisations, either with the aim of promoting gender equality but also in view of fostering structural changes for Responsible Research and Innovation. They have been developed by the three technical partners of the project: Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini (coordinator of the project); Associazione Donne e Scienza (Italian women in science organizations); International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization (Gender Unit), UN Agency. In particular, the authors are: Genova Angela, De Micheli Barbara, Zucco Flavia, Grasso Claudia, Magri Benedetta. The final guidelines were written and published in English, and they were then translated in the six languages of the project, namely: Italian, Serbian, Slovenian, Swedish, Spanish, German. The guidelines are downloadable from the GENIS LAB project website.
GENIS LAB has been presented by technical partners (FGB, ADS and ITC ILO) in several international meetings related to the link between women and science, listed here below:
2011
-Poster presentation and participation at the first European Gender Summit by Barbara De Micheli and Manuelita Mancini (FGB) that networked key players from all sectors to initiate the much-needed changes in the culture of research and innovation. These joint discussions produced the first ever collective agreement on policy development on gender for innovation, the policy manifesto on “Integrated Action on the Gender Dimension in Research”. The conference was organized within the GENSET project in Brussels 8-9th of November 2011.
2012
-Lecture on the Genis Lab project and its methodological tools “Gender budgeting in scientific organizations: reframing the gender equality tool”, made by FGB researcher on the project, Dr. Angela Genova, at the IAFFE (International Association for Feminist Economics) Annual Conference, Barcelona June 27-29 2012;
-The project brochure was distributed at the 8th European Feminist Research Conference, The Politics of Location Revisited: Gender@2012 - Budapest, Hungary on May 17-20, an event organized by the Central European University, Department of Gender Studies and ATGENDER;
-Poster presentation and participation of Barbara De Micheli and Barbara Kenny (FGB) at the European Conference on Gender and Innovation - Maximising Innovation Potential Through Diversity in Research Organisations, 19th-20th March 2012, Stuttgart, Germany.
-Flavia Zucco from Associazione Donne e Scienza presented Genis Lab to the European Parliament during the “Towards a Gender Balanced Science Culture to Foster Innovation” meeting organized by the EPWS in January 2012 in Brussels;
-FGB, ADS and ITC ILO participated, to the Second European Gender Summit held at the European Parliament in Brussels, On November 29-30, 2012.
-ILO informed about Genis Lab activities in Brussels, on 29-30 November 2012 – “Developing Systematic Implementation Strategy to Advance EU Policy on Gender Equality in Science, as part of HORIZON 2020, European Research Area and Innovation Union”.
2013
-FGB and ADS presented Genis Lab project at the Padova University, in occasion of the opening event of the Gendertime project, on June 12, 2013;
-ADS presented Genis Lab project at the Naples University , in occasion of the launch of the new European project Genovate It’s Time For Gender Action In Research, on June 25, 2013;
-ADS gave a lecture on “Why promote women in science” at the University La Sapienza of Rome on October 7, 2013. The lecturer was Dr. Flavia Zucco;
-ADS promoted Genis Lab with a poster at the conference “Structural Changes Encouraging Gender Equality in Scientific Institutions” held in Vilnius on November 21-22, 2013;
-FGB and ILO informed about Genis Lab activities in Brussels, on 2 December 2013 “Gender Workshop. On the way to the top: providing equal opportunities for men and women in science and technology” organized by the European Research Council
2014
-On 24 and 25 March 2014, Barbara De Micheli and Flavia Zucco attended to the "Stages - Structural Transformation to Achieve Gender Equality in Science” FP7 project meeting in Brussels;
-on 30 June 2014, Barbara De Micheli presented GENIS LAB intermediate results to the EU Gender Summit
-on 4 September 2014, Angela Genova participated to the 8th European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education Participation and presented the gender budgeting metholodogy;
-on 11 September 2014, Barbara De Micheli participated to Workshop on evaluation of Gender Equality Plans organized in Brussels.
-production of articles related to the project published on the “inGenere” web magazine (www.ingenere.it).
-on April 2014, publication of the review “Assessing excellence” by Flavia Zucco retrievable online
-on 26-28 August 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab project by Flavia Zucco in the Gender issue session CMD25 - JMC14 see http://www.sfpnet.fr/index.php?page=tpage&id=21 in Paris;
-on 12 September 2014, reporting about GENIS Lab’s activities by Claudia Grasso at the internal meeting of ADS;
-on 20-21 November 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab by Flavia Zucco during the international conference RRI CNR “Science, Innovation and Society: achieving Responsible Research and Innovation”
-updating of GENIS Lab project in the internal newsletter “Gender Info” of the ITC-ILO;
-presentation of GENIS Lab project to the CERN top management and HR management;
-presentation of GENIS Lab project and results to INFN top management and staff in Frascati;
-on 1 January – 30 June 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in “Training support on gender responsive budgeting implementation in Haiti (year 2014)” in Port-au-Prince, Haiti;
-on 18 February 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in Advisory mission to INFN;
-on 31 March – 2 April, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in “Lear4Dev joint learning journey and expert meeting on EU resource package on gender mainstreaming in development cooperation” in Brussels;
-on 5-9 May 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in Advisory mission to Dresden;
-on 3-5 September 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in “Gender and employment policy course” in Turin;
-on 9-12 September 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in “Global workshop on sectoral experiences in gender-responsive planning and budgeting: increasing accountability in financing for gender equality” in Turin;
-on 20 November 2014 Barbara De Micheli presented Genis Lab in the World Café How to foster Institutional Changes for Responsible Research and Innovation? In the framework odf the SIS-RRI conference in Rome http://www.sis-rri-conference.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/programma-def_13112014.pdf;
-on 11-14 November 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab experience in “Training for the NTT of the National Women's Employment Action Plan” in Ankara.
Here follows a summary of the dissemination activities carried on by each scientific partner. The activities implemented respond to the three objectives of WP6 by means of the above tools:
IPF - Germany
-The EO webpage is updated, an on-line feedback system and guidelines for parental leave are available.
-IPF-Intern is a three-month IPF-newsletter distributed among several partners and national/international networks of the IPF.
-Genis Lab project is publicized in the main building of IPF and through its Yearly Report.
-Guidance on parental leave on EO website (IPF intranet) together with the useful links on “Active fatherhood” with a special page for PhD students with children are already in place.
-Presentation of GENIS Lab in the frame of the Celebration of 20th Anniversary of Leibniz Association (WGL)
-On April 2014, presentation of the GENIS Lab poster in the Annual Reception of the IPF.
-Publication on the Annual Report of the IPF (www.ipfdresden.de/publications) of the activities carried out with GENIS Lab.
-On March and December 2014, report about the activities of GENIS Lab and “berufundfamilie” to the Managing Meeting of the IPF;
-On 13 October 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab in the Meetings of the Dresden EOs of the research and academia institutions;
-On November and December 2014, report about the activities of GENIS Lab to the Scientific Board of the IPF and to the General Meeting of the IPF;
-Organization by the IPF-EO Dr. Victoria Albrecht of an information event on GENIS Lab and “berufundfamilie” for manager positions at the IPF;
-Presentation by the IPF-EO Dr. Victoria Albrecht of the GENIS Lab activities during the meetings of the workforce (“Betriebsversammlung”) about news concerning paternity / parental benefits and GENIS Lab;
-Agreement with the Network “KinderMobil Familienhilfe- und Kinderbetreuungsverein” concerning the disposition of emergency assistance for children for unpredictable situations. This agreement was widely disseminated through the EO website (IPF Intranet) as well as in the meeting of the workforce. The telephone number for emergencies is available on the EO website as well as in the IPF-telephone index.
ICTP/CSIC – Spain
-The implementation of the forum in the website.
-The organization of a cycle of seminars from June 2013 to May 2014. The seminars took place in the ICTP and the participation was quite good. In each meeting a woman from the academic and scientific filed was invited. All speakers divided their talk in two parts, the first part was devoted to the careers and personal experiences. The second part was devoted more on the scientific works. Among others:
• 11 February 2014 with Consuelo del Cañizo (ex-director of the L’OREAL Foundation with title “Ciencia y Cosmética” “science and cosmetics”)
• 06 April 2014 with Rosa Menendez (Researcher) “Revolución científica y tecnológica en los materiales de carbon” “Scientific and technology revolution in carbon materials”
• 8 May 2014 with Dr. Concepció Rovira Angulo (Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Barcelona CSIC).
-Publication of the relevant information of the GENIS Lab Project in the organization website and diffusion of posters, flyers and save the date into the various institutes of the CSI and beyond. The promotion of the GENIS Lab Final Conference has been made also through the ICTP newsletter. Moreover, the association Mujeres y Ciencia has been involved in the dissemination activity tanks to the support given through its broadcast and web page.
INFN – Italy
INFN realized the following objectives:
-In March 2013 the INFN built its internal website of Genis Lab project;
-INFN made a presentation of Genis Lab during Genovate Seminar on June 25, 2013 in Naples;
-Seminar “Why to promote women in science” was organized with technical partner ADS on October 7, 2013;
-INFN made a presentation of Genis Lab project to CNF on October 16, 2013 in Naples;
-it organized a seminar about raising awareness on the issue of skills held on November 27, 2013 in INFN’s Trieste section;
-it organized a Re-ACT play on December 10, 2013 in Frascati. 30 participants attended;
-on 25th February 2014, organization of a training course titled: “Change Management - The Competency Model and Organizational Change Management”, in Frascati (RM) with Sudeshna Datta, Head of HR Diversity at CERN Ombdus and expert for the CCM, where both top management and employees were involved. 20 participants attended the course (5 GENIS Lab team members and 15 INFN employees).
-on 7-8 May 2014, a series of lectures hosted in Pisa on the subject: "Gender and science: an open issue", organized in the framework of promoting the change of the organizational culture and solution of the gender stereotypes objectives of the GENIS LAB TAP, and in close collaboration with the Donne e Scienza organization. The lectures focused, among others, on: a historical overview of women in academia in Italy (Prof. Paola Govoni, Univ. of Bologna); teaching of science, meritocracy and school choices (Prof. Patrizia Colella, Donne e Scienza);
-at the beginning of May has been organized a series of interviews with senior staff about technical competencies of the personnel in the institute and core values,
-online survey about technical competencies of two pilot structures of the INFN (National Laboratories of Frascati and INFN Trieste), which has been completed by 158 employees of both structures (36% of LNF and 67% of Trieste employees).
-on 10th July 2014, presentation of the INFN Competency Model by Oretta Di Carlo at the training course entitled “Measurement Systems and Performance Evaluation”, at the National Gran Sasso Laboratories which was attended by employees engaged in the Human Resources Management area throughout the INFN sites.
-on 31st October 2014, presentation of INFN Competency Model and its application on education and training by Sara Arnone at the National Training Committee meeting at INFN Perugia.
-on 12-14 November 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab activities by Maria Luigia Paciello during a convention organized by Donne e Scienza titled “Science, gender and society: where do we stand? Gender perspectives into a science that evolves” in Trento.
-on 4-5 December 2014, organization of training course titled: “Gender balance: the development and management of human resources through the promotion of gender equity” in Frascati.
BTH – Sweden
- the HR director has decided to include the Genis Lab HRM TAP in the ordinary development work at BTH;
- the introduction of the BTH score card is also an instrument for dissemination within the whole organization;
- Genis Lab Report From Blekinge Institute Of Technology, Sweden / Gender Budgeting, Human Resources, Organisational Culture - Development Of Methods;
- BTH Equality Strategy 2104 – 2016 Equal Rights and Possibilities (to be translated to English);
- report from the R&D&I project “A norm-critical game culture”;
- BTH score card (the new version after reorganisation of the whole university to be finalized);
- to be published the book titled Change @Campus Karlshamn / OUR STORY- CULTURE, NORMS and GENDER at Blekinge Institute of Technology.
NIC – Slovenia
- - Graphic campaign on stereotypes: four campaigns were presented and launched on November 25-26, 2013 at the Genis Lab Transnational Conference in Ljubljana.
- -A promotional video was published on the Youtube channel and spread via Facebook and LinkedIn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvwvMyZpqFE
- -A silicone wristband for gender awareness campaign was also produced.
- -It was carried out the Institute’s open day on October, 2012, attended by 20 primary school children. The NIC’s open day took place also on October 8-9, 2013. In this occasion, participants were around 300 children from elementary and high schools and visitors from the NIC’s industrial partners.
- -Genis Lab corner on the NIC Slovenia’s website has been continuously updated.
- - on 15 January 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab during the opening event of the project on balancing power relations between men and women, conducted by the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities of the Republic of Slovenia and co-financed by the Norwegian Financial Mechanism Programme 2009-2014, entitled“Gender Equality Pays Off!”;
- -on 7th march 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab project during the conference organized by the Slovenian Commission for Women in Science on the occasion of the upcoming International Women's Day;
- -on 7-8 October 2014, organization of NIC Slovenia's open day attended by 328 children from Slovenian elementary and high schools.
- -on 13-14 November 2014, presentation of GENIS Lab project during a conference organized by the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities of the Republic of Slovenia and the Women’s Lobby of Slovenia and co-financed by the Norwegian Financial Mechanism Programme 2009-2014, entitled “Women 20 years after Beijing”;
- -on December, distribution of GENIS Lab USB Key.