Promoting gender equality in research
According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020 published by the World Economic Forum, “All things being equal, with current trends, the overall global gender gap can be closed in 99.5 years.” Put plainly, this means we won’t see gender equality in our lifetimes. Taking action to raise awareness and empower women is therefore just as important as it has ever been. EU-funded project GE Academy is contributing to this effort by promoting gender equality in research. The project has three goals. First, it aims to increase the skills of managers, academic staff and others implementing gender equality measures in their institutions. Second, it strives to deepen the expertise of researchers interested in the gender dimension of their work. Last, it aims to further develop the skills of gender experts willing to train research and higher education communities in Europe and abroad. Executed in at least 15 countries, GE Academy’s capacity-building programme includes in-person training sessions, summer schools, workshops, webinars, distributive open collaborative courses and train-the-trainer sessions.
Six online training sessions
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2021, the project is now holding a Gender in Research Weeks training series consisting of six online sessions that will be spread across the months of March and April. The training sessions’ purpose is to convey knowledge and enhance participants’ awareness about the integration of sex and gender dimensions in science and technology research. The first session, titled Introductory online training on the sex and gender dimension in sciences and technology fields, will be held on 4 March. Compulsory for participants who are unfamiliar with the concept of gender in research, this session introduces the basic concepts and definitions related to integrating sex and gender in research content. The date set for the second training session Gender dimension in research: 4 Case Studies from the STEM Field is 18 March. The session will provide an in-depth introduction to the inclusion of gender in four research fields: mobility, energy, human–computer interaction and robotics. This is followed by Sex and gender dimension in research: Health & Medicine on 23 March. Sessions 4 (25 March), 5 (15 April) and 6 (22 April) are in-depth sessions that follow up on the second – STEM field – session. The three sessions focus on the sex and gender dimension in the research fields of mobility, human–computer interaction and robotics, respectively.
Repository of gender equality knowledge
Interested parties can also access the GE Academy (Gender Equality Academy) project’s repository of webinars and online sessions. The purpose is to facilitate the uptake of gender issues in research and innovation. The project ends in December 2021. For more information, please see: GE Academy project website
Keywords
GE Academy, gender, gender equality, research, training, International Women’s Day