Improved tools for tackling gender inequality in academia, research and innovation
Gender and feminist scholarship has built up a significant body of research over the past few decades about gender issues – and gender inequalities – in the workplace. Despite such advances however, knowledge and acceptance of certain gender issues have struggled to penetrate many mainstream academic disciplines. Furthermore, although an increase in gender capacity building and training in research has been seen over the past decade, some regions, such as central and eastern Europe, have not been as well served by training programmes. With tight budgets and an array of other priorities, many research organisations continue to struggle to invest their own resources into gender equality training. There is also the risk that research and innovation organisations make one-off ‘token’ gender equality training commitments, instead of aiming to achieve structural change.
Building capacity on gender equality in R&I
To address these challenges, the GE Academy (Gender Equality Academy) project developed and implemented a capacity-building programme on gender equality in research, innovation and higher education. “The project aimed to increase the skills of those implementing gender equality measures in their institutions, such as management, administrators, HR managers and academic staff,” explains GE Academy project coordinator Vicky Moumtzi, chief operating officer at ViLabs, Greece. “It also sought to deepen the expertise of researchers interested in the gender dimension of their work.” This was achieved through the design, pilot testing and implementation of a broad set of training materials on gender equality in research and institutional change. Training topics included: gender bias in recruitment, promotion, and career management; integration of the gender dimension in curricula and teaching content in different sciences and technology fields; and developing and implementing Gender Equality Plans. The latter is of particular relevance given the introduction of an eligibility criterion in Horizon Europe that requires all applying higher education institutions, research organisations and public bodies from Member States and associated countries have in place a Gender Equality Plan. The programme, which ran until December 2021, included in-person training, summer schools, interactive workshops, webinars and train-the-trainer sessions, both online and offline. A summer school on Gender Equality Plans and the challenge of intersectionality was hosted by Technological University Dublin in Ireland in the summer of 2021. Materials and courses were made freely available to institutions and researchers through the website. “Our programme addressed the broad spectrum of topics concerned with the ‘mainstreaming’ of gender expertise in different disciplinary areas and scientific fields,” adds Moumtzi. “We also took intersectionality into account. This refers to the interlocking, complex system of inequalities and differences in which individuals are embedded.”
Valuable training resource
A key legacy of the project is the GE Academy website, which, since project completion, continues to provide a single entry point for accessing all project resources. “All past training activities and materials, as well as more up-to-date resources that can feed into the training design process, are accessible though the website,” says Moumtzi. “We are also looking into the possibility of hosting training session workshops via the GE Academy platform. Several partner organisations are also interested in delivering demand-driven trainings.” In addition, the trainers’ database, which includes all the gender experts who were engaged throughout the GE Academy’s implementation phase, is available. There is also a distributed open collaborative platform, accessible via the website, where users can free-browse courses on gender equality relevant to research and higher education. The GE Academy produced two policy briefs, which draw on the experiences and lessons learned during the project. The first focuses on the capacity-building challenges ahead, and aims to support efforts towards harmonising Gender Equality Plans in the new European Research Area framework. The second contains guidance for consistent national frameworks on gender equality in R&I. Both papers are now available through the project website.
Keywords
GE Academy, gender, feminist, equality, intersectionality, capacity-building, training, R&I
