Ensuring the future of democracy requires empowering all social group to engage, yet the gender gap in political leadership, ambition and self-efficacy is the most persistent across Western democracies. The situation when looking across the intersect of gender, social class and ethnicity becomes even more grave. These differences have been shown to begin in the school and classroom dynamics has been cited as the likely socialisation process that leads to these different outcomes.
G-EPIC is a group of universities and other organisations working together to find ways to reduce gender inequality in politics. G-EPIC brings together experts from different fields, including political science, sociology, gender & youth studies, education, and psychology. The seven partners in six countries (BE, CZ, DK, GE, ES, UK) will start by looking at existing data to understand how attitudes towards politics are learned. We will then create experiments in schools and test new interventions with the help of teachers and students. These experiments and interventions will be evaluated and will lead to the development of the Gender Empowerment in Classroom intervention. This will be delivered in schools across Europe, which could lead to real change and a reduction in the gender gap in politics. We will also evaluate the national context and the local and European policy framework to design regulations and policies that encourage more girls from disadvantaged backgrounds to get involved in politics.
The expected impact is:
The project will make a scientific impact through the analysis of the data collected that will show why there is unequal gender political engagement. G-EPIC tools will help tackle gender inequality in politics in the classroom through the gender empowerment intervention. The intervention will help girls get more confident and motivated to get involved in politics. We think these girls will be more involved in politics when they can vote. This could mean that they know they can choose less traditional careers, like running for office or a career in politics. Finally, the collected data will be used to make recommendations to policymakers and civil society organisations working in education, gender equality, youth well-being, social inclusion and civic engagement.
The research will benefit 1,875 young people (900 girls) involved in the intervention in five countries. The project will also affect about 200 teachers who will have taken part in and been trained in Gender Empowerment at the Continued Professional Development workshop. We expect to have a total impact on 700 policymakers and civil society activists at the EU level. They will receive the policy brief and 120 of them will be directly involved in the advisory boards.
