Final Report Summary - TRIGGER (TRansforming Institutions by Gendering contents and Gaining Equality in Research)
Executive Summary:
The TRIGGER Project “TRansforming Institutions by Gendering contents and Gaining Equality in Research” aimed at promoting systemic interventions designed to have deep, long-lasting and widespread impacts at all the different levels in 5 research organisations. The project, coordinated and co-funded by the Italian Government, assisted by an institute specialised in gender and science, involved as co-funders five universities from different EU countries (Czech Republic, France, Italy, UK, Spain). Building on the results of earlier projects, integrated actions have been implemented at each university addressing different fields of gender inequality in science, i.e.:
1) Working environment, formal/informal culture and explicit/tacit rules (awareness-raising; collection of gender-sensitive data; support in the early stages of scientific careers; promotion of work-life balance, etc.).
2) Content and methods of scientific research, to acknowledge its gender dimension and impact (updating of teaching curricula; gendering the design of research and technological innovation; allocation of funds for gendered research; contrasting stereotypes about women in science, etc.).
3) Scientific leadership at different levels (selection procedures and criteria for the evaluation of scientific merit; introduction of equality targets in decision making bodies; enhancement of women researchers’ visibility, etc.).
Each of the 5 involved partners have designed and carried out a tailored action plan including measures related to all 3 fields, whose relative weight depended on their specific characteristics, situations and needs. A set of common activities, including technical assistance, monitoring & evaluation, and public communication have been also performed to valorise and disseminate the results of the Action Plans Europe-wide.
TRIGGER has been characterised by integration, customisation, systematic nature, concreteness. Public debate and awareness have been generated on these issues Europe-wide. Added value has been yielded both on the strategic level, by the strong focus on gendering research, and on the operational level, through fostering mutual learning among partners and among the different European structural change projects, to share ideas and building blocks of the structural change process towards gender equality.
Project Context and Objectives:
1. PROJECT AS A WHOLE
The European Union is committed to remove inequalities and to promote equality between men and women in all its activities, including research and innovation. Indeed, gender inequality in science is a long-lasting problem, since, despite some slow improvements, women remain insufficiently represented among scientists, mainly at top levels, also in the EU member states (see She Figures, 2015, https://ec.europa.eu/research/swafs/pdf/pub_gender_equality/she_figures_2015-final.pdf#view=fit&pagemode=none).
In its nearly 20-years policy effort, the European Commission launched, in the early 2010s, a strategy promoting structural change processes inside research institutions, geared at introducing gender equality and gender-aware management in a permanent way, through dedicated projects and gender action plans. This strategy, started in the second part of the 7th Framework Programme for research and innovation of the EC, has been continued and intensified in the subsequent Horizon 2020 programme. The remarkable developments of EU policy-making in this area gradually led from awareness-raising efforts to a wide set of pilot projects trying to actually implement change, finally giving the way to the perspective of structural change. A shift has also occurred as concerns general perspectives: from women scientists to research organisations and universities as the main targets of actions (from “fixing the women” to “fixing the organisations”), and from the prevalence of traditional equal opportunities approaches to the growing importance of the issue of the gender dimension of research design and process as a crucial lever for fundamental change (“fixing the knowledge”).
In this framework, TRIGGER aimed to contribute to implement structural change in five institutions, identifying views and building block of the structural change process, to produce deep, systematic and long-lasting change in scientific and technological organisations, coherently and innovatively combining the most promising notions and tools developed along the way, also taking advantage from the fact it is participating in what is already the fourth wave of structural change initiatives launched by the EC. The challenge the project chose to undertake was consequently that of translating an advanced set of gender-equality oriented policies and approaches into widespread social action, that is, into concrete, active and daily support to change at all levels, affecting the ordinary functioning and daily behaviour of people at the 5 involved organisations, thus initiating (“triggering”) self-sustained and durable change processes.
Considering the wide scope of the aim and the challenge identified, the objectives of the project specifically target, but at the same time go beyond, the involved organisations. From the practical point of view, TRIGGER envisaged five objectives.
The first objective was to concretely apply different self-tailored action plans (hereinafter APs), geared at introducing gender-aware management at all levels in each of the participating organisations, i.e. Université Paris Diderot (UPD - France), Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (ISAS - Czech Republic), Birkbeck College (BBK - United Kingdom) , Università di Pisa (UNIPI - Italy) Vysoka skola chemicko-technologicka v Praze (VSCHT - Czech Republic) and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM - Spain).
A second objective was carrying out a coordinated and specific effort in all the involved institutions aimed at experimenting innovative measures for the practical gendering of the priority-setting and design process of scientific research and technological innovation, to test their actual potential in triggering far-reaching and deep change.
A third objective was ensuring the sustainability of the action plans by constantly negotiating change with all involved stakeholders, also enlarging the area of the stakeholders considered so to include relevant external actors, whose participation would favour wider social innovation dynamics, in turn increasing longer-term sustainability.
The fourth objective was producing a deeper understanding of the dynamics surrounding structural change efforts by constantly analysing, monitoring and assessing the process activated in each institution, which also makes mutual learning practices among partners systematic and rewarding. Fifth and last, the project set out to provide an active arena for discussion and exchange among the players involved in the different structural change initiatives throughout Europe, in order to share its efforts and results in consolidating and setting up a sort of integrated model for interpreting structural change.
In order to achieve its goals, several interconnected activities have been designed and implemented.
1.1. DRAFTING AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ACTION PLANS
The drafting of the Action Plans was carried out prior to the presentation of the proposal for financing. The Action Plans were designed using a common theoretical and methodological framework defining three strategic areas respectively pertaining to: the promotion of a friendly environment for women; the development of gender-aware science; the promotion of women’s leadership in science. This common framework was used as a tool for both building a comparable and communicable perspective to share and make the most of the different experiences, and for the effective tailoring of the design to the concrete reality and needs of each partner. The implementation process lasted four years and was conducted according to a common roadmap. A sustainability plan has been also defined for each Action Plan so as to ensure the continuation of the Actions after the TRIGGER project lifespan.
1.2. TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
A continuous technical assistance activity to the Teams engaged with the Action Plans has been provided. This activity was oriented at steering and continuously adjusting the Action Plan to changing conditions as well as at coordinating and promoting mutual learning processes among all the partners. The technical assistance included different kinds of activities, e.g.: manage internal discussion and exchange; the organisation of bilateral monitoring sessions; the organisation of working sessions on common issues and emerging problems, with the production and dissemination of handouts and guidance documents on specific issues; the organisation of regular on-site visits. All activities have been conducted either in the presence or at a distance. In the framework of the technical assistance, different mutual learning activities have been conducted in order to favour an exchange of practices and experiences among the partners. Moreover, a feasibility study on the sustainability of the TRIGGER Action Plans has been proposed, aimed at favouring the preparation of the sustainability plans of the actions included in each Action Plan (see 1.1. above).
1.3. ONGOING AND FINAL EVALUATION
An evaluation service has been provided, including three in-progress evaluation exercises and a final evaluation. For each exercise, an evaluation report has been discussed with each concerned team, and subsequently delivered. The evaluation process was based on an evaluation model including five dimensions: effectiveness, efficiency, impact, sustainability, and relevance. For each dimension, a set of indicators have been applied. To carry out the evaluation process, specific technical instruments (questionnaires and grids) have been developed on the basis of data and information resulting from technical assistance and monitoring.
1.4. ACCOMPANYING RESEARCH
Leveraging upon the information collected through both the technical assistance and the evaluation process, an accompanying research on the implementation dynamics of the action plans has been conducted all over the project period. Such a research was geared to coordinate and interpret the whole information set which was being collected on what was going on in the participating institutions, so to lay the ground for the drafting of Guidelines (see point 1.5. below).
1.5. GUIDELINES
Directly deriving from the structural change experience, the Guidelines addressed the “how-to” dimension with respect to the activation of the change process, so as to favour acceptance and assure long-run sustainability for the actions implemented through gender equality plans in research institutions. The Guidelines – developed through a mutual learning process and experience exchange among the participating organisations – also in collaboration with other European Projects such as EGERA, FESTA, GARCIA, GenderTime, GenisLab, GENOVATE, INTEGER and STAGES, have been produced with the aim of spreading, among European universities and research institutes, successful practices and negotiation strategies favouring structural transformations. The contents of final guidelines came from mutual learning among participants and stakeholders, and from accompanying research based on different sources as monitoring, evaluation and technical assistance to the projects, etc. The combination of these approaches has been summarized in clusters of processes, organised around an elementary model of the process of change discussed within the consortium and outside it, which provided a structure for the final guidelines.
1.6. NETWORKING, DISSEMINATION AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION
During project implementation, a set of networking, dissemination and public communication activities have been carried out. Such activities have been implemented both at the project level and at the level of the participating organisations. At the project level, these activities were aimed at regularly spreading information about the TRIGGER project, establishing forms of exchange with other EC-funded structural change projects and spreading the Guidelines. To these ends, a project website has been created, where the main project products have been uploaded. A project newsletter has been regularly produced and disseminated. A mid-term and a final conference of the TRIGGER project have been organised. At the level of single participating organisations, networking, dissemination and public communication activities were aimed at increasing the internal and external visibility of the Action Plans and starting a dialogue with local and national social partners (relevant governmental agencies, local authorities, women’s networks and associations, etc.) to involve them in the change process. Each team created one specific website or webpage regularly spreading information on the Action Plan.
1.7. GENERAL MANAGEMENT
General management activities have included technical and administrative coordination, financial management, intellectual property management, relations with the European Commission and ongoing and final evaluation of the project as a whole. In order to enhance the substantive aspects of the project, an International Board of Advisors has been established, with the participation of experts in gender and science and leading scientists from different disciplinary fields. The Board was composed of: Lotte Bailyn, Professor of Management and Professor of Management emerita at MIT’s Sloan School of Management; Maria Joao Marcelo Curto, a Portuguese senior researcher with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Imperial College, London, where she worked under Sir Derk Barton, Nobel Prize of Chemistry; Stefan Fuchs, a sociologist and currently head of the Regional Research Network at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg, Germany; Alice Hogan, an independent consultant advising and evaluating university programmes and policies to advance the participation of women in academic science and engineering; Dalia Šatkovskiene, an internationally known specialist in the field of quantum mechanics of molecules.
2. ACTION PLANS’ IMPLEMENTATION
2.1. UNIVERSITA’ DI PISA (UNIPI)
The University of Pisa Action Plan aimed at promoting an integrated set of actions targeting at implementing structural changes conducive of gender equality and equal opportunities in six Science and Technology Departments (in the medical area and engineering), with many actions targeting the whole University. The plan has been characterised by a strong focus on both permanent innovative institutional arrangements, and content-oriented initiatives, aimed at practically demonstrating the usefulness of taking into account gender priorities, points of view and peculiarities within the research and innovation processes. Work-life balance initiatives have been addressed to build on and improve existing services. A sustainability plan has been issued to support the full integration of the actions in the ordinary life of the university. The action plan was divided into 6 tasks: the first task was devoted to Actions promoting change in organisational cultures and behaviours. Actions in the second task aimed at improving and making existing services permanent, while also encouraging the sharing of care responsibilities between men and women (whole university). The third task was devoted to supporting early-stage career development. The fourth Task was devoted to promoting actions to change gender stereotypes Science and Technology and to overcome consequent career distortions. The sixth and final task was dedicated to promoting women’s leadership of science. This task included actions sustaining women’s presence and visibility in leadership positions connected to the different aspects of scientific work.
2.2. VYSOKA SKOLA CHEMICKO-TECHNOLOGICKA V PRAZE (VSCHT ) WITH THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE INSTITUTE OF SOCIOLOGY OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC (ISAS)
The priorities and strategic areas of VSCHT and ISAS Action Plan were:
1) Professional and career development of women and early-career researchers
• Working culture and environment, elimination of gender stereotypes, awareness-raising
• Changing of institutional practices and rules
• Providing direct support to female researchers and women and early-career researchers
• Assessment of the current situation, winning the support of leaders, training and workshops for top management and researchers, publication of interviews with women researchers
• Working conditions, work-life balance measures
• mentoring, women’s network, career advice, empowerment and soft-skills training
2) Promote women’s leadership in research and research management
• Assess and revise institutional practices and rules
• Enhancement of women researchers’ visibility and empowerment of women researchers
• Professional assessment and evaluations, selection procedures and criteria for the evaluation, introduction of equality targets in decision-making bodies
• Communication training, training to access decision-making boards and committees
• Gendering contents and methods of scientific activity
• Improve expertise concerning the integration of gender and sex analysis into research
• workshops in cooperation with the Yellow Window, training on the gender dimension in curricula and the pedagogical process
• Develop institutional conditions and opportunities to promote the integration of gender dimension into research
• Setting rules for funding and allocation of funds for gendered research, promoting doctoral theses with gender dimension.
In this framework, the Action Plan involved a set of integrated activities, targeting the entire university and all faculties, geared at achieving sustainable results in key strategic areas – i.e. to create more women-friendly environments, promote gender-aware science and women´s leadership of science – with specifically tailored gender equality actions.
2.3. BIRKBECK COLLEGE (BBK)
The implementation of the TRIGGER project at Birkbeck comprised actions regarding understanding gender cultures in the College, raising awareness about the role of gender in academic work and in the research process, fostering the career of early stage researchers, and enhancing leadership and networking skills. Another action involved supporting the commercialisation of women’s work.
TRIGGER mainly involved the SET fields studied at Birkbeck: the School of Science and the Departments of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, and Computer Science and Information Systems in the School of Business, Economics and Informatics. The general objective was that of changing the academic culture, by focusing on the strategies to positively involve all potential stakeholders and overcome indifference, resistance and backlash. TRIGGER actions at Birkbeck aimed to impact different sides of the gender-and-science issue and to build new perspectives beyond the traditional “neutral” understanding of science.
2.4. UNIVERSITE’ PARIS DIDEROT (UPD)
University Paris Diderot proposed a large action plan because there already existed a unit in charge of gender equality (le pole égalité femmes hommes). The plan included 28 actions addressing, according to their specific features, one or both of the more directly participating institutes (Physics and Biology), but often also the whole university. The Action plan included: actions promoting change in organisational cultures and behaviours; actions promoting work-life balance; actions supporting early-stage career development; actions challenging gender stereotypes in S&T and consequent career distortions; actions aimed at gendering S&T contents and methods; actions promoting women’s leadership in the practice of research; actions promoting women’s leadership in the management of research; actions promoting women’s leadership in scientific communication; actions promoting women’s leadership in innovation. An action aimed at combating sexual harassment was added during operation. Most of the actions performed were extended to other organizations making part of the same community of higher education institutions, created in the year preceding the TRIGGER start.
2.5. UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE MADRID (UPM)
The UPM Action Plan promoted an integrated set of actions aimed at triggering structural-level change at the University, to be later incorporated in and made permanent through the Equality Action Plan that UPM had to draft and implement following Spanish normative requirements, actually entered into force during the last project year. The actions, addressing many problem areas relevant to gender equality, targeted the whole University, even though three Schools (School of Architecture/ETSAM; School of Building Engineering/ETSEM; School of Industrial Engineering/ETSII) have been– even if to a different extent – the forerunners, both in the planning and implementation of activities targeting all Faculties and Schools, and in the testing of additional ones, specific to their characteristics and previous experience. The Action Plan encompassed the creation of a UNESCO international chair on gender.
Project Results:
In the following sections, the main results deriving from the five Action Plans will be shortly described. Then, a brief presentation of the results coming from the other cross-cutting activities included in the Project will be recalled.
1. UNIVERSITY OF PISA (UNIPI)
1.1. GENERAL APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTATION
The University of Pisa is one of the oldest and largest Italian universities, with 52,000 enrolled students and beyond 1,500 professors in 20 Departments. The percentage of women in each step of careers was in the project beginning in line with the national average (female were 52% among undergraduate students, 51% of graduate students, 42.8% of researchers, 33% of associate professors, and 15% of full professors). Despite the several differences among the various departments, the gradient of exclusion is more pronounced in the scientific field. Because of this, the actions promoted by the TRIGGER project focused on six Science and Technology Departments (in medical area and engineering). To support gender equality and gender sensitiveness at Pisa University, the action plan promoted an integrated set of actions focused on both permanent innovative institutional arrangements aimed at implementing structural changes conducive to gender equality and equal opportunities, and content-oriented initiatives, aimed at practically demonstrating the usefulness of taking into account gender priorities, points of view and peculiarities within research and innovation processes.
An articulated set of actions has been devised in the six Departments, and the active participation and support of distinguished scientists (also from other universities, thanks to the collaboration with the National Conference of Italian University of Equality Bodies) has been ensured with a view to testing innovative research procedures fully integrating the gender perspective (also sponsoring scholarship and annual dissertation awards). On the basis of the results of the tests conducted, at the end of the project a teaching module on the gendered aspects of research and on gendered research tools and procedures in the medicine area and engineering has been established.
1.2. MAIN RESULTS
The whole action plan has been implemented and the most part of the actions will be continued in the future, as detailed in the sustainability plan devised by the project team, thanks to the collaboration of the team with the Delegate of the Rector in Gender Studies & Equal Opportunities and the University Unique Committee of Guarantee (CUG). Among the actions made permanent, it’s worth mentioning the creation and regular updating of an on-line database of female scientists, and the establishment of a permanent teaching module for PhD courses on gender equality and gender in research. The following aspects are to be stressed.
− The action plan achieved all the objectives set at the beginning of the Project in relation to the appointment of the mentioned Rector’s Delegate. However, the team did not expect to find such an important ally in her when defining the Project's sustainability plan. Her role has indeed been crucial in obtaining the necessary support for the development and negotiation of the plan.
− With regard to the Sustainability plan, the role of the CUG and its President is pivotal. Since its first meeting with the team, in the first half of 2017, the CUG (and its President) has shown much interest in the work carried out by the TRIGGER Project. As a result, the project team was and the CUG were able to jointly propose an amendment to the Statute (Action 1.6.2 Agreement for equal gender representation in decision-making bodies), and also recover and enhance many of TRIGGER’s actions, in some cases actions concluded before the beginning of 2017, as in the case of Action 1.2.1 (Satisfaction survey with existing services and integration plan).
− The involvement of the Sisters' Project network in the organisation of the training courses for members of the Conference of National Equality Bodies (CoNaEB) enrolled in the "Gender and Science" section allowed the team to strengthen the collaboration with the project’s representatives and to identify a stable network and collaboration with the CoNaEB. The latter is able to guarantee continuity and the exchange of information amongst the stakeholders of the network, and favour the dissemination of the results.
− The success of the action dedicated to gender analysis of administrative language continued up to the project end. As a result, a toolkit was produced and picked up as a vademecum for the drafting of administrative documents by the University of Pisa.
− In terms of research results, Prof. Ineke Klinge (member of the Advisory Unit for Gendering Research of TRIGGER) has been enthusiastic about the research launched and supported by the TRIGGER Project in medicine and engineering, acknowledging the validity of the projects and endorsing the methods adopted, that she found worthy of being disseminated as good practices for others.
− After the proposition for gendering the contents of the Course in Medicine (approved on 12 December 2016) was approved - pursuant to which the Standing Conference of the Presidents at National Level of the Single Degree Course in Medicine and Surgery recommends that all Italian Degrees in Medicine and Surgery integrate and implement Gender Medicine in their activities, starting from A.Y. 2017/2018 - the coordinator of the Pisa Core Team, was actively involved in drawing up the amendments to the syllabus of the University of Pisa.
− As for dissemination, by the end of the Project the team reached 45 publications regarding gender research and related issues dealt with in the TRIGGER Project at Italian and international level and more than 30 presentations at national and international conferences, well beyond the original plans.
2. THE INSTITUTE OF CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY, PRAGUE / VYSOKA SKOLA CHEMICKO-TECHNOLOGICKA V PRAZE (VSCHT ) AND THE INSTITUTE OF SOCIOLOGY OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC (ISAS)
2.1. GENERAL APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTATION
The university of Chemistry and Technology in Prague is the largest and most significant educational and research institution of its kind in the Czech Republic and also in the Central Europe. Its two-hundred-year history combines tradition with the progressive trends and modern technologies in a wide range of chemical disciplines. UCT Prague consists of four faculties, Rector’s office departments and students facilities. As the recent statistics show, the number of female students has been on the rise, and this fact needs to be reflected in the university’s human resources management policy. This resulted in a decision to participate in the TRIGGER project, with the aim to start addressing gender diversity and equality and transform the institutional culture. The lack of experience with gender in research led to the cooperation with gender experts from the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Jointly, the two teams drafted an Action Plan tailored to the needs of UCT Prague.
The idea behind the action plan, which enjoyed the support and active participation of the top management at the University level, was testing various tools aimed at achieving gender equality. The Faculty of Food and Biochemical Technology was a specific target for many actions, even though the project also addresses the other Faculties, particularly the Dept of Water Technology and Environmental Engineering of Faculty of Environmental Technology, and the university as a whole. A starting point toward structural change has been recognising that there was no systematic overview and assessment of the situation at VSCHT and no systematic exchange of good or successful initiatives.
The action plan was geared at promoting change in several areas: providing career advice to young researchers, promoting work-life balance, activating occasions of women’s empowerment, promoting communication and visibility of women scientists, promoting a gender sensitive knowledge production and management.
2.2. MAIN RESULTS
The most part of the actions in the Plan have been implemented. A sustainability plan has been devised which include the continuation of almost all of them in the next years, thanks to the cooperation of the team with relevant representatives of the university management, like the university bursar and various departments of the Rector’s Offices, as well as senior female professors in different faculties. The following results deserve to be mentioned.
- Institutional documents. An unplanned opportunity to review institutional documents emerged as part of the process of re-accreditation in line with an amendment to the Act on Higher Education. Pursuant to this amendment, all higher education institutions in the country are undergoing a re-accreditation process, which requires them also to review and amend as needed relevant institutional documents. This gave the TRIGGER team an opportunity to address equal opportunities, human resources development and diversity in some of the documents (namely, the Statute and the Order for the Selection Procedure for the Appointment of Academic Staff). The TRIGGER team, and especially the PI, worked very closely with the UCT Prague top management on the review of documents.
- Advisory and Career Centre. A new Department, the Advisory and Career Centre, which launched its activities in 2017 was established at UCT Prague. It will ensure those parts of the TRIGGER action plan as mentoring, career advice, trainings and courses in next period. The existence of a “Centre” was approved by Academic Senate, thus it became part of the organisational structure of UCT Prague.
- Leadership and career development actions for women researchers. The leadership training module for aspiring women researchers was designed in 2016 based on a needs assessment survey and individual interviews, with a view to address the severe gender imbalance in leadership and managerial positions at UCT Prague. In line with the plan, the module was continued from 2016. Additional four trainings were delivered. An evaluation of the training module was performed, showing the huge success of the design, topics selected and execution of the module. An informal network has been formed and it appears that it will continue after the close of the project. Due to the success of the training module, it has been negotiated with the top management that the training module will continue after the end of the project.
- Book of interviews with men researchers at UCT Prague. As a follow-up to the highly successful book of interviews with women researchers published in the framework of TRIGGER, the ISAS team requested an amendment to the grant agreement, to prepare a book of interviews with men researchers, in order to contrast the experience and life paths of women and men at UCT Prague. A total of 20 men were interviewed, and a book with the title Dynamic equilibrium to reach? With UCT Prague chemists on science and equality (2017) was prepared for publication and launched before the project end. UCT Prague printed, from its TRIGGER budget additional 1,000 copies of the book, in addition to 500 copies funded from the project budget of ISAS.
- The Julie Hamackova Award (JHA). In 2017 the third run of the Julie Hamackova Award was organized, with the award ceremony on 15 November 2017. The Julie Hamackova Award was established in 2015 with a view to fostering the inclusion of the gender dimension in student theses. It was named after the first female dean and professor who was nearly forgotten and was “excavated” for the memory of women researchers at UCT Prague thanks to the TRIGGER project. For more (in Czech) see https://gro.vscht.cz/cjh/aktuality#novinka_detail25107004041293).
3. BIRKBECK COLLEGE (BBK)
3.1. GENERAL APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTATION
The BBK, ranked in the top 25% of UK multi-Faculty higher education institutions, is also the leading provider of part-time, evening education, serving the needs of diverse and non- traditional students. BBK consists of five Academic Schools, of which two have relevant SET components (the School of Science and the School of Business, Economics and Informatics). At BBK, even though women were well represented in the student body at the start of the project , comprising over 56% of the 17,890 enrolled students, they were underrepresented among the academic staff. This was especially higher level professors (and also among readers and senior lecturers) and even more so in SET-related disciplines. Women were also underrepresented in influential committees at College level.
Gender quality oriented policies and initiatives have been adopted over time, even if not uniformly present in all Schools and Depts. The College has been awarded Bronze level National Athena SWAN scheme (aiming to promote good practice in recruiting, retaining and promoting women in SET).
It is in this context that BBK decided to join the TRIGGER project. TRIGGER in fact, even though it promoted a completely independent and original plan of action, also represented a unique tool to support the achievement of the objectives of the Athena SWAN, while at the same time widening and deepening its scope.
The TRIGGER plan of action of Birkbeck therefore included actions impacting different sides of the gender-and-science issue, ranging from the daily working environment, the gendering of research procedures and the promotion of women’s leadership in the practice, management and communication of research. It has done this through developing ‘agency’ among scientific women, enhancing their ability to be leaders and have co-ownership of resources.
A particularly relevant feature of the AP was its effort in supporting the commercialisation of women’s research and innovation. Even though selected actions targeted the whole BBK, SET-related Schools (School of Science and the School of Business, Economics and Informatics) were more directly involved.
3.2. MAIN RESULTS
Six areas where Birkbeck TRIGGER has been highly significant:
1. Bringing about institutional change for furthering gender equality in Birkbeck: the TRIGGER team at Birkbeck were represented on all the gender and equality related committees in the College. The participation in the Athena SWAN self-assessment team has been especially important to guarantee sustainability for actions 3.2.1 (mentoring) and 3.4.1 (leadership programme).
The ways that institutional change has been achieved were summarised by Richard Wilson, Deputy Head of HR in a document for the Birkbeck TRIGGER Final conference in June 2017, which stressed the strong support given by TRIGGER to gender equality in the College, and, in particular, to the enhancement of the Athena SWAN programme of the institution and, among others, underlined that “in 2017 we have more women academics in post than men (164 vs 153); and for the second year running women are more likely to apply for promotion than men (23% of women vs 15% of men); and women are more likely to be successful in their promotion application than men (84% of women versus 79% of men).”
2. TRIGGER has also been instrumental in the appointment of a Research and Development manager responsible for commercialisation of research in the BEI School (June 2015).
3. The scientific tasks 3.3.1 (Training on the gendered aspects of research) and 3.3.2 (Testing innovative research tools for the gendering of research procedures in multidisciplinary research on autism) were successful in their own right having led to ground-breaking research. Task 3.3.2 was underpinned by the appointment of a research assistant funded as part of the TRIGGER budget.
4. By making a mark externally: the contribution of the TRIGGER team has been essential to lobby for BBK to become member of the WISE campaign, https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/. More specifically, the organization and promotion of the networking event in November 2016, about gender equality in STEMM (with the invitation of Helen Wollaston, Chief Executive of WISE), has played a pivotal role in underlining the importance of the cause and arguing for the importance of becoming members of WISE. The successful submission evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Gender equality.
5. On-Going programmes: leadership programme for Birkbeck academics and professionals – with industry sponsorship, and the Birkbeck PhD programme – supported across the College and by the Birkbeck Graduate and Research School.
6. The overall success of the Birkbeck TRIGGER project is indicated by the forthcoming TRIGGER book H. Lawton Smith, C. Henry, H. Etzkowitz & A. Poulovassilis (eds) New Perspectives in Gender, Science & Innovation, Edward Elgar Publishing (forthcoming). This covers three broad themes in the Birkbeck programme: Mentoring & gender cultures, networking and commercialisation of research. It has not only included contributions by the TRIGGER team (Meschitti, Lawton Smith, Henry, Etzkowitz, Poulovassilis), but also by members of the TRIGGER External Board (Edmunds, Bagchi-Sen), two of the Pisa TRIGGER team Biancheri, and Silvia Cervia, University of Pisa, and from other countries including the US, Hungary, Denmark, and Ireland. The completed manuscript is due to be with the publisher by the end of April 2018. Much of the credibility for the TRIGGER project has been in its publications, networking events and leadership programme events with their associated Blogs and Tweets. While the events have been of benefit to individual participants (speakers and audience), they have also presented really important data and analysis for Birkbeck and broader audiences.
4. UNIVERSITE’ PARIS DIDEROT (UPD)
4.1. GENERAL APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTATION
The University Paris Diderot is the only multidisciplinary University in Paris to offer a wide range of degrees in the Humanities, Medicine and the Sciences. Women represented at the project start 39% of teaching and research staff, 48% of the assistant professors and 26% of the full professors. As regards students, women represented 61.6% of the students and 54% of the doctoral students but only 32% of the physics students.
In 1985, UPD was one of the first French universities to establish gender studies research and teaching. In 2005, a financial support from the European Social Fund allowed to initiate some actions and, first of them, a study on women research lectures which disclosed actual gender inequality. Then, from 2007 to nowadays, campaigns promoting gender equality are permanent. A unit in charge of gender equality (Pole Égalité femmes homes - PEFH) was subsequently established in 2010.
In TRIGGER, UPD proposed a broad and comprehensive plan targeting different layers and factors of inequalities (organisational cultures and behaviours, work life balance, support to early career researchers, struggle against gender stereotypes, gendering research contents and methods, women’s leadership in research, communication, management and innovation).
The plan included 28 actions addressing, according to their specific features, one or both of the more directly participating institutes (Physics and Biology), but often also the whole university. Among them, the creation of a permanent network of gender focal points in all the department and services of the University.
The actions encompassed regular collection and analysis of statistics, qualitative research in the concerned departments to target further actions, training courses addressing different audiences among students and employees, promotion of new rules, raising awareness and communication, including the organisation of international conferences.
4.2. MAIN RESULTS
The project team succeeded in implementing the most part of the ambitious plan, also extending its scope to other institutions (see below), and to assure the continuation of numerous actions for the future. The following results are to be stressed.
− The first year of the TRIGGER project, a civil servant position was created for an equality officer. Since then, the team asked every year a second position to be able to achieve all the actions. The financial situation of the university didn’t allow the creation of this second position and all the team’s demands were rejected. But finally, the creation of this second civil servant position was accepted in October 2017 by the position commission. A civil servant competition will be opened in 2018, which is an unexpected success (because of the funding issue) of the visibility strategy of the team. The head of UPD recognized the importance of the team’s missions and efforts to achieve its policy objectives. Furthermore the financial commission approved the funding increase of the operating budget of the PEFH. In 2018, a 40% growth of this budget is awarded.
− A new gender equality action plan, to a great extent inspired by the TRIGGER action plan, was presented to, and subsequently was adopted by, the central council in May 2017.
− UPD obtained the European label HRS4R. The PEFH participated to the draft of the project and mentioned the measures already implemented. This label ensures a gender equality policy at UPD.
− In 2014, the PEFH team offered USPC to have a common gender equality policy for all universities and institutes which are members (Paris 3 University, Paris 5 University, Paris 13 University, Paris Diderot University, Sciences Po, Institute of physics and National Institute of Orientals languages). After a lot of meetings with PEFH team, USPC decided to create a gender equality network composed by gender equality officers from each university and institute member and asked to PEFH team to coordinate this network and to define an action plan. PEFH received 100 000 euro from USPC. When PEFH team defined and implemented actions for USPC, the team extended all actions or measures which could be extended (trainings, colloquium) to USPC. In February 2016, after 2 years of work, PEFH managed to create an external structure against sexual harassment for all students, staff, and teacher-researchers of USPC (i.e. 150,000 people). Even if this action was not included in the initial TRIGGER action plan, it was an important achievement because USPC is the first public institution which decided to create an external structure on sexual harassment. If this initiative was praised by the French media because USPC had the courage to create an external structure, it is especially substantial evidence that PEFH action plan and strategy are efficient.
Following these successes, the team is confident about its possibility to ensure long-lasting actions. Furthermore, it is a tangible proof that a real structural change at the institution level has already happened.
5. UNIVERSITY OF MADRID (UPM)
5.1. GENERAL APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTATION
The Technical University of Madrid is the largest Spanish technological university. More than 2,400 researchers carry out their activity at the UPM, grouped in 200 Research Groups, 22 Research Centres or Institutes and 55 Laboratories.
At the project start, at UPM women accounted for around 33% and 34% of undergraduate and graduate students respectively. Among professors (all categories), women accounted for 23%. The presence of women was particularly low among full professors (7.9%) and higher in the group of adjunct professors (44.8%).
The Action Plan for UPM promoted an integrated set of actions aimed at launching structural-level change at the University, to be later incorporated in and made permanent through the Equality Action Plan that UPM has to draft and implement following Spanish normative requirements. The TRIGGER project thus also concretely supported the existing Equality Unit, which was part of its Board. The actions, addressing many problem areas relevant to gender equality, were mostly targeting the whole University, even though three Schools (School of Architecture/ETSAM; School of Building Engineering/ETSEM; School of Industrial Engineering/ETSII) were – even if to a different extent – the forerunners, both in the planning and implementation of activities targeting all Faculties and Schools, and in the testing of additional ones, specific to their characteristics and previous experience.
Among the many actions geared at promoting a women-friendly environment (changing behaviours and culture, supporting work-life balance, sustaining early career researchers), a gender-aware science and technology (struggle against stereotypes and insertion of gendered methodologies and contents) and the emerging of a women’s leadership in research, innovation, management and communication, it is to highlight the successful creation of a Chair in Gender, Innovation and Sustainability and the intense national and international networking activity.
5.2. MAIN RESULTS
The actions in the Plan have been implemented. Some of them have been changed following the first implementation phase, so as to make them more effective (e.g. the women network which has been reoriented outward). A sustainability plan has been devised which include the continuation of almost all of them in the next years, mainly through the activities of the Chair in gender, innovation and sustainability and the adoption and implementation of the equality action plan of the institution. The UNESCO Chair was officially approved in June 2016. The Plan, extending the review of University norms included in TRIGGER and the identification of targets for women’s presence in decision making positions, entered into force in July 2017.
The following results deserve mentioning.
Research study on women at UPM. The first edition of the “Women at UPM” report and the subsequent exhibitions showing its results were critical in raising awareness within the UPM; and during the second period of the project, the report has been used by other institutions and researchers as a basis in further studies about the situation of women in STEM fields in the Spanish context. The Second Edition of the report, following the structure of the first edition, has been used as diagnosis report for the Equality Plan, approved in July 2017.
Network of UPM women researchers. Both the Equality Unit and the UNESCO Chair have oriented this action outwards, by strengthening existing external networks and creating new ones, thus reinforcing the visibility and the effectiveness of gender related action also in the institution. Among others, The UNESCO Chair is member of the Network of Spanish Institutions in Structural Change European Projects; its director has been appointed Co-Chair of the Research and Academia Partner Constituency Group of the General Assembly of Partner of UN-Habitat and has been chosen as member of the Advisory Group on Gender Issues to the Executive Director of UN-Habitat .
Courses on Equal Opportunities and seminars on women in science and technology. The TRIGGER team offered several courses in different schools and institutions which had asked its support. The Equality Plan includes training courses on gender equality addressed to all UPM members.
Guidelines for implementing protocols on bullying and sexual harassment. Based on the project activities in the first half of the project, consisting of drafting and disseminating a “Guidelines for implementing protocols on bullying and sexual harassment” and its publication both in English and Spanish, a protocol on bullying and sexual harassment has been signed at the University and measures against all kinds of harassment were included in the Equality Plan of the institution, thus becoming permanent.
Work-life balance plan. Taking into account the internal survey implemented in the framework of TRIGGER, the Equality Plan includes a set of measures to promote reconciliation of work and family/personal life to UPM members. These measures are complemented with the existing social benefits for UPM staff.
Mentoring programmes. Following the example of the School of Building Engineering, which implemented a set of mentoring programmes in the framework of TRIGGER during the first three years of the project, In late 2016, a new and more ambitious mentoring programme was launched, reaching the whole female students of UPM. So far, more than 150 female students have joined the new mentoring programme. Besides, the TRIGGER team is preparing the edition of the Basic Guidelines for the Organization of Mentoring Programmes for women in STEAM (a project deliverable) turning it into a reader-friendly publication, following the format of other guidelines and publications editing in the framework of the project. It will be published in the following months, offering a basic toolkit to organize and get involved in mentoring programmes especially addressed to girls and women in STEAM fields.
International events. The TRIGGER team organised two editions of the Engendering International Conference, also attracting additional internal funds.
Monitoring and fixing sexist language. Based on the action implemented in the first part of the project, also including the publication of guidelines, the Equality Plan includes measures fighting sexist language and stereotypes, including training courses on the topic for UPM members.
Webspaces. Both the equality unit and the UNESCO Chair have their own webpage. The TRIGGER blog has had more than 14.000 visits since its creation. The website of the UNESCO Chair, which has incorporated the website of the Spanish version of the Gendered Innovations project (co-funded by the Stanford University and the European Commission) is launched in a preliminary version, having an increasing amount of visits.
Experimental incorporation of gendered contents in existing courses. The integration of gendered contents in courses has been implemented in the School of Industrial Engineering and in the School of Architecture. The first Equality Plan includes some measures to incorporate gender in curricula and research, what becomes an important tool to consolidate the inclusion of gender in teaching and research within the UPM. A new master programme on gender equality is planned to be launched by autumn 2019, funded by the Regional Government of Madrid and co-offered by the five public universities of Madrid. The programme of the master includes a 30 ECTS module on Gender in Research, Technology and Leadership that will be taught by UPM.
Acknowledgement and visibility of women scientists
The Equality Plan includes one specific measure to increase the presence of women in the category of “Distinguished UPM Member” and a one to support the dissemination of the work of UPM female researchers as part of objective 2.4.3 “Promoting women’s leadership”.
6. CROSS-CUTTING ACTIVITIES
6.1. TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
In the framework of the technical assistance, led by ASDO, four main areas of activities are considered here:
A. Development of the annual detailed planning
B. Bilateral technical assistance
C. Mutual learning
D. Feasibility study on sustainability.
A) A technical assistance has been provided to the partners for the development of the annual detailed planning.
At the beginning of each implementation year, ASDO provided the partners with a chronogram scheme (based on 15-days interval) including all the activities foreseen in the DoW. Using this scheme, each partner developed the annual detailed planning of its Action Plan, in the form of a GANTT chart covering all the activities scheduled under each Task/Action, including all relevant deadlines for the year. The last year detailed planning frequently included sustainability-oriented activities to be implemented after the lifespan of the TRIGGER project.
B) As for the bilateral technical assistance, it developed along two main axes: monitoring activities and on-site visits.
Monitoring activities have been largely based on the annual planning exercise, which provided the basis for ASDO to develop each year the monitoring checklists, collected in an electronic database, to be used in monitoring and for structuring the monitoring notes sent to the partner after each session. Overall, 80 monitoring sessions have been held.
The on-site visits have been annually organised by ASDO to the premises of the implementing partners, based on specific bilateral agreements. The visits pursued different aims: directly learning what was going on in the Action Plans; discussing with the teams about implementation issues; organising meetings with leaders and stakeholders in the research organisation; more qualitatively monitoring the ongoing activities; participating in special occasions (public meetings, seminars, presentations etc.). In the first period of the project implementation process, the on-site visits have been prevalently used for favouring the launch and consolidation of the Action Plans, while in the last period they have been increasingly devoted to discuss the sustainability perspectives and arrangements that the teams have been setting up in view of the conclusion of the project. Overall, 20 on-site visits have been held throughout the project implementation period.
C) Mutual learning was aimed at favouring an exchange among the partners (internal mutual learning) and with the staff of other EC-funded structural change projects (external mutual learning). The mutual learning process developed through a set of sessions (both at-a-distance and in-presence meetings). Overall, 8 mutual learning meetings have been organised (5 internal and 3 external), both in connection with or independently of the Steering Committee meetings.
All the internal meetings have been prepared by circulating the agenda and a scheme for the presentations of the Action Plans to facilitate comparison and exchange. The aim of these meetings was to provide a group monitoring action and to deal together with the qualitative issues which emerged from the implementation of the Action Plans and which could benefit of a plurality of points of view, so to foster mutual learning. The “qualitative” part of the meetings were generally organised as a working seminar focusing on a specific issue (e.g. the drafting of the feasibility plans) or set of issues (e.g. effective methods to involve the institutional leadership in the Action Plans; the use of data and evidence on work-life balance to plan internal or to review internal policies on the subject), in some cases inviting external experts (e.g. the members of the International Board of Scientific Advisors - IBSA). In the second part of the project, the shift was to more intense peer-to-peer learning efforts, with the direct elaboration by the partners of relevant common issues, giving way to bilateral and multilateral collaborations, also aiming to external dissemination. In the last eighteen months of the project, the mutual learning effort has been increasingly linked to the future sustainability of the TRIGGER action plans.
The external meetings, conducted with other European projects, were aimed at sharing views, methodologies and experience for igniting structural change, in sight of the drafting of the final Guidelines of the project. An outline for discussion of the meetings was circulated before starting. Three meetings were held, divided in two: a part devoted to the presentations and discussion of the contributions of the other projects on specific issues and methodologies (e.g.: how to classify and deal with resistances to structural change; how to integrate bottom up and top down approaches in the implementation of gender action plans; how to measure the status and progress of gender equality in an institution; how to incorporate gender equality in the institutional policy of a higher education organisation; how to know and address the needs of early career researchers, leveraging on them for change) and another devoted to the general programme of exchange.
The contents and structure of the Guidelines (see below) were discussed in this second slot during the last meeting. The exchange process continued at a distance through mails, teleconferences and interviews.
D) The feasibility study on the sustainability of the TRIGGER Action Plans was intended as a specific knowledge management tool aimed at favouring the preparation of the sustainability plans of the actions included in each Action Plan.
The activities related to the feasibility study begun in July 2014, with the collection of documents related to similar projects and, in general, scientific and technical literature addressing the issue of sustainability of policies and programmes conceived to ignite processes of change and having a well-defined duration and funding.
Since the study was “tailored”, i.e. geared to deal with the specific problems of the five organisation implementing Action Plans in the framework of TRIGGER, it actually dealt with information coming from technical assistance activities, especially bilateral monitoring and on-site visits. It anyway took stock, more in general, of all the documents related to the implementation of structural change initiatives.
The feasibility study was completed on June 2015. It constituted the basis and defined a road map for the partners to develop their respective sustainability plans, of which they were responsible, collected in a unique deliverable by ASDO. After the completion of the feasibility study, anyway, ASDO kept assisting the implementing partner to facilitate them in their task.
6.2. ONGOING AND FINAL EVALUATION
The evaluation of the action plans has been ensured by ASDO. This activity was aimed at monitoring the quality of their implementation. The evaluation approach, however, did not intend monitoring as a static judgmental procedure, where data were periodically collected to simply express an assessment or worse to "give a score" to the APs, to be passively recognised by the implementing teams.
With a certain affinity with the approach of developmental evaluation, particularly adequate when policies of change are conducted, evaluation was rather understood as the opportunity, offered and structured by the Evaluation Team, of a shared process of reflection on the problems met during the implementation of the Action Plans, so to activate learning processes on the basis of experience. This is why an important role was attributed to self-evaluation by the teams, integrated with the evaluating team’s point of view, in the position of "critical friends", neither totally external (because for instance of continuous contacts through periodic monitoring sessions), nor directly part of the teams implementing the Plans.
Evaluation, in particular, provided information that could be used for practical purposes and to produce new knowledge. Through periodic checks, it included support for the advancement and the overall quality of the tasks assigned to the TRIGGER partners in charge of the five Action Plans, and ensured that they were able, if necessary, to adjust project activities to the changing needs and/or goals of the concerned institutions.
The evaluation of the action plans was held every reporting period during operation, and again at the end of the project (final evaluation). Overall, three annual evaluation reports and a final evaluation report have been drafted. The periodical assessments made during operations were intended not only to verify the progress made in the planned activities, but also to record and evaluate the changes occurred while the Action Plans are implemented.
Five evaluation criteria have been applied.
• Effectiveness, intended as the capacity to implement the activities according to the Action Plan’s provisions, attaining the objectives outlined in the document.
• Efficiency, intended as the capacity to make the best use of available resources, complying with the timeframes and procedures contemplated for expenses, in the context of a good managerial capacity.
• Impact, concerning the satisfaction of the beneficiaries of the Action Plans and the capacity to promote consensus among the other players involved (subjective impact) and the effects obtained in terms of real change within the organisations (objective impact).
• Sustainability, which refers to the capacity of the actions implemented through the Action Plans to continue producing effects even beyond the end of the programme.
• Relevance, concerning the adequacy of the initiatives foreseen in the Action Plans to the situation of the organisations in which they are conducted, as well as to the wider social, cultural and economic contexts of reference for S&T in the different countries involved. Considered the strategic approach of TRIGGER, relevance encompasses also the analysis of negotiation activities carried out for each Action Plan as for institutional, interpretive, symbolic and operational levels.
Almost 80 indicators, mainly but not only qualitative, have been identified, covering all these criteria.
The evaluation of the Action plans was based on several sources, both living (project team, beneficiaries, other staff of the institutions not directly involved in the Action Plans, members of IBSA and national committees of the project) and documentary (notes of the monitoring sessions, reports of meetings, official documents as deliverables and websites, other working documents of the implementing institutions).
The technical tools included ongoing evaluation grids, questionnaires addressed to different interlocutors, as well as reading grids and check-lists to read and analyse deliverables and other documents.
Information has been collected by ASDO, the organisation in charge of evaluation, with the help of the Action Plans staff, through monitoring activities, and using specific technical tools
6.3. ACCOMPANYING RESEARCH
The accompanying research, designed as a cross-cutting activity led by ASDO, was intended as a support tool for collecting, organising and processing the large amount of information about structural change emerging from the implementation of the Action Plans which otherwise could be lost.
In line with its functional nature, the accompanying research pursued two practical aims.
The first aim was that of collecting information on the implementation of the action plans to be used for developing the Guidelines on starting processes of structural change towards gender equality in science organisations (see below).
The second aim was favouring a successful project implementation process. In fact, research results have been entered into the cycle of project management mainly through the technical assistance activities carried out by ASDO throughout the four years of implementation.
Ongoing research was needed since the project inevitably confronted the difficulty of identifying beforehand which of the specific environmental dynamics and structural features of the institutions involved were able to seriously hinder the action plans at the different stages of implementation, and which, on the contrary, were able to provide different forms of support.
In this perspective, the accompanying research developed along with the implementation of the Action Plans so as to collect first-hand information on what was going on in the participating institutions. Special attention has been given to the change processes which were being activated – to different extents – by the Action Plans, the evolution and changes in the project teams and their progressive ability to act as transformational players in the institution, the supporting and hindering factors and dynamics emerging during implementation, as well as the strategies devised to manage them.
The empirical basis of the accompanying research has been built based on the information collected through a multiplicity of sources, the most important being the analysis of documentation and the direct observation connected to technical assistance activities (bilateral monitoring sessions, on-site visits, mutual learning activities, detailed planning, support to sustainability planning).
Two research reports have been produced, i.e. the Mid-term report and the Final report.
The Mid-term research report was presented at the Mid-term workshop held in London on April 14th, 2016 and delivered at the end of the same month.
The text was articulated in 4 parts, respectively devoted to:
- The Institutional framework of the project (describing in short the TRIGGER Project, the accompanying research and the mutual learning process, the purpose and structure of the document)
- The theoretical framework of the research (specifying its basic assumptions, the three research fields dealt with and including a summary of the theoretical framework)
- The methodological framework of the research (describing in particular the database building process and the mutual learning process)
- Some first insights emerging from the observation process, following an elementary path including Attracting the interest of leadership; finding the right language to communicate the project contents; enabling the team to work in the project; getting people involved; being able to cope with organisational mechanism and to react to intervening factors; building action on the knowledge acquired; collecting the first results)
The Final research report was delivered at the end of the TRIGGER project and was organised in three chapters.
The first chapter was devoted to recall the institutional framework, the analytical framework and methodological framework.
The second chapter provided a systematic description of the empirical basis of the research, consisting of 40 implementation dynamics referred to the experience of the 5 action plans.
In chapter three, an overall analysis of the implementation dynamics related to change, activated by the different Action Plans was provided.
6.4. GUIDELINES
The TRIGGER Project included, among its objectives, the development of a set of guidelines, targeting the leaderships of universities and research institutions, with the aim of providing them with suggestions and tools to deal with real-life situations facing the implementation of gender equality programmes in science and technology domains. The Guidelines are based on an internal reflection of the TRIGGER partners, coordinated by ASDO, which also supported it with its accompanying research to the Action Plans, and a mutual learning process among TRIGGER partners and similar projects (sister projects).
The roadmap leading to the shared draft of the guidelines was started during a mutual learning meeting in Madrid (held on October 7th 2016) with other projects’ representatives.
To draft the final guidelines, a consultation among partners and sister projects representatives was made, according a procedure established by the TRIGGER partners under the coordination of ASDO, the partner in charge of drafting the guidelines. Partners and “sister projects” provided examples of strategies, methods or tools they successfully used to cope with some aspects of the process of change. These examples, integrated with the ones collected in the database of the Implementation Dynamics up to the end of 2016, were regrouped into themes (patterns of problems and patterns of solutions), thus creating clusters of cases. The list of the clusters, regrouped into the four components of the process of change (creation of a transformational agent, activation and mobilisation, making an impact, sustainability) and, inside them, according to the main dimensions of change they refer to (interpretive, symbolic, normative and operational), was submitted to the partners during a subsequent phase of consultation and in-depth interviews.
The ASDO team developed the examples into texts which were sent to partners and representatives of the sister projects.
The core of the guidelines is structured as follows:
Introduction
AREA 1 - Transformational agent
1. Accessing expertise
2. Reputation building
3. Organisational embedment
4. Securing staff and resources
Transformational agent - Key issues
AREA 2 - Activation and mobilisation
5. Scientific recognition
6. Political backing
7. Creating space for engagement
8. Mobilisation of pro-women actors
9. Active involvement of men
10. Implementation backing
Activation and mobilisation - Key issues
AREA 3 - Making an impact
11. Self-reflexive process
12. Gender-sensitive communication
13. Gender-sensitive education and training
14. Action plan tailoring process
15. Policy integration
16. External backing
Making an impact - Key issues
AREA 4 - Sustainability
17. Inclusion of gender in monitoring systems
18. Inclusion of gender in scientific excellence
19. Inclusion of gender considerations in service provision
20. Inclusion of gender in organisational standards
21. Inclusion of gender in an organisation's structure and mission
Sustainability - Key issues
The whole Guidelines were sent to the TRIGGER International Board of Scientific Advisors (IBSA) for their revision.
Once the guidelines were published online and in 1000 hard copies, the five TRIGGER partners implementing action plans organised presentations of the text in their respective countries. The text was also presented in the project final conference.
6.5. NETWORKING, DISSEMINATION AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION
The main objectives of this set of activities, coordinated by the DPO and IRS, were to communicate the results being obtained through the project, to collect suggestions from the scientific community and from other relevant stakeholders, to facilitate activities and knowledge brokerage through networking in order to contribute to the promotion of a new culture of gender equality in science. The circulation of information and the promotion of the project’s results have been ensured by using the communication tools prepared and updated by the DPO and IRS, in collaboration with the partners. The following results can be particularly stressed:
A) Creation and updating of the project website
B) Drafting and uploading of 6 issues of the e-newsletter
C) Supporting the presence in the media, networking and creation of a new mailing list
D) Participation to conferences in order to present the project
E) Organisations of public events at European level: mid-term workshop and final international conference
F) Drafting of a Plan for exploitation of results.
A) Project website. A project website has been designed and developed in the first months of the project implementation period. The website, www.triggerproject.eu contained the following sections: information on TRIGGER activities, partners and contacts; information on the five Action Plans; a Gallery hosting pictures related to the project; news on the presence of the project in the media both at national and international level; information and documents on the main project products (deliverables), the internal meetings of the project, the International Board of Advisors and the National Committees; the project newsletter; documents and texts about other structural change project; information on events connected to the project, and news in general concerning women in science. The maintenance and updating of the website have been assured all along the project execution.
B) E-newsletter. As planned, 6 issues of the e-newsletter have been issued (both in English and Italian) respectively in: December 2014; June 2015, December 2015; June 2016; December 2018, December 2017.
C) Presence in the media, networking and creation of a new mailing list. All the partners (especially those implementing the Action Plans) have developed strong contacts with local and national media. Overall, more than 100 contacts with the media (including TV reports and interviews, articles on newspapers and magazines, press-releases) have been reported by the partners implementing the Action Plans. A mailing list including 3,600 contacts has been developed at the beginning of the project, including different types of entries (representatives of national public administrations, local public administrations, experts, scholars, PHD students, etc.). The mailing list has been constantly updated and new contacts have been added reaching over 7,000 entries.
D) Presentations and papers. All the partners, during the project period, participated in conferences to present the project and published scientific papers. Around 100 papers, conference presentations and poster presentations have been overall reported by the project partners.
E) Public events at European level: mid-term workshop and final international conference
The mid-term international workshop of TRIGGER was organised on April 14th 2016 in London at the premises of the Birkbeck College (BBK - partner of the project). The Workshop was entitled “Transforming research institutions, gendering contents and gaining equality: a half way reflection”.
The event was aimed at presenting the current achievements of the TRIGGER action plans, defining the guidelines of the project and opening a public debate on new policies and instruments to transform research institutions and gain gender equality in research, by involving relevant and different stakeholders.
The Workshop was therefore organised with a view to facilitating an intense dialogue on these issues and by inviting not only the TRIGGER consortium members, but also representatives of the other EU-funded structural change projects and European and international experts. The seminar was attended by about 50 people and opened by welcoming speeches.
The first session of the workshop, entitled “The TRIGGER experience at mid-term” was devoted to a reflection on their experiences at mid-term point by each of the TRIGGER partner team.
In the second session, entitled “Negotiating institutional change with the leadership of research institutions: setting the scene”, the TRIGGER partners and the participants were invited to discuss what has worked in the TRIGGER Project in their own institutions up to now and what has not.
The third session, entitled “Negotiating institutional change with the leadership of research institutions: dialogue on practices”, was structured in an interactive group session on how to find solutions to some of the problems of negotiating institutional change with leadership in research institutions. In particular, groups were asked to brainstorm on the solutions for one specific key issue so as to produce quick wins and initiate actions that could be part of a longer-term action plan.
The Final Conference titled “#TriggeringGenderInScience” has been held in Brussels on November 28-29, 2017. It has been prepared and carried out under the responsibility of IRS, in cooperation with DPO and ASDO.
The aim of the event was to present the final achievements of the TRIGGER action plans and the final guidelines of the project and to open a public debate on new policies and instruments to promote structural change processes to achieve gender equality in science involving relevant and different stakeholders.
To this end, the Final Conference was organised with a view to allow an intense dialogue on these issues involving, not only the TRIGGER consortium members, but also representatives of the other EU-funded structural change projects, European and international experts, EC DG Research and Innovation officers, and representatives of EIGE.
Overall, around 80 people attended the meeting.
The Final Conference has been structured as follows: opening speech from EC and DPO representatives
− TRIGGER Action Plans presentation
− Poster presentation ad speech by a young Italian researcher
− Lessons learned from the TRIGGER project and future perspective of the European Strategies to promote institutional change. This part of the Conference includes two separate sessions namely: “Promoting institutional change towards gender equality in practice – Lessons learned from the FP7 and H2020”, including the presentation of the TRIGGER final guidelines, and a round table on “Future perspectives of the European strategies to promote institutional change towards gender equality”
F) Exploitation plan. The Plan for the Exploitation and Dissemination of Results has been drafted by IRS, based on the work initially planned and developed by the DPO, project coordinator and initially in charge of the project communication, and sets the stage for TRIGGER ’s communication and dissemination activities.
It provides the general communication strategy for TRIGGER, as well as a draft plan for the actions that have been taken all along the duration of the project and also beyond the lifespan of the project.
The general objectives of the TRIGGER communication activities are to:
• Communicate the results being obtained through the project
• Collect suggestions from the scientific community and from other relevant stakeholders
• Facilitate activities and knowledge brokerage through networking.
The Plan represents a roadmap for all TRIGGER communication and dissemination activities. The following sections are included in the Plan:
• The scope and objectives of the Plan (chapter 1)
• The identified target audiences (chapter 2)
• The communication material (chapter 3)
• A description of the communication strategy (chapter 4).
6.6. GENERAL MANAGEMENT
The general management of the project, ensured by DPO, included different types of activities, all of pivotal importance for the success of the TRIGGER project as a whole.
A) Project administration. DPO ensured the administration of the project as a whole, including the organisation of the project meetings related to the Steering Committee, the production and delivery of the periodic and final reports, the drafting of main documents related to the management of the project, and the development of all the documents related to the organisation of project events. Overall 6 main events have been organised, i.e.: a kick off meeting, 5 steering committee meetings. A strong support was also given to the organisation of the mid-term workshop and the Final Conference.
B) Relation with the EC. The DPO was in charge for the relations with the European Commission and DG Research. This included formal and informal exchange of information (letters, e-mail) with the EC project officer and financial officer as well as the organisation of meetings with them.
C) Internal communication. The DPO provided the partners with an assistance during all the phases of the project. In this regard, DPO has maintained regular contacts with the team members, keeping them informed of the progress/problems/delays and clarification related to the project. The DPO was also in contact with the administrative and financial officers of all the organisations of the consortium in order to provide the necessary support in filling the financial statements. The internal communication has been performed by e-mail messages and web-conferences.
Potential Impact:
The main potential impacts of the TRIGGER project are connected with the five Action Plans. Most of these impacts have been described above (see Description of the main S&T results/foreground). In this section, some considerations about impacts and sustainability of the Action Plans, drawn by the final evaluation report, are briefly provided.
To the aim of the project evaluation, the impact has been assessed both in terms subjective impact, i.e. satisfaction of the beneficiaries of the Action Plans and consensus among the other stakeholders and objective impact, related to the effects obtained in terms of real change within the organisations. Sustainability refers to the capacity of the actions implemented through the Action Plans to continue producing effects even beyond the end of the programme.
1.1. Università di Pisa (UNIPI)
The action plan has certainly produced numerous impacts, both "subjective" and "objective". With regard to the first aspect, it is noted that the AP has, overall, always recorded high or very high levels of agreement, by all the stakeholders involved. In particular, the direct beneficiaries expressed themselves in a very positive way, but also the managers and leaders of the organization, as well as the male component, showed their agreement.
Also the satisfaction with the activities carried out has always been considered high by all the components considered (managers/leaders of the organization, men of the organisation, the Internal support committee and others) and, even, very high by the direct beneficiaries of these actions.
With regard to the objective impact, it can be stressed, first of all, that important results have been attained, especially thanks to the increasing visibility and recognition of the project at UNIPI, allowing the Team to establish stronger relationships with the management and internal stakeholders.
Some of the most important impacts are reported below:
− inclusion of some amendments to the regulations of the University on the basis of the results of the Gender oriented analysis (Action 1.4.2.);
− definition and signature, following the results of the Satisfaction Survey (Action 1.2.1.) of some agreements with different cooperatives to match the need for child-related services not only for employees but also students, PhD students and other people working for the university, even if on a temporary basis;
− introduction of some changes in the Gender Budget at UNIPI in order to map the different dimensions of female participation following the line adopted in "Analysis of female careers and related awareness-raising activities" (Action 1.4.1);
− the acquisition of the database of the scientists (Action 1.6.1.) at the central and departmental level as a permanent tool for Human Resources offices.
No specific negative effects have been recorded by the team during the project lifespan. On the contrary, there have been numerous positive effects, such as a very high level of awareness concerning the gender dimension of work organization achieved thanks to the third Annual seminar with the Dean on career support (Action 1.3.1.) and the subsequent activation of a specific task force on this matter. Moreover, the promotion of a participative approach from the beginning of the project seemed to be very profitable to increase the awareness of the female researchers involved in the project as referents for the targeted Departments or as participants in different activities (seminars, course on the leaky pipeline, etc.). This approach fostered a sharing process inside the target departments which favoured women’s “voice” to emerge.
Furthermore, the Action Plan has allowed the launch of numerous relationships and collaborations, on different bases, with stakeholders outside the University. Among them we can mention, first of all, the National Conference of the Italian University of Equality Bodies (CoNaEB) that is a National Association between the Italian Universities Bodies for Equal Opportunities (named CUG, Guarantee Committee). This association has been inserted directly into the plan as beneficiary of one of the actions (1.1.2.) which aimed to provide this new association with training and support, so that it can achieve one of its statutory objectives, namely: "promote and support research and teaching on gender studies and monitoring of careers "in Italian Universities.
Collaborative relationships have also been initiated with other players such as: the National Institute of Health; the national Association "Health and Gender"; the National Journal "Noi Donne"; the Regional Administration of Tuscany; "La Limonaia", a Pisa-based association specialised in science communication.
The Team did not report any problems or recurrent constraints in designing and establishing sustainable arrangements in order to secure the continuation of the Action Plan. The key factor in defining the sustainability plan, according to the Team, was the adoption of a strategy aimed at sharing the action plan both with the university top level management and with young researchers and professors in different stages of their careers by adopting a bottom-up approach.
As it emerges from the sustainability plan, important achievements have been attained for the institutionalisation or continuation under other forms of actions initiated under the Action Plan. For many actions, sustainable institutional arrangements have been already developed, also thanks to the increasing cooperation of the Team with internal stakeholders as UNIPI management, and external ones, like the public and private bodies mentioned above.
Here below, some relevant achievements are listed.
− Two relevant institutional agreements with the Regional Administration of Tuscany Department of Health and with the National Institute of Health have been signed. These agreements are aimed at promoting and supporting gender-based health and medicine.
− A thematic section on Gendering Content and Methods in Scientific Research has been founded and embedded in the CoNaEB. Such section aims at sharing practices and results gained by researchers and professors, at national level, who introduced a gender-related approach in their research activities.
− Thanks to the key role played by the UNIPI TRIGGER team in the Standing Conference of the Presidents of the Single Degree Course in Medicine and Surgery, an amendment was approved recommending all Italian Degree Course in Medicine and Surgery to integrate their training offer with educational activities related to Gender Medicine, starting from the A.Y. 2017/2018
Furthermore, the institutionalization of many actions started under the Action Plan must be reported. These are actions for which new resources of different nature have been obtained both internally at the University of Pisa and externally, through the networking actions launched during the project. Among others, we can remember the following actions:
− The Database of female scientists (Action 1.6.2);
− The annual competition for theses with a gendered approach (Action 1.5.4)
− the Satisfaction survey with existing services and integration plan (1.2.1);
− Itinerant lectures on parental roles within the couple (1.2.2);
− Annual seminars with the participation of Deans on career support (1.3.1);
− Annual training course on the leaky pipeline phenomenon (1.3.2);
− Analysis of female careers and related awareness-raising activities (1.4.1);
− Gender-oriented analysis on the administrative documents (1.4.2);
− Testing innovative research tools for the gendering of research procedures (1.5.2);
− Permanent teaching module for PhD courses (1.5.3);
− Annual competition for theses with a gendered approach (1.5.4);
− Database of female scientists (1.6.1).
Also with regard to the sustainability of the Team involved in the implementation of the Action Plan, even if there is not a defined and institutionalized path for all the members, solutions have been prepared that will allow, at the end of the TRIGGER Project, to give new life to gender equality activities in the institution.
The individual team members, indeed, will remain involved in activities concerning gender equality at the University of Pisa. With reference to the two permanent staff members, they will continue their commitment within the university, having already taken on support and advisory roles that are consistent and coherent with the objectives of the TRIGGER project. As for the third Team member's contract, it has been extended by an additional two years (maximum term foreseen by Law 240/2010). She thus will remain involved in activities like the integration of a gender dimension in research and education in the Department of Political Science and the University of Pisa.
1.2. Vysoka Skola Chemicko-technologicka v Praze - (VSCHT)
The AP has shown a fluctuating trend of agreement and satisfaction among the different components considered, with the male component always lower than others. Direct beneficiaries, anyway, have always expressed a high agreement and satisfaction with the activities carried out.
These results are partially explained by the innovative and pioneering character of the project, whose arguments and activities are unusual in a technical and male-dominated Czech university, especially after the renewal of its management team with persons partially different from the ones who followed the TRIGGER Action Plan since its very beginning.
As regards the objective impact, it can be stressed, firstly, that, according to the TRIGGER Team, important results have been attained for what concerns: raising awareness on the gender issues within the organisation; changes in the strategic and internal documents; empowerment of women; increasing competences and knowledge on gender and diversity issues; introduction of the gender dimension in research content.
In particular, despite the difficulties occurring mainly in relation to establishing rules to support the female careers, some positive outcomes are visible:
- The amendment of the collective agreement concerning home working and flexible time
- The insertion of an objective of diversity management in the strategic plan of the institution
- The amendment of the internal regulations in the context of accreditation of HEIs with a new paragraph titled “The University should heed the equal opportunities”
- The implementation of the Julie Hamackova award
- The popularity gained by the book of interviews and related posters, also in terms of visibility and, to some extent, authoritativeness of the women researchers involved
- The establishment of the new Department “Advisory and Career Centre” which was approved by Academic Senate, thus becoming a part of the organisational structure
- The new project financed under the Operational Programme of the European Social Fund, and also within the Institutional Plan, where new activities as mentoring, career advice, and training in soft competencies have been integrated.
The team recorded on the actors involved both positive effects and negative ones, mainly in the first part of the project, in terms of support to the project team.
Furthermore, the Action Plan has allowed the launch of numerous relationships and collaborations with stakeholders outside the University, including other Czech universities, trade unions, the Czech Rectors’ conference, other organisations partnering in EU-funded gender equality projects.
Moreover, these collaborations, according to the VSCHT team, led to some results, and outputs of the Action Plan have been also used by other organisations:
- The National Contact Centre for Gender and Science (ISAS) has created the Working Group for Change, which organizes mutual learning events at national level to share experience about implementation. VSCHT team actively participates in it
- Cooperation has been established with the other institutions (in particular, Czech Globe) about the internal directives regarding home office and flexible working hours measures as well as the development of a gender sensitive communication charter
- Cooperation with the Technology Agency of Czech Republic (TA CR) has been established for sharing experience on sex and gender analysis in research topics, used in shaping the rules of the new TA CR programme
- Both team leaders of VSCHT and ISAS are members of the Working Group on the Action Plan for the HR and gender in research of the Ministry of Education
- The Masaryk University in Brno discussed the TRIGGER action plan and was inspired by it in setting up a proposal of an action plan to be funded under the Libra Project (H2020 project), which actually was selected for funding.
Finally, the team reported that some actions of the Action plan are being reproduced outside the University, and in particular:
− The interviews with women researchers (in order to enhance role models)
− The leadership programme for women researchers
− The contents of internal documents/rules (including gender equality/diversity) in strategic documents.
The VSCHT Team did not met specific problems or recurrent constraints in designing and establishing sustainable arrangements in order to secure the continuation of the Action Plan. The greatest difficulty in this regard is connected to the scarce budget allocated to administrative staff, which could probably prevent the current staff from following the continuation of activities.
All this notwithstanding, some relevant elements indicate that the sustainability of the Action Plan can be assessed as very positive. According to the team, some factors played a key role in defining this plan. Among these, the following must be mentioned: establishment of a new department at VSCHT Praha, the Advisory and Career Centre, that will ensure those parts of action plan as mentoring, career advice, trainings and courses; development of a new ESF project focused on institution policies improvement; development of a new Accreditation system of HEIs in the Czech Republic; higher competitiveness of other universities; increased internationalisation of the Czech HEIs.
From the point of view of the future sustainability of the activities included in the Action Plan, the VSCHT team remarked that at national level a closer cooperation was established with the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (agency supporting and financing research and innovation projects) for the preparation of the new programme ZETA supporting early stage researchers. It was the first time in Czech Republic that a support programme includes gender equality among evaluation criteria. This agency is also a partner in a H2020 GEP project. The team also mentioned the activation of a stable link with the network for cultural and institutional change. In this framework, a specific cooperation has been established with the Masaryk University Brno, also participant of project LIBRA.
To give continuity to actions initiated under TRIGGER, the VSCHT Team reported that some new economic, material or human resources were found from the Ministry of education and the European Social Fund through other projects for implementing some TRIGGER actions.
According to the Sustainability Plan of the Action plan No. 2 the following activities or activity areas, that were realised during the lifespan of the project, will continue after its end.
2.1.1 Statistical survey of students and academics female and male proportion on different levels of their career
2.1.2 Survey of needs, obstacles and challenges of VSCHT employees (academic and non-academic)
2.1.5 Workshops on gender diversity management
2.1.6 Network of women researchers to mutual support and empowerment
2.2 Actions promoting work-life balance
2.3 Actions supporting early-stage career-development
2.4 Actions challenging gender stereotypes and consequent horizontal segregation
2.5 Actions aimed at gendering S&T contents and methods
2.6 Actions promoting women’s leadership in the practice of research
2.7 Actions promoting women’s leadership in the practice of scientific management
With reference to linkages established with key-players to support the Action Plan or to favour its repeatability, the team involved staff and students from the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, the Ministry of Education, and the Czech Technical University in Prague in the seminars and workshops arranged by the TRIGGER team.
Finally, as for activities implemented or started to make the new operational setups activated by the actions definitive, the team reported the adoption of new regulations.
1.3. Birkbeck College University of London (BBK)
With regard to the subjective impact, it is noted that the AP has, overall, always recorded high or very high levels of agreement and satisfaction, by all the stakeholders involved. Almost all the actions aroused high satisfaction during the Action Plan.
With regard to the objective impact, the following facts can be mentioned.
- The Master of the College now opens appointments for senior positions to open competition rather than making appointments. In addition, data collection and analysis on gender equality now is a standard procedure.
- Unconscious bias training was built into College procedures, thanks to Action 3.1.1 (Systematic observation of potentially discriminating formal/informal behaviours), and the growing awareness of discriminatory behaviour towards women in the college backed up by TRIGGER evidence.
- Following the same process started with the action 3.1.1. Assistant Deans for Equality were appointed in each school from Summer 2017, including the School of Business, Economics, and Informatics (BEI).
- The appointment of a Research and Development Manager, i.e. a dedicated technology transfer officer in the BEI School, was adopted as a result of the research on commercialisation undertaken under Action 3.5.
- The adoption of a new Birkbeck People Strategy, “Building Success Together”, to whom the TRIGGER team contributed through Athena SWAN.
Another relevant change was represented by the fact that TRIGGER team is currently part of Athena SWAN Self Assessment Committee and the TRIGGER actions are feeding into Athena Swan applications (College and departments). This means that once TRIGGER will be over, the HR department will ensure their continuity.
Considering the effects on the actors involved, no specific negative effects have been recorded by the team during the project lifespan. Among the positive effects, it is worth mentioning, instead, a generally increased commitment towards gender equality by the top leadership of BBK and the acknowledgment of the need for a mentoring/leadership programme and its sustainability by the Athena SWAN self-assessment team, chaired by the Master and composed of different members of staff at BBK.
As for the unexpected effects on gender equality, it is firstly to stress the support the TRIGGER team is giving to the Athena SWAN (the governing Self Assessment Committee and the Action Committee) to work on the submission of a proposal for a bronze award. Furthermore, the team reported the creation of a discussion on gender equality at college level, with the setting up of a working group for the appointment of a Pro-Vice Master for Equality Issues and the emerging discussions on the need to foster commercialisation at Birkbeck: these have informed a proposal.
Concerning networking and raising awareness activities, during the project lifespan, the team promoted several networking events and PhD seminars, involved universities abroad (Dundalk, Lund) and the business sector in the implementation of the Mentoring programme and participated in the scientific debate on gender in science and technology through several journal articles or book chapters (6), edited books (2) and presentations in conferences and workshops other than the ones included in the TRIGGER action plans (9).
Through Action 3.1.2 on the establishment of collaborative networks, the Team involved organisations from both the private and public sector (such as: PwC; Cisco; Google; Mercer; Syngenta; Three; MWS Consulting; CBI; BIS; The Guardian Higher Education; Greater London Authority).
Furthermore, in 2015 a representative of the Dundalk Institute of Technology (Ireland) has invited the TRIGGER team leader to be a member of the Global Women’s Entrepreneurship Policy (WEP) Research Project. She has been also asked to chair the Regional Studies Association Committee on Gender equality, this representing a way for results of the BBK Action Plan to be used by other organisation.
The Team did not encounter any particular problems or recurrent constraints in designing and establishing sustainable arrangements in order to secure the continuation of the Action Plan. Only the search for funds for the PhD program caused delays, even if it was later solved with the grant awarded by the Birkbeck Graduate School. The key factor for defining the sustainability plan, according to the team, was the advices from the TRIGGER external and internal Boards.
Concerning the development of national or international contacts in order to access additional resources, two facts are worth mentioning. First, the TRIGGER team was involved with the Leadership Foundation which holds events and delivers publications on women in leadership. Second, BBK has joined WISE, a campaign for gender balance in science, technology and engineering, which enables and energises people in business, industry and education to increase the participation, contribution and success of women in STEM.
Moreover, a network is being built with other organisations, from the private and public sector, to maximize TRIGGER research impact and stable links were created with several bodies within and outside the institute, as for example: Human Resources Team, Institute of Directors, Athena Swan committee, Regional Studies Association, Higher Education Authority, Ireland and Taylor and Francis.
Furthermore, among the linkages established with key-players other than ones strictly involved with the implementation of the Action Plan to favour its repeatability, a strong support to the TRIGGER activities was received by Mercers, a city firm, and by the Dean of the Business School at Royal Holloway, University of London.
To support the implementation of the Action Plan, new funds were found. In particular: BEI School and College provided grants for networking including for events for to be held outside Birkbeck; the Graduate School is funding Seminars in the PhD programme; Taylor and Francis will support events in the continuing Leadership Programme.
Among the actions initiated in continuity with those promoted within the activities of the Action plan, the Mentoring programme (Activity 3.2.1.) the Leadership programme (Activity 3.4.1.) and the PhD programme (Activity 3.3.3.) can be mentioned.
The actions 3.2.1. and 3.4.1. have been included in the Athena SWAN action plan, and specifically: Athena SWAN-TRIGGER academic mentoring programme; seminars for aspiring professors/managers (2 per year); network for women professors. This means that these actions will be carried on after the end of TRIGGER and till end 2019 at least. In relation to action 3.3.3. the TRIGGER team has closely worked with the Birkbeck Graduate Research School (BGRS), the actor that at Birkbeck deals with PhD students’ training. BGRS revises its curriculum development plans on a yearly base, and funds have been asked to conduct the action in 2018; the proposal was successful. The TRIGGER Team leader at Birkbeck is in charge of ensuring funds for the following years.
After the end of the project, the team sustainability will be achieved as follows: Membership of the Team leader in relevant College bodies (Equality Committee and Athena SWAN self-assessment team); Consultancy-based contracts (till end February 2019) with one of the consultants and the project administrator working on TRIGGER impact in particular.
As a strategy to better embed gender equality at Birkbeck, the TRIGGER team has proposed the appointment of a Pro-Vice Master for Equality and Diversity. The decision process is still ongoing. Assistant Deans for equality have been appointed in each School. At the same time, the role and structure of the Equality Committee is being revised so to address changes in the College’s diversity strategy, including strengthening the gender equality agenda.
1.4. Université Paris Diderot, (UPD)
Concerning the subjective impact, the levels of agreement and satisfaction by all the stakeholders involved have been reported as high. Only with respect to some actions carried out in the early stages of the project, satisfaction was assessed at an intermediate level by both the male components and the Managers/leaders of the organization. It is also to be considered that in the last phase of the project, satisfaction for individual actions and for activities in general seems to be greatly increased.
With regard to the objective impact, important results have been achieved, especially thanks to the increasing sensitiveness to gender equality in the University community. Some of the most significant changes connected to the action plan are summarized below:
- The establishment of a new organisational unit dedicated to the fight against sexual harassment at the level of the Communauté Sorbonne Paris Cité (USPC)
- The adoption of a new rule giving priority for women in being awarded a sabbatical within the first two years after a maternity leave
- The adoption of measures to favour the turnover in administrative tasks
- The adoption and further application of a gender-neutral language in all human resources documents (encouraging women to apply)
- The achievement of the HRS4R (Human Resources Strategy for Researchers) European label, pertaining to the transparency of recruitment procedures
- The adoption of measures concerning career advancement, reward, and sabbatical overall aiming women to apply for higher career positions
- The start by the HR service of a reflexion on coaching for female assistant professors in order to encourage them to require to be full professor
- The extension of the training for masters students at USPC level
- The introduction of training for medical students
- The adoption of gendered-based statistics in the OVE (Student Life Observatory) and in the UPD social report (to a higher extent than established by law).
Considering the effects on the actors involved, the team recorded some negative effects as conflicts and resistances, or lack of full cooperation, from some university components (top leadership, male component and, in some cases, beneficiaries) related to the use of gender-neutral language, and a supposed male "discrimination" in specific actions. On the contrary, many positive effects have been reported in terms of strong support, offer of help for the realization of some activities, the request to present results and initiatives, etc., including:
- The director of the PhD school of the Communauté Sorbonne Paris Cité ;
− the director of the PhD training centre
− the directors of Biology and Physics departments (target institutes of the Action Plan)
- Many researchers and students addressing individual requests to the project team
- researchers asking the team to present the gender equality actions to their students
- organisational units asking for trainings on equality for their students
- student associations offering to help
- Some laboratories asking the team for training for their researchers/administrative staff.
Moreover, the involvement of the Team at national level (through the coordination of a national working group and the participation as member in different national working groups) largely helped it to gain much more credibility. At the institution level, both UPD leaders and researchers became much more supportive with the Team.
Finally, it must be emphasized that the impact of training for students and staff became really visible. When the team presented its new action plan to the Central Council in May 2017, both trade unions and elected students supported this action plan and asked for a new permanent position for the PEFH.
The Action Plan also allowed initiating numerous relationships and collaborations with external stakeholders. Among these, in the first place, it is worth mentioning some actors from the world of research and education such as the Communauté Sorbonne Paris Cité (especially the universities of Paris 3, Paris 5 and Paris 13), the CNRS, Science Po, and the CPED (Conférence Permanente des chargées de mission Egalité Diversité dans l’enseignement supérieur).
Reference is also to be made to institutional or private entities at the national and international level such as: French Ministry of higher education; ONU Femmes France; The Higher Council on gender equality; the Parliament delegation of women rights; Centre Hubertine Auclert; Generali firm; Clichy City; Institut en santé génésique; CLASHES (French student association against sexual harassment in higher education); Femmes et sciences, Laboratoire de l’égalité, Universcience, ANEF (Association Nationale des Études Féministes), the national association of the presidents of Universities, the national association of the presidents of the great schools, the national association of the presidents of the engineering schools, the association of young researchers on gender, The Association for the Women Leaders in the Higher education and Research, réseau the national network of legal offices in Higher Education and Research.
Moreover, thanks to their action, members of the team were invited to participate in radio broadcast or to answer interviews for traditional and online newspapers.
The Team had no particular problems or recurrent constraints in designing and establishing sustainable arrangements in order to secure the continuation of the Action Plan. Some elements played a key role in defining the sustainability plan, according to the team members. In particular, reference is made to: the national debate and the national context (new law on gender equality adopted); the involvement of the TRIGGER Project at the national level which represented a great opportunity for visibility; the increased attention given to gender issues within the university community thanks to the actions implemented.
In this framework some meaningful facts deserve to be highlighted as related to the possible future sustainability.
First of all, concerning contacts established with other external organisations that could play a role in the future to ensure long-term sustainability to the Actions launched under the Action Plan, the team mentioned several formal and informal partnerships established with national and international players (see above).
As for new economic and human resources identified/achieved to entirely or partially support the activities of the Action Plan or to give continuity to them, a second civil servant position for the PEFH will be created in 2018. In addition to the creation of this position, the PEFH budget will increase of a 40%.
UPD obtained the European label HRS4R. The PEFH participated to the draft of the project and mentioned the measures already implemented. This label ensures a gender equality policy at UPD, thus providing an argument to create a second civil servant position at the PEFH.
Among the new actions initiated in continuity with those promoted within the activities of the Action Plan, the Team reported that an external structure on sexual harassment was created. Moreover, a large part of the TRIGGER action plan at UPD is or will be extended to USPC. To this aim, some departments or laboratories asked the Team to provide new trainings.
As for the activities implemented or started to make the new operational setups activated by the actions definitive, the adoption of a new gender equality action plan (made up of actions drawn from the TRIGGER Action Plan) by the Central Council in May 2017 led to the establishment of new procedures (Actions 4.2.2. 4.4.3. and 4.7.2.).
Furthermore, all the student associations will sign a charter on gender equality and against sexist communication, which exclude them from funds and university support in case of violation.
1.5. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM)
The AP has, overall, always recorded levels of agreement and satisfaction more than positive by all the involved stakeholders. An exception is to be made for the male component, which in the initial phase of the activities manifested some skepticism by expressing intermediate levels of agreement. Such a diffidence seemed to be progressively decreased or even disappeared as the AP progressed.
As for the objective impact, according to the Team, some impacts turned out to be more significant in their capacity to introduce change within the organisation. They are:
- The setting up and the approval of the Equality Plan of the UPM
- The creation of the UNESCO Chair
- The "Women at UPM" reports that have been used in different presentations by the Equality Unit, in order to show the situation of women and girls at UPM
- The approval of a new inter-university Master Programme on gender (even if the process of negotiation on some legal issues is still ongoing) to be launched on 2019
- The introduction of a new Mentoring programme
- The review of the normative which ended up in the first Equality Plan of the UPM.
In general, some effects concerning the actors involved are reported by the TRIGGER team. At UPM most people have discovered or become aware of existing inequalities and what gender and equality is by some of the actions of TRIGGER, but also through informal conversations that happened spontaneously. The team reckoned this as positive overall, even if the reaction to this has not always been positive or producing supportive attitudes. Anyhow, the actions included in the AP succeeded in raising the people’s awareness. In many cases, people started thinking about gender inequality for the very first time in their life thanks to the project.
Mentoring programmes are leading to an empowerment of women, and some of them are becoming interested on the topic, even offering themselves as mentors of future mentees.
The activities related to the inclusion of gender in existing courses had led to two PhD theses at the School of Architecture (one finished and other ongoing), and a new student has shown interest in writing her Bachelor dissertation taking into account gender as the core of the topic. In all of the three pilot schools, the team has had different research articles/papers and participation in conferences including gender, so several students are discovering a new topic and methodology of research.
The creation of the Chair and its support from UNESCO is playing an essential role in the consolidation of gender and equality in UPM, especially regarding the support of the higher positions. The new management team is trusting very much in the visibility that the Chair may offer to the UPM.
Many dissemination activities concerning the Action Plan have also been carried out outside the university (in this regard, UPM TRIGGER activities were presented in international meetings in Turkey, Greece, Romania and Austria) and important relations have been established with external bodies. During the project lifespan, relevant collaborations have been started with public and private bodies, such as:
- IGME (Geological and Mining Institute of Spain)
- COAM (Professional Association of Architects in Madrid)
- Extremadura Regional Government and Canary Island Regional Government
- Fundación Mujeres x África
- Madrid City Council
- Gender4UP
- Network of Equality Unit of Spanish Universities
- AMIT- Association of Women Engineers and Technologist
- UN HABITAT – Habitat III
- Spanish Network for a Sustainable Develpment (Red Española para el Desarrollo Sostenible)
- National Association of Architects
As for the utilisation of the project results, it is to highlight that the report “Women at UPM” has been used by other researchers and in many activities as a database on the situation of women in technological studies; the guidelines to fight Sexual Harassment are being used by the RRI Tools project and included in the publication "GEAR Tool- Gender Equality in Academia and Research" published by EIGE; the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin) is reproducing the creation of a UNESCO Chair, following the same process followed by the UPM team.
The Team did not report problems or recurrent constraints in designing and establishing sustainable arrangements in order to secure the continuation of the Action Plan. Some elements, which represent the heart of the PA, have played, according to the team members, a key role in defining the sustainability plan. In particular, reference is made to: the Gender Equality Plan; the new Mentoring programme about leadership; the new Master programme on gendered contents; the UNESCO Chair (gender expertise in all the former issues and international representation of UPM).
Some interesting facts can be recalled as related to the possible future sustainability.
Different contacts have been established by the Team with national or international networks, associations or S&T organisations in order to access further human, material or economic resources to entirely or partially support the implementation of the Action plan or its sustainability beyond the conclusion of the TRIGGER project. In this regard, the following points can be highlighted:
− The mentoring activities and some related training are being supported by private and public funding, included in the new mentoring programme
− The new Master Programme will be funded by the Regional Government of Madrid
− The UNESCO Chair is signing different agreements and contracts with external institutions (public and private) that will ensure the continuity of the TRIGGER team for at least 1.5 year after the TRIGGER lifetime
− UPM has submitted a number of applications related to gender/equality projects to get funds from H2020 calls, one of which was successful (at the date of the end of December 2017).
With reference to the creation of stable links with other bodies involved in the implementation of gender equality initiatives in science, in enterprises or in other sectors, the Team primarily stressed that the UNESCO Chair is member of the Global Network of UNESCO Chairs on Gender. Moreover, other links have been established – among others – with the University Platform on women, gender and feminist studies, and the Network of Equality Units of Spanish Universities. The Equality Unit belongs to the working group Gender4UP (gathering the equality units from the four technological universities from Spain).
As for Actions initiated in continuity with those promoted within the activities of the Action plan of UPM, the Team mentioned the new mentoring programme, while the Equality Plan, approved in June 2017, can be considered as the major operational setup activated by the action plan allowing to make its outputs definitive. All in all, a large number of actions carried out during the AP will be implemented in the near future through the UPM Gender Equality Plan and the support of the aforementioned players.
List of Websites:
www.triggerproject.eu
The TRIGGER Project “TRansforming Institutions by Gendering contents and Gaining Equality in Research” aimed at promoting systemic interventions designed to have deep, long-lasting and widespread impacts at all the different levels in 5 research organisations. The project, coordinated and co-funded by the Italian Government, assisted by an institute specialised in gender and science, involved as co-funders five universities from different EU countries (Czech Republic, France, Italy, UK, Spain). Building on the results of earlier projects, integrated actions have been implemented at each university addressing different fields of gender inequality in science, i.e.:
1) Working environment, formal/informal culture and explicit/tacit rules (awareness-raising; collection of gender-sensitive data; support in the early stages of scientific careers; promotion of work-life balance, etc.).
2) Content and methods of scientific research, to acknowledge its gender dimension and impact (updating of teaching curricula; gendering the design of research and technological innovation; allocation of funds for gendered research; contrasting stereotypes about women in science, etc.).
3) Scientific leadership at different levels (selection procedures and criteria for the evaluation of scientific merit; introduction of equality targets in decision making bodies; enhancement of women researchers’ visibility, etc.).
Each of the 5 involved partners have designed and carried out a tailored action plan including measures related to all 3 fields, whose relative weight depended on their specific characteristics, situations and needs. A set of common activities, including technical assistance, monitoring & evaluation, and public communication have been also performed to valorise and disseminate the results of the Action Plans Europe-wide.
TRIGGER has been characterised by integration, customisation, systematic nature, concreteness. Public debate and awareness have been generated on these issues Europe-wide. Added value has been yielded both on the strategic level, by the strong focus on gendering research, and on the operational level, through fostering mutual learning among partners and among the different European structural change projects, to share ideas and building blocks of the structural change process towards gender equality.
Project Context and Objectives:
1. PROJECT AS A WHOLE
The European Union is committed to remove inequalities and to promote equality between men and women in all its activities, including research and innovation. Indeed, gender inequality in science is a long-lasting problem, since, despite some slow improvements, women remain insufficiently represented among scientists, mainly at top levels, also in the EU member states (see She Figures, 2015, https://ec.europa.eu/research/swafs/pdf/pub_gender_equality/she_figures_2015-final.pdf#view=fit&pagemode=none).
In its nearly 20-years policy effort, the European Commission launched, in the early 2010s, a strategy promoting structural change processes inside research institutions, geared at introducing gender equality and gender-aware management in a permanent way, through dedicated projects and gender action plans. This strategy, started in the second part of the 7th Framework Programme for research and innovation of the EC, has been continued and intensified in the subsequent Horizon 2020 programme. The remarkable developments of EU policy-making in this area gradually led from awareness-raising efforts to a wide set of pilot projects trying to actually implement change, finally giving the way to the perspective of structural change. A shift has also occurred as concerns general perspectives: from women scientists to research organisations and universities as the main targets of actions (from “fixing the women” to “fixing the organisations”), and from the prevalence of traditional equal opportunities approaches to the growing importance of the issue of the gender dimension of research design and process as a crucial lever for fundamental change (“fixing the knowledge”).
In this framework, TRIGGER aimed to contribute to implement structural change in five institutions, identifying views and building block of the structural change process, to produce deep, systematic and long-lasting change in scientific and technological organisations, coherently and innovatively combining the most promising notions and tools developed along the way, also taking advantage from the fact it is participating in what is already the fourth wave of structural change initiatives launched by the EC. The challenge the project chose to undertake was consequently that of translating an advanced set of gender-equality oriented policies and approaches into widespread social action, that is, into concrete, active and daily support to change at all levels, affecting the ordinary functioning and daily behaviour of people at the 5 involved organisations, thus initiating (“triggering”) self-sustained and durable change processes.
Considering the wide scope of the aim and the challenge identified, the objectives of the project specifically target, but at the same time go beyond, the involved organisations. From the practical point of view, TRIGGER envisaged five objectives.
The first objective was to concretely apply different self-tailored action plans (hereinafter APs), geared at introducing gender-aware management at all levels in each of the participating organisations, i.e. Université Paris Diderot (UPD - France), Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (ISAS - Czech Republic), Birkbeck College (BBK - United Kingdom) , Università di Pisa (UNIPI - Italy) Vysoka skola chemicko-technologicka v Praze (VSCHT - Czech Republic) and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM - Spain).
A second objective was carrying out a coordinated and specific effort in all the involved institutions aimed at experimenting innovative measures for the practical gendering of the priority-setting and design process of scientific research and technological innovation, to test their actual potential in triggering far-reaching and deep change.
A third objective was ensuring the sustainability of the action plans by constantly negotiating change with all involved stakeholders, also enlarging the area of the stakeholders considered so to include relevant external actors, whose participation would favour wider social innovation dynamics, in turn increasing longer-term sustainability.
The fourth objective was producing a deeper understanding of the dynamics surrounding structural change efforts by constantly analysing, monitoring and assessing the process activated in each institution, which also makes mutual learning practices among partners systematic and rewarding. Fifth and last, the project set out to provide an active arena for discussion and exchange among the players involved in the different structural change initiatives throughout Europe, in order to share its efforts and results in consolidating and setting up a sort of integrated model for interpreting structural change.
In order to achieve its goals, several interconnected activities have been designed and implemented.
1.1. DRAFTING AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ACTION PLANS
The drafting of the Action Plans was carried out prior to the presentation of the proposal for financing. The Action Plans were designed using a common theoretical and methodological framework defining three strategic areas respectively pertaining to: the promotion of a friendly environment for women; the development of gender-aware science; the promotion of women’s leadership in science. This common framework was used as a tool for both building a comparable and communicable perspective to share and make the most of the different experiences, and for the effective tailoring of the design to the concrete reality and needs of each partner. The implementation process lasted four years and was conducted according to a common roadmap. A sustainability plan has been also defined for each Action Plan so as to ensure the continuation of the Actions after the TRIGGER project lifespan.
1.2. TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
A continuous technical assistance activity to the Teams engaged with the Action Plans has been provided. This activity was oriented at steering and continuously adjusting the Action Plan to changing conditions as well as at coordinating and promoting mutual learning processes among all the partners. The technical assistance included different kinds of activities, e.g.: manage internal discussion and exchange; the organisation of bilateral monitoring sessions; the organisation of working sessions on common issues and emerging problems, with the production and dissemination of handouts and guidance documents on specific issues; the organisation of regular on-site visits. All activities have been conducted either in the presence or at a distance. In the framework of the technical assistance, different mutual learning activities have been conducted in order to favour an exchange of practices and experiences among the partners. Moreover, a feasibility study on the sustainability of the TRIGGER Action Plans has been proposed, aimed at favouring the preparation of the sustainability plans of the actions included in each Action Plan (see 1.1. above).
1.3. ONGOING AND FINAL EVALUATION
An evaluation service has been provided, including three in-progress evaluation exercises and a final evaluation. For each exercise, an evaluation report has been discussed with each concerned team, and subsequently delivered. The evaluation process was based on an evaluation model including five dimensions: effectiveness, efficiency, impact, sustainability, and relevance. For each dimension, a set of indicators have been applied. To carry out the evaluation process, specific technical instruments (questionnaires and grids) have been developed on the basis of data and information resulting from technical assistance and monitoring.
1.4. ACCOMPANYING RESEARCH
Leveraging upon the information collected through both the technical assistance and the evaluation process, an accompanying research on the implementation dynamics of the action plans has been conducted all over the project period. Such a research was geared to coordinate and interpret the whole information set which was being collected on what was going on in the participating institutions, so to lay the ground for the drafting of Guidelines (see point 1.5. below).
1.5. GUIDELINES
Directly deriving from the structural change experience, the Guidelines addressed the “how-to” dimension with respect to the activation of the change process, so as to favour acceptance and assure long-run sustainability for the actions implemented through gender equality plans in research institutions. The Guidelines – developed through a mutual learning process and experience exchange among the participating organisations – also in collaboration with other European Projects such as EGERA, FESTA, GARCIA, GenderTime, GenisLab, GENOVATE, INTEGER and STAGES, have been produced with the aim of spreading, among European universities and research institutes, successful practices and negotiation strategies favouring structural transformations. The contents of final guidelines came from mutual learning among participants and stakeholders, and from accompanying research based on different sources as monitoring, evaluation and technical assistance to the projects, etc. The combination of these approaches has been summarized in clusters of processes, organised around an elementary model of the process of change discussed within the consortium and outside it, which provided a structure for the final guidelines.
1.6. NETWORKING, DISSEMINATION AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION
During project implementation, a set of networking, dissemination and public communication activities have been carried out. Such activities have been implemented both at the project level and at the level of the participating organisations. At the project level, these activities were aimed at regularly spreading information about the TRIGGER project, establishing forms of exchange with other EC-funded structural change projects and spreading the Guidelines. To these ends, a project website has been created, where the main project products have been uploaded. A project newsletter has been regularly produced and disseminated. A mid-term and a final conference of the TRIGGER project have been organised. At the level of single participating organisations, networking, dissemination and public communication activities were aimed at increasing the internal and external visibility of the Action Plans and starting a dialogue with local and national social partners (relevant governmental agencies, local authorities, women’s networks and associations, etc.) to involve them in the change process. Each team created one specific website or webpage regularly spreading information on the Action Plan.
1.7. GENERAL MANAGEMENT
General management activities have included technical and administrative coordination, financial management, intellectual property management, relations with the European Commission and ongoing and final evaluation of the project as a whole. In order to enhance the substantive aspects of the project, an International Board of Advisors has been established, with the participation of experts in gender and science and leading scientists from different disciplinary fields. The Board was composed of: Lotte Bailyn, Professor of Management and Professor of Management emerita at MIT’s Sloan School of Management; Maria Joao Marcelo Curto, a Portuguese senior researcher with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Imperial College, London, where she worked under Sir Derk Barton, Nobel Prize of Chemistry; Stefan Fuchs, a sociologist and currently head of the Regional Research Network at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg, Germany; Alice Hogan, an independent consultant advising and evaluating university programmes and policies to advance the participation of women in academic science and engineering; Dalia Šatkovskiene, an internationally known specialist in the field of quantum mechanics of molecules.
2. ACTION PLANS’ IMPLEMENTATION
2.1. UNIVERSITA’ DI PISA (UNIPI)
The University of Pisa Action Plan aimed at promoting an integrated set of actions targeting at implementing structural changes conducive of gender equality and equal opportunities in six Science and Technology Departments (in the medical area and engineering), with many actions targeting the whole University. The plan has been characterised by a strong focus on both permanent innovative institutional arrangements, and content-oriented initiatives, aimed at practically demonstrating the usefulness of taking into account gender priorities, points of view and peculiarities within the research and innovation processes. Work-life balance initiatives have been addressed to build on and improve existing services. A sustainability plan has been issued to support the full integration of the actions in the ordinary life of the university. The action plan was divided into 6 tasks: the first task was devoted to Actions promoting change in organisational cultures and behaviours. Actions in the second task aimed at improving and making existing services permanent, while also encouraging the sharing of care responsibilities between men and women (whole university). The third task was devoted to supporting early-stage career development. The fourth Task was devoted to promoting actions to change gender stereotypes Science and Technology and to overcome consequent career distortions. The sixth and final task was dedicated to promoting women’s leadership of science. This task included actions sustaining women’s presence and visibility in leadership positions connected to the different aspects of scientific work.
2.2. VYSOKA SKOLA CHEMICKO-TECHNOLOGICKA V PRAZE (VSCHT ) WITH THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE INSTITUTE OF SOCIOLOGY OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC (ISAS)
The priorities and strategic areas of VSCHT and ISAS Action Plan were:
1) Professional and career development of women and early-career researchers
• Working culture and environment, elimination of gender stereotypes, awareness-raising
• Changing of institutional practices and rules
• Providing direct support to female researchers and women and early-career researchers
• Assessment of the current situation, winning the support of leaders, training and workshops for top management and researchers, publication of interviews with women researchers
• Working conditions, work-life balance measures
• mentoring, women’s network, career advice, empowerment and soft-skills training
2) Promote women’s leadership in research and research management
• Assess and revise institutional practices and rules
• Enhancement of women researchers’ visibility and empowerment of women researchers
• Professional assessment and evaluations, selection procedures and criteria for the evaluation, introduction of equality targets in decision-making bodies
• Communication training, training to access decision-making boards and committees
• Gendering contents and methods of scientific activity
• Improve expertise concerning the integration of gender and sex analysis into research
• workshops in cooperation with the Yellow Window, training on the gender dimension in curricula and the pedagogical process
• Develop institutional conditions and opportunities to promote the integration of gender dimension into research
• Setting rules for funding and allocation of funds for gendered research, promoting doctoral theses with gender dimension.
In this framework, the Action Plan involved a set of integrated activities, targeting the entire university and all faculties, geared at achieving sustainable results in key strategic areas – i.e. to create more women-friendly environments, promote gender-aware science and women´s leadership of science – with specifically tailored gender equality actions.
2.3. BIRKBECK COLLEGE (BBK)
The implementation of the TRIGGER project at Birkbeck comprised actions regarding understanding gender cultures in the College, raising awareness about the role of gender in academic work and in the research process, fostering the career of early stage researchers, and enhancing leadership and networking skills. Another action involved supporting the commercialisation of women’s work.
TRIGGER mainly involved the SET fields studied at Birkbeck: the School of Science and the Departments of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, and Computer Science and Information Systems in the School of Business, Economics and Informatics. The general objective was that of changing the academic culture, by focusing on the strategies to positively involve all potential stakeholders and overcome indifference, resistance and backlash. TRIGGER actions at Birkbeck aimed to impact different sides of the gender-and-science issue and to build new perspectives beyond the traditional “neutral” understanding of science.
2.4. UNIVERSITE’ PARIS DIDEROT (UPD)
University Paris Diderot proposed a large action plan because there already existed a unit in charge of gender equality (le pole égalité femmes hommes). The plan included 28 actions addressing, according to their specific features, one or both of the more directly participating institutes (Physics and Biology), but often also the whole university. The Action plan included: actions promoting change in organisational cultures and behaviours; actions promoting work-life balance; actions supporting early-stage career development; actions challenging gender stereotypes in S&T and consequent career distortions; actions aimed at gendering S&T contents and methods; actions promoting women’s leadership in the practice of research; actions promoting women’s leadership in the management of research; actions promoting women’s leadership in scientific communication; actions promoting women’s leadership in innovation. An action aimed at combating sexual harassment was added during operation. Most of the actions performed were extended to other organizations making part of the same community of higher education institutions, created in the year preceding the TRIGGER start.
2.5. UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE MADRID (UPM)
The UPM Action Plan promoted an integrated set of actions aimed at triggering structural-level change at the University, to be later incorporated in and made permanent through the Equality Action Plan that UPM had to draft and implement following Spanish normative requirements, actually entered into force during the last project year. The actions, addressing many problem areas relevant to gender equality, targeted the whole University, even though three Schools (School of Architecture/ETSAM; School of Building Engineering/ETSEM; School of Industrial Engineering/ETSII) have been– even if to a different extent – the forerunners, both in the planning and implementation of activities targeting all Faculties and Schools, and in the testing of additional ones, specific to their characteristics and previous experience. The Action Plan encompassed the creation of a UNESCO international chair on gender.
Project Results:
In the following sections, the main results deriving from the five Action Plans will be shortly described. Then, a brief presentation of the results coming from the other cross-cutting activities included in the Project will be recalled.
1. UNIVERSITY OF PISA (UNIPI)
1.1. GENERAL APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTATION
The University of Pisa is one of the oldest and largest Italian universities, with 52,000 enrolled students and beyond 1,500 professors in 20 Departments. The percentage of women in each step of careers was in the project beginning in line with the national average (female were 52% among undergraduate students, 51% of graduate students, 42.8% of researchers, 33% of associate professors, and 15% of full professors). Despite the several differences among the various departments, the gradient of exclusion is more pronounced in the scientific field. Because of this, the actions promoted by the TRIGGER project focused on six Science and Technology Departments (in medical area and engineering). To support gender equality and gender sensitiveness at Pisa University, the action plan promoted an integrated set of actions focused on both permanent innovative institutional arrangements aimed at implementing structural changes conducive to gender equality and equal opportunities, and content-oriented initiatives, aimed at practically demonstrating the usefulness of taking into account gender priorities, points of view and peculiarities within research and innovation processes.
An articulated set of actions has been devised in the six Departments, and the active participation and support of distinguished scientists (also from other universities, thanks to the collaboration with the National Conference of Italian University of Equality Bodies) has been ensured with a view to testing innovative research procedures fully integrating the gender perspective (also sponsoring scholarship and annual dissertation awards). On the basis of the results of the tests conducted, at the end of the project a teaching module on the gendered aspects of research and on gendered research tools and procedures in the medicine area and engineering has been established.
1.2. MAIN RESULTS
The whole action plan has been implemented and the most part of the actions will be continued in the future, as detailed in the sustainability plan devised by the project team, thanks to the collaboration of the team with the Delegate of the Rector in Gender Studies & Equal Opportunities and the University Unique Committee of Guarantee (CUG). Among the actions made permanent, it’s worth mentioning the creation and regular updating of an on-line database of female scientists, and the establishment of a permanent teaching module for PhD courses on gender equality and gender in research. The following aspects are to be stressed.
− The action plan achieved all the objectives set at the beginning of the Project in relation to the appointment of the mentioned Rector’s Delegate. However, the team did not expect to find such an important ally in her when defining the Project's sustainability plan. Her role has indeed been crucial in obtaining the necessary support for the development and negotiation of the plan.
− With regard to the Sustainability plan, the role of the CUG and its President is pivotal. Since its first meeting with the team, in the first half of 2017, the CUG (and its President) has shown much interest in the work carried out by the TRIGGER Project. As a result, the project team was and the CUG were able to jointly propose an amendment to the Statute (Action 1.6.2 Agreement for equal gender representation in decision-making bodies), and also recover and enhance many of TRIGGER’s actions, in some cases actions concluded before the beginning of 2017, as in the case of Action 1.2.1 (Satisfaction survey with existing services and integration plan).
− The involvement of the Sisters' Project network in the organisation of the training courses for members of the Conference of National Equality Bodies (CoNaEB) enrolled in the "Gender and Science" section allowed the team to strengthen the collaboration with the project’s representatives and to identify a stable network and collaboration with the CoNaEB. The latter is able to guarantee continuity and the exchange of information amongst the stakeholders of the network, and favour the dissemination of the results.
− The success of the action dedicated to gender analysis of administrative language continued up to the project end. As a result, a toolkit was produced and picked up as a vademecum for the drafting of administrative documents by the University of Pisa.
− In terms of research results, Prof. Ineke Klinge (member of the Advisory Unit for Gendering Research of TRIGGER) has been enthusiastic about the research launched and supported by the TRIGGER Project in medicine and engineering, acknowledging the validity of the projects and endorsing the methods adopted, that she found worthy of being disseminated as good practices for others.
− After the proposition for gendering the contents of the Course in Medicine (approved on 12 December 2016) was approved - pursuant to which the Standing Conference of the Presidents at National Level of the Single Degree Course in Medicine and Surgery recommends that all Italian Degrees in Medicine and Surgery integrate and implement Gender Medicine in their activities, starting from A.Y. 2017/2018 - the coordinator of the Pisa Core Team, was actively involved in drawing up the amendments to the syllabus of the University of Pisa.
− As for dissemination, by the end of the Project the team reached 45 publications regarding gender research and related issues dealt with in the TRIGGER Project at Italian and international level and more than 30 presentations at national and international conferences, well beyond the original plans.
2. THE INSTITUTE OF CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY, PRAGUE / VYSOKA SKOLA CHEMICKO-TECHNOLOGICKA V PRAZE (VSCHT ) AND THE INSTITUTE OF SOCIOLOGY OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC (ISAS)
2.1. GENERAL APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTATION
The university of Chemistry and Technology in Prague is the largest and most significant educational and research institution of its kind in the Czech Republic and also in the Central Europe. Its two-hundred-year history combines tradition with the progressive trends and modern technologies in a wide range of chemical disciplines. UCT Prague consists of four faculties, Rector’s office departments and students facilities. As the recent statistics show, the number of female students has been on the rise, and this fact needs to be reflected in the university’s human resources management policy. This resulted in a decision to participate in the TRIGGER project, with the aim to start addressing gender diversity and equality and transform the institutional culture. The lack of experience with gender in research led to the cooperation with gender experts from the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Jointly, the two teams drafted an Action Plan tailored to the needs of UCT Prague.
The idea behind the action plan, which enjoyed the support and active participation of the top management at the University level, was testing various tools aimed at achieving gender equality. The Faculty of Food and Biochemical Technology was a specific target for many actions, even though the project also addresses the other Faculties, particularly the Dept of Water Technology and Environmental Engineering of Faculty of Environmental Technology, and the university as a whole. A starting point toward structural change has been recognising that there was no systematic overview and assessment of the situation at VSCHT and no systematic exchange of good or successful initiatives.
The action plan was geared at promoting change in several areas: providing career advice to young researchers, promoting work-life balance, activating occasions of women’s empowerment, promoting communication and visibility of women scientists, promoting a gender sensitive knowledge production and management.
2.2. MAIN RESULTS
The most part of the actions in the Plan have been implemented. A sustainability plan has been devised which include the continuation of almost all of them in the next years, thanks to the cooperation of the team with relevant representatives of the university management, like the university bursar and various departments of the Rector’s Offices, as well as senior female professors in different faculties. The following results deserve to be mentioned.
- Institutional documents. An unplanned opportunity to review institutional documents emerged as part of the process of re-accreditation in line with an amendment to the Act on Higher Education. Pursuant to this amendment, all higher education institutions in the country are undergoing a re-accreditation process, which requires them also to review and amend as needed relevant institutional documents. This gave the TRIGGER team an opportunity to address equal opportunities, human resources development and diversity in some of the documents (namely, the Statute and the Order for the Selection Procedure for the Appointment of Academic Staff). The TRIGGER team, and especially the PI, worked very closely with the UCT Prague top management on the review of documents.
- Advisory and Career Centre. A new Department, the Advisory and Career Centre, which launched its activities in 2017 was established at UCT Prague. It will ensure those parts of the TRIGGER action plan as mentoring, career advice, trainings and courses in next period. The existence of a “Centre” was approved by Academic Senate, thus it became part of the organisational structure of UCT Prague.
- Leadership and career development actions for women researchers. The leadership training module for aspiring women researchers was designed in 2016 based on a needs assessment survey and individual interviews, with a view to address the severe gender imbalance in leadership and managerial positions at UCT Prague. In line with the plan, the module was continued from 2016. Additional four trainings were delivered. An evaluation of the training module was performed, showing the huge success of the design, topics selected and execution of the module. An informal network has been formed and it appears that it will continue after the close of the project. Due to the success of the training module, it has been negotiated with the top management that the training module will continue after the end of the project.
- Book of interviews with men researchers at UCT Prague. As a follow-up to the highly successful book of interviews with women researchers published in the framework of TRIGGER, the ISAS team requested an amendment to the grant agreement, to prepare a book of interviews with men researchers, in order to contrast the experience and life paths of women and men at UCT Prague. A total of 20 men were interviewed, and a book with the title Dynamic equilibrium to reach? With UCT Prague chemists on science and equality (2017) was prepared for publication and launched before the project end. UCT Prague printed, from its TRIGGER budget additional 1,000 copies of the book, in addition to 500 copies funded from the project budget of ISAS.
- The Julie Hamackova Award (JHA). In 2017 the third run of the Julie Hamackova Award was organized, with the award ceremony on 15 November 2017. The Julie Hamackova Award was established in 2015 with a view to fostering the inclusion of the gender dimension in student theses. It was named after the first female dean and professor who was nearly forgotten and was “excavated” for the memory of women researchers at UCT Prague thanks to the TRIGGER project. For more (in Czech) see https://gro.vscht.cz/cjh/aktuality#novinka_detail25107004041293).
3. BIRKBECK COLLEGE (BBK)
3.1. GENERAL APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTATION
The BBK, ranked in the top 25% of UK multi-Faculty higher education institutions, is also the leading provider of part-time, evening education, serving the needs of diverse and non- traditional students. BBK consists of five Academic Schools, of which two have relevant SET components (the School of Science and the School of Business, Economics and Informatics). At BBK, even though women were well represented in the student body at the start of the project , comprising over 56% of the 17,890 enrolled students, they were underrepresented among the academic staff. This was especially higher level professors (and also among readers and senior lecturers) and even more so in SET-related disciplines. Women were also underrepresented in influential committees at College level.
Gender quality oriented policies and initiatives have been adopted over time, even if not uniformly present in all Schools and Depts. The College has been awarded Bronze level National Athena SWAN scheme (aiming to promote good practice in recruiting, retaining and promoting women in SET).
It is in this context that BBK decided to join the TRIGGER project. TRIGGER in fact, even though it promoted a completely independent and original plan of action, also represented a unique tool to support the achievement of the objectives of the Athena SWAN, while at the same time widening and deepening its scope.
The TRIGGER plan of action of Birkbeck therefore included actions impacting different sides of the gender-and-science issue, ranging from the daily working environment, the gendering of research procedures and the promotion of women’s leadership in the practice, management and communication of research. It has done this through developing ‘agency’ among scientific women, enhancing their ability to be leaders and have co-ownership of resources.
A particularly relevant feature of the AP was its effort in supporting the commercialisation of women’s research and innovation. Even though selected actions targeted the whole BBK, SET-related Schools (School of Science and the School of Business, Economics and Informatics) were more directly involved.
3.2. MAIN RESULTS
Six areas where Birkbeck TRIGGER has been highly significant:
1. Bringing about institutional change for furthering gender equality in Birkbeck: the TRIGGER team at Birkbeck were represented on all the gender and equality related committees in the College. The participation in the Athena SWAN self-assessment team has been especially important to guarantee sustainability for actions 3.2.1 (mentoring) and 3.4.1 (leadership programme).
The ways that institutional change has been achieved were summarised by Richard Wilson, Deputy Head of HR in a document for the Birkbeck TRIGGER Final conference in June 2017, which stressed the strong support given by TRIGGER to gender equality in the College, and, in particular, to the enhancement of the Athena SWAN programme of the institution and, among others, underlined that “in 2017 we have more women academics in post than men (164 vs 153); and for the second year running women are more likely to apply for promotion than men (23% of women vs 15% of men); and women are more likely to be successful in their promotion application than men (84% of women versus 79% of men).”
2. TRIGGER has also been instrumental in the appointment of a Research and Development manager responsible for commercialisation of research in the BEI School (June 2015).
3. The scientific tasks 3.3.1 (Training on the gendered aspects of research) and 3.3.2 (Testing innovative research tools for the gendering of research procedures in multidisciplinary research on autism) were successful in their own right having led to ground-breaking research. Task 3.3.2 was underpinned by the appointment of a research assistant funded as part of the TRIGGER budget.
4. By making a mark externally: the contribution of the TRIGGER team has been essential to lobby for BBK to become member of the WISE campaign, https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/. More specifically, the organization and promotion of the networking event in November 2016, about gender equality in STEMM (with the invitation of Helen Wollaston, Chief Executive of WISE), has played a pivotal role in underlining the importance of the cause and arguing for the importance of becoming members of WISE. The successful submission evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Gender equality.
5. On-Going programmes: leadership programme for Birkbeck academics and professionals – with industry sponsorship, and the Birkbeck PhD programme – supported across the College and by the Birkbeck Graduate and Research School.
6. The overall success of the Birkbeck TRIGGER project is indicated by the forthcoming TRIGGER book H. Lawton Smith, C. Henry, H. Etzkowitz & A. Poulovassilis (eds) New Perspectives in Gender, Science & Innovation, Edward Elgar Publishing (forthcoming). This covers three broad themes in the Birkbeck programme: Mentoring & gender cultures, networking and commercialisation of research. It has not only included contributions by the TRIGGER team (Meschitti, Lawton Smith, Henry, Etzkowitz, Poulovassilis), but also by members of the TRIGGER External Board (Edmunds, Bagchi-Sen), two of the Pisa TRIGGER team Biancheri, and Silvia Cervia, University of Pisa, and from other countries including the US, Hungary, Denmark, and Ireland. The completed manuscript is due to be with the publisher by the end of April 2018. Much of the credibility for the TRIGGER project has been in its publications, networking events and leadership programme events with their associated Blogs and Tweets. While the events have been of benefit to individual participants (speakers and audience), they have also presented really important data and analysis for Birkbeck and broader audiences.
4. UNIVERSITE’ PARIS DIDEROT (UPD)
4.1. GENERAL APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTATION
The University Paris Diderot is the only multidisciplinary University in Paris to offer a wide range of degrees in the Humanities, Medicine and the Sciences. Women represented at the project start 39% of teaching and research staff, 48% of the assistant professors and 26% of the full professors. As regards students, women represented 61.6% of the students and 54% of the doctoral students but only 32% of the physics students.
In 1985, UPD was one of the first French universities to establish gender studies research and teaching. In 2005, a financial support from the European Social Fund allowed to initiate some actions and, first of them, a study on women research lectures which disclosed actual gender inequality. Then, from 2007 to nowadays, campaigns promoting gender equality are permanent. A unit in charge of gender equality (Pole Égalité femmes homes - PEFH) was subsequently established in 2010.
In TRIGGER, UPD proposed a broad and comprehensive plan targeting different layers and factors of inequalities (organisational cultures and behaviours, work life balance, support to early career researchers, struggle against gender stereotypes, gendering research contents and methods, women’s leadership in research, communication, management and innovation).
The plan included 28 actions addressing, according to their specific features, one or both of the more directly participating institutes (Physics and Biology), but often also the whole university. Among them, the creation of a permanent network of gender focal points in all the department and services of the University.
The actions encompassed regular collection and analysis of statistics, qualitative research in the concerned departments to target further actions, training courses addressing different audiences among students and employees, promotion of new rules, raising awareness and communication, including the organisation of international conferences.
4.2. MAIN RESULTS
The project team succeeded in implementing the most part of the ambitious plan, also extending its scope to other institutions (see below), and to assure the continuation of numerous actions for the future. The following results are to be stressed.
− The first year of the TRIGGER project, a civil servant position was created for an equality officer. Since then, the team asked every year a second position to be able to achieve all the actions. The financial situation of the university didn’t allow the creation of this second position and all the team’s demands were rejected. But finally, the creation of this second civil servant position was accepted in October 2017 by the position commission. A civil servant competition will be opened in 2018, which is an unexpected success (because of the funding issue) of the visibility strategy of the team. The head of UPD recognized the importance of the team’s missions and efforts to achieve its policy objectives. Furthermore the financial commission approved the funding increase of the operating budget of the PEFH. In 2018, a 40% growth of this budget is awarded.
− A new gender equality action plan, to a great extent inspired by the TRIGGER action plan, was presented to, and subsequently was adopted by, the central council in May 2017.
− UPD obtained the European label HRS4R. The PEFH participated to the draft of the project and mentioned the measures already implemented. This label ensures a gender equality policy at UPD.
− In 2014, the PEFH team offered USPC to have a common gender equality policy for all universities and institutes which are members (Paris 3 University, Paris 5 University, Paris 13 University, Paris Diderot University, Sciences Po, Institute of physics and National Institute of Orientals languages). After a lot of meetings with PEFH team, USPC decided to create a gender equality network composed by gender equality officers from each university and institute member and asked to PEFH team to coordinate this network and to define an action plan. PEFH received 100 000 euro from USPC. When PEFH team defined and implemented actions for USPC, the team extended all actions or measures which could be extended (trainings, colloquium) to USPC. In February 2016, after 2 years of work, PEFH managed to create an external structure against sexual harassment for all students, staff, and teacher-researchers of USPC (i.e. 150,000 people). Even if this action was not included in the initial TRIGGER action plan, it was an important achievement because USPC is the first public institution which decided to create an external structure on sexual harassment. If this initiative was praised by the French media because USPC had the courage to create an external structure, it is especially substantial evidence that PEFH action plan and strategy are efficient.
Following these successes, the team is confident about its possibility to ensure long-lasting actions. Furthermore, it is a tangible proof that a real structural change at the institution level has already happened.
5. UNIVERSITY OF MADRID (UPM)
5.1. GENERAL APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTATION
The Technical University of Madrid is the largest Spanish technological university. More than 2,400 researchers carry out their activity at the UPM, grouped in 200 Research Groups, 22 Research Centres or Institutes and 55 Laboratories.
At the project start, at UPM women accounted for around 33% and 34% of undergraduate and graduate students respectively. Among professors (all categories), women accounted for 23%. The presence of women was particularly low among full professors (7.9%) and higher in the group of adjunct professors (44.8%).
The Action Plan for UPM promoted an integrated set of actions aimed at launching structural-level change at the University, to be later incorporated in and made permanent through the Equality Action Plan that UPM has to draft and implement following Spanish normative requirements. The TRIGGER project thus also concretely supported the existing Equality Unit, which was part of its Board. The actions, addressing many problem areas relevant to gender equality, were mostly targeting the whole University, even though three Schools (School of Architecture/ETSAM; School of Building Engineering/ETSEM; School of Industrial Engineering/ETSII) were – even if to a different extent – the forerunners, both in the planning and implementation of activities targeting all Faculties and Schools, and in the testing of additional ones, specific to their characteristics and previous experience.
Among the many actions geared at promoting a women-friendly environment (changing behaviours and culture, supporting work-life balance, sustaining early career researchers), a gender-aware science and technology (struggle against stereotypes and insertion of gendered methodologies and contents) and the emerging of a women’s leadership in research, innovation, management and communication, it is to highlight the successful creation of a Chair in Gender, Innovation and Sustainability and the intense national and international networking activity.
5.2. MAIN RESULTS
The actions in the Plan have been implemented. Some of them have been changed following the first implementation phase, so as to make them more effective (e.g. the women network which has been reoriented outward). A sustainability plan has been devised which include the continuation of almost all of them in the next years, mainly through the activities of the Chair in gender, innovation and sustainability and the adoption and implementation of the equality action plan of the institution. The UNESCO Chair was officially approved in June 2016. The Plan, extending the review of University norms included in TRIGGER and the identification of targets for women’s presence in decision making positions, entered into force in July 2017.
The following results deserve mentioning.
Research study on women at UPM. The first edition of the “Women at UPM” report and the subsequent exhibitions showing its results were critical in raising awareness within the UPM; and during the second period of the project, the report has been used by other institutions and researchers as a basis in further studies about the situation of women in STEM fields in the Spanish context. The Second Edition of the report, following the structure of the first edition, has been used as diagnosis report for the Equality Plan, approved in July 2017.
Network of UPM women researchers. Both the Equality Unit and the UNESCO Chair have oriented this action outwards, by strengthening existing external networks and creating new ones, thus reinforcing the visibility and the effectiveness of gender related action also in the institution. Among others, The UNESCO Chair is member of the Network of Spanish Institutions in Structural Change European Projects; its director has been appointed Co-Chair of the Research and Academia Partner Constituency Group of the General Assembly of Partner of UN-Habitat and has been chosen as member of the Advisory Group on Gender Issues to the Executive Director of UN-Habitat .
Courses on Equal Opportunities and seminars on women in science and technology. The TRIGGER team offered several courses in different schools and institutions which had asked its support. The Equality Plan includes training courses on gender equality addressed to all UPM members.
Guidelines for implementing protocols on bullying and sexual harassment. Based on the project activities in the first half of the project, consisting of drafting and disseminating a “Guidelines for implementing protocols on bullying and sexual harassment” and its publication both in English and Spanish, a protocol on bullying and sexual harassment has been signed at the University and measures against all kinds of harassment were included in the Equality Plan of the institution, thus becoming permanent.
Work-life balance plan. Taking into account the internal survey implemented in the framework of TRIGGER, the Equality Plan includes a set of measures to promote reconciliation of work and family/personal life to UPM members. These measures are complemented with the existing social benefits for UPM staff.
Mentoring programmes. Following the example of the School of Building Engineering, which implemented a set of mentoring programmes in the framework of TRIGGER during the first three years of the project, In late 2016, a new and more ambitious mentoring programme was launched, reaching the whole female students of UPM. So far, more than 150 female students have joined the new mentoring programme. Besides, the TRIGGER team is preparing the edition of the Basic Guidelines for the Organization of Mentoring Programmes for women in STEAM (a project deliverable) turning it into a reader-friendly publication, following the format of other guidelines and publications editing in the framework of the project. It will be published in the following months, offering a basic toolkit to organize and get involved in mentoring programmes especially addressed to girls and women in STEAM fields.
International events. The TRIGGER team organised two editions of the Engendering International Conference, also attracting additional internal funds.
Monitoring and fixing sexist language. Based on the action implemented in the first part of the project, also including the publication of guidelines, the Equality Plan includes measures fighting sexist language and stereotypes, including training courses on the topic for UPM members.
Webspaces. Both the equality unit and the UNESCO Chair have their own webpage. The TRIGGER blog has had more than 14.000 visits since its creation. The website of the UNESCO Chair, which has incorporated the website of the Spanish version of the Gendered Innovations project (co-funded by the Stanford University and the European Commission) is launched in a preliminary version, having an increasing amount of visits.
Experimental incorporation of gendered contents in existing courses. The integration of gendered contents in courses has been implemented in the School of Industrial Engineering and in the School of Architecture. The first Equality Plan includes some measures to incorporate gender in curricula and research, what becomes an important tool to consolidate the inclusion of gender in teaching and research within the UPM. A new master programme on gender equality is planned to be launched by autumn 2019, funded by the Regional Government of Madrid and co-offered by the five public universities of Madrid. The programme of the master includes a 30 ECTS module on Gender in Research, Technology and Leadership that will be taught by UPM.
Acknowledgement and visibility of women scientists
The Equality Plan includes one specific measure to increase the presence of women in the category of “Distinguished UPM Member” and a one to support the dissemination of the work of UPM female researchers as part of objective 2.4.3 “Promoting women’s leadership”.
6. CROSS-CUTTING ACTIVITIES
6.1. TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
In the framework of the technical assistance, led by ASDO, four main areas of activities are considered here:
A. Development of the annual detailed planning
B. Bilateral technical assistance
C. Mutual learning
D. Feasibility study on sustainability.
A) A technical assistance has been provided to the partners for the development of the annual detailed planning.
At the beginning of each implementation year, ASDO provided the partners with a chronogram scheme (based on 15-days interval) including all the activities foreseen in the DoW. Using this scheme, each partner developed the annual detailed planning of its Action Plan, in the form of a GANTT chart covering all the activities scheduled under each Task/Action, including all relevant deadlines for the year. The last year detailed planning frequently included sustainability-oriented activities to be implemented after the lifespan of the TRIGGER project.
B) As for the bilateral technical assistance, it developed along two main axes: monitoring activities and on-site visits.
Monitoring activities have been largely based on the annual planning exercise, which provided the basis for ASDO to develop each year the monitoring checklists, collected in an electronic database, to be used in monitoring and for structuring the monitoring notes sent to the partner after each session. Overall, 80 monitoring sessions have been held.
The on-site visits have been annually organised by ASDO to the premises of the implementing partners, based on specific bilateral agreements. The visits pursued different aims: directly learning what was going on in the Action Plans; discussing with the teams about implementation issues; organising meetings with leaders and stakeholders in the research organisation; more qualitatively monitoring the ongoing activities; participating in special occasions (public meetings, seminars, presentations etc.). In the first period of the project implementation process, the on-site visits have been prevalently used for favouring the launch and consolidation of the Action Plans, while in the last period they have been increasingly devoted to discuss the sustainability perspectives and arrangements that the teams have been setting up in view of the conclusion of the project. Overall, 20 on-site visits have been held throughout the project implementation period.
C) Mutual learning was aimed at favouring an exchange among the partners (internal mutual learning) and with the staff of other EC-funded structural change projects (external mutual learning). The mutual learning process developed through a set of sessions (both at-a-distance and in-presence meetings). Overall, 8 mutual learning meetings have been organised (5 internal and 3 external), both in connection with or independently of the Steering Committee meetings.
All the internal meetings have been prepared by circulating the agenda and a scheme for the presentations of the Action Plans to facilitate comparison and exchange. The aim of these meetings was to provide a group monitoring action and to deal together with the qualitative issues which emerged from the implementation of the Action Plans and which could benefit of a plurality of points of view, so to foster mutual learning. The “qualitative” part of the meetings were generally organised as a working seminar focusing on a specific issue (e.g. the drafting of the feasibility plans) or set of issues (e.g. effective methods to involve the institutional leadership in the Action Plans; the use of data and evidence on work-life balance to plan internal or to review internal policies on the subject), in some cases inviting external experts (e.g. the members of the International Board of Scientific Advisors - IBSA). In the second part of the project, the shift was to more intense peer-to-peer learning efforts, with the direct elaboration by the partners of relevant common issues, giving way to bilateral and multilateral collaborations, also aiming to external dissemination. In the last eighteen months of the project, the mutual learning effort has been increasingly linked to the future sustainability of the TRIGGER action plans.
The external meetings, conducted with other European projects, were aimed at sharing views, methodologies and experience for igniting structural change, in sight of the drafting of the final Guidelines of the project. An outline for discussion of the meetings was circulated before starting. Three meetings were held, divided in two: a part devoted to the presentations and discussion of the contributions of the other projects on specific issues and methodologies (e.g.: how to classify and deal with resistances to structural change; how to integrate bottom up and top down approaches in the implementation of gender action plans; how to measure the status and progress of gender equality in an institution; how to incorporate gender equality in the institutional policy of a higher education organisation; how to know and address the needs of early career researchers, leveraging on them for change) and another devoted to the general programme of exchange.
The contents and structure of the Guidelines (see below) were discussed in this second slot during the last meeting. The exchange process continued at a distance through mails, teleconferences and interviews.
D) The feasibility study on the sustainability of the TRIGGER Action Plans was intended as a specific knowledge management tool aimed at favouring the preparation of the sustainability plans of the actions included in each Action Plan.
The activities related to the feasibility study begun in July 2014, with the collection of documents related to similar projects and, in general, scientific and technical literature addressing the issue of sustainability of policies and programmes conceived to ignite processes of change and having a well-defined duration and funding.
Since the study was “tailored”, i.e. geared to deal with the specific problems of the five organisation implementing Action Plans in the framework of TRIGGER, it actually dealt with information coming from technical assistance activities, especially bilateral monitoring and on-site visits. It anyway took stock, more in general, of all the documents related to the implementation of structural change initiatives.
The feasibility study was completed on June 2015. It constituted the basis and defined a road map for the partners to develop their respective sustainability plans, of which they were responsible, collected in a unique deliverable by ASDO. After the completion of the feasibility study, anyway, ASDO kept assisting the implementing partner to facilitate them in their task.
6.2. ONGOING AND FINAL EVALUATION
The evaluation of the action plans has been ensured by ASDO. This activity was aimed at monitoring the quality of their implementation. The evaluation approach, however, did not intend monitoring as a static judgmental procedure, where data were periodically collected to simply express an assessment or worse to "give a score" to the APs, to be passively recognised by the implementing teams.
With a certain affinity with the approach of developmental evaluation, particularly adequate when policies of change are conducted, evaluation was rather understood as the opportunity, offered and structured by the Evaluation Team, of a shared process of reflection on the problems met during the implementation of the Action Plans, so to activate learning processes on the basis of experience. This is why an important role was attributed to self-evaluation by the teams, integrated with the evaluating team’s point of view, in the position of "critical friends", neither totally external (because for instance of continuous contacts through periodic monitoring sessions), nor directly part of the teams implementing the Plans.
Evaluation, in particular, provided information that could be used for practical purposes and to produce new knowledge. Through periodic checks, it included support for the advancement and the overall quality of the tasks assigned to the TRIGGER partners in charge of the five Action Plans, and ensured that they were able, if necessary, to adjust project activities to the changing needs and/or goals of the concerned institutions.
The evaluation of the action plans was held every reporting period during operation, and again at the end of the project (final evaluation). Overall, three annual evaluation reports and a final evaluation report have been drafted. The periodical assessments made during operations were intended not only to verify the progress made in the planned activities, but also to record and evaluate the changes occurred while the Action Plans are implemented.
Five evaluation criteria have been applied.
• Effectiveness, intended as the capacity to implement the activities according to the Action Plan’s provisions, attaining the objectives outlined in the document.
• Efficiency, intended as the capacity to make the best use of available resources, complying with the timeframes and procedures contemplated for expenses, in the context of a good managerial capacity.
• Impact, concerning the satisfaction of the beneficiaries of the Action Plans and the capacity to promote consensus among the other players involved (subjective impact) and the effects obtained in terms of real change within the organisations (objective impact).
• Sustainability, which refers to the capacity of the actions implemented through the Action Plans to continue producing effects even beyond the end of the programme.
• Relevance, concerning the adequacy of the initiatives foreseen in the Action Plans to the situation of the organisations in which they are conducted, as well as to the wider social, cultural and economic contexts of reference for S&T in the different countries involved. Considered the strategic approach of TRIGGER, relevance encompasses also the analysis of negotiation activities carried out for each Action Plan as for institutional, interpretive, symbolic and operational levels.
Almost 80 indicators, mainly but not only qualitative, have been identified, covering all these criteria.
The evaluation of the Action plans was based on several sources, both living (project team, beneficiaries, other staff of the institutions not directly involved in the Action Plans, members of IBSA and national committees of the project) and documentary (notes of the monitoring sessions, reports of meetings, official documents as deliverables and websites, other working documents of the implementing institutions).
The technical tools included ongoing evaluation grids, questionnaires addressed to different interlocutors, as well as reading grids and check-lists to read and analyse deliverables and other documents.
Information has been collected by ASDO, the organisation in charge of evaluation, with the help of the Action Plans staff, through monitoring activities, and using specific technical tools
6.3. ACCOMPANYING RESEARCH
The accompanying research, designed as a cross-cutting activity led by ASDO, was intended as a support tool for collecting, organising and processing the large amount of information about structural change emerging from the implementation of the Action Plans which otherwise could be lost.
In line with its functional nature, the accompanying research pursued two practical aims.
The first aim was that of collecting information on the implementation of the action plans to be used for developing the Guidelines on starting processes of structural change towards gender equality in science organisations (see below).
The second aim was favouring a successful project implementation process. In fact, research results have been entered into the cycle of project management mainly through the technical assistance activities carried out by ASDO throughout the four years of implementation.
Ongoing research was needed since the project inevitably confronted the difficulty of identifying beforehand which of the specific environmental dynamics and structural features of the institutions involved were able to seriously hinder the action plans at the different stages of implementation, and which, on the contrary, were able to provide different forms of support.
In this perspective, the accompanying research developed along with the implementation of the Action Plans so as to collect first-hand information on what was going on in the participating institutions. Special attention has been given to the change processes which were being activated – to different extents – by the Action Plans, the evolution and changes in the project teams and their progressive ability to act as transformational players in the institution, the supporting and hindering factors and dynamics emerging during implementation, as well as the strategies devised to manage them.
The empirical basis of the accompanying research has been built based on the information collected through a multiplicity of sources, the most important being the analysis of documentation and the direct observation connected to technical assistance activities (bilateral monitoring sessions, on-site visits, mutual learning activities, detailed planning, support to sustainability planning).
Two research reports have been produced, i.e. the Mid-term report and the Final report.
The Mid-term research report was presented at the Mid-term workshop held in London on April 14th, 2016 and delivered at the end of the same month.
The text was articulated in 4 parts, respectively devoted to:
- The Institutional framework of the project (describing in short the TRIGGER Project, the accompanying research and the mutual learning process, the purpose and structure of the document)
- The theoretical framework of the research (specifying its basic assumptions, the three research fields dealt with and including a summary of the theoretical framework)
- The methodological framework of the research (describing in particular the database building process and the mutual learning process)
- Some first insights emerging from the observation process, following an elementary path including Attracting the interest of leadership; finding the right language to communicate the project contents; enabling the team to work in the project; getting people involved; being able to cope with organisational mechanism and to react to intervening factors; building action on the knowledge acquired; collecting the first results)
The Final research report was delivered at the end of the TRIGGER project and was organised in three chapters.
The first chapter was devoted to recall the institutional framework, the analytical framework and methodological framework.
The second chapter provided a systematic description of the empirical basis of the research, consisting of 40 implementation dynamics referred to the experience of the 5 action plans.
In chapter three, an overall analysis of the implementation dynamics related to change, activated by the different Action Plans was provided.
6.4. GUIDELINES
The TRIGGER Project included, among its objectives, the development of a set of guidelines, targeting the leaderships of universities and research institutions, with the aim of providing them with suggestions and tools to deal with real-life situations facing the implementation of gender equality programmes in science and technology domains. The Guidelines are based on an internal reflection of the TRIGGER partners, coordinated by ASDO, which also supported it with its accompanying research to the Action Plans, and a mutual learning process among TRIGGER partners and similar projects (sister projects).
The roadmap leading to the shared draft of the guidelines was started during a mutual learning meeting in Madrid (held on October 7th 2016) with other projects’ representatives.
To draft the final guidelines, a consultation among partners and sister projects representatives was made, according a procedure established by the TRIGGER partners under the coordination of ASDO, the partner in charge of drafting the guidelines. Partners and “sister projects” provided examples of strategies, methods or tools they successfully used to cope with some aspects of the process of change. These examples, integrated with the ones collected in the database of the Implementation Dynamics up to the end of 2016, were regrouped into themes (patterns of problems and patterns of solutions), thus creating clusters of cases. The list of the clusters, regrouped into the four components of the process of change (creation of a transformational agent, activation and mobilisation, making an impact, sustainability) and, inside them, according to the main dimensions of change they refer to (interpretive, symbolic, normative and operational), was submitted to the partners during a subsequent phase of consultation and in-depth interviews.
The ASDO team developed the examples into texts which were sent to partners and representatives of the sister projects.
The core of the guidelines is structured as follows:
Introduction
AREA 1 - Transformational agent
1. Accessing expertise
2. Reputation building
3. Organisational embedment
4. Securing staff and resources
Transformational agent - Key issues
AREA 2 - Activation and mobilisation
5. Scientific recognition
6. Political backing
7. Creating space for engagement
8. Mobilisation of pro-women actors
9. Active involvement of men
10. Implementation backing
Activation and mobilisation - Key issues
AREA 3 - Making an impact
11. Self-reflexive process
12. Gender-sensitive communication
13. Gender-sensitive education and training
14. Action plan tailoring process
15. Policy integration
16. External backing
Making an impact - Key issues
AREA 4 - Sustainability
17. Inclusion of gender in monitoring systems
18. Inclusion of gender in scientific excellence
19. Inclusion of gender considerations in service provision
20. Inclusion of gender in organisational standards
21. Inclusion of gender in an organisation's structure and mission
Sustainability - Key issues
The whole Guidelines were sent to the TRIGGER International Board of Scientific Advisors (IBSA) for their revision.
Once the guidelines were published online and in 1000 hard copies, the five TRIGGER partners implementing action plans organised presentations of the text in their respective countries. The text was also presented in the project final conference.
6.5. NETWORKING, DISSEMINATION AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION
The main objectives of this set of activities, coordinated by the DPO and IRS, were to communicate the results being obtained through the project, to collect suggestions from the scientific community and from other relevant stakeholders, to facilitate activities and knowledge brokerage through networking in order to contribute to the promotion of a new culture of gender equality in science. The circulation of information and the promotion of the project’s results have been ensured by using the communication tools prepared and updated by the DPO and IRS, in collaboration with the partners. The following results can be particularly stressed:
A) Creation and updating of the project website
B) Drafting and uploading of 6 issues of the e-newsletter
C) Supporting the presence in the media, networking and creation of a new mailing list
D) Participation to conferences in order to present the project
E) Organisations of public events at European level: mid-term workshop and final international conference
F) Drafting of a Plan for exploitation of results.
A) Project website. A project website has been designed and developed in the first months of the project implementation period. The website, www.triggerproject.eu contained the following sections: information on TRIGGER activities, partners and contacts; information on the five Action Plans; a Gallery hosting pictures related to the project; news on the presence of the project in the media both at national and international level; information and documents on the main project products (deliverables), the internal meetings of the project, the International Board of Advisors and the National Committees; the project newsletter; documents and texts about other structural change project; information on events connected to the project, and news in general concerning women in science. The maintenance and updating of the website have been assured all along the project execution.
B) E-newsletter. As planned, 6 issues of the e-newsletter have been issued (both in English and Italian) respectively in: December 2014; June 2015, December 2015; June 2016; December 2018, December 2017.
C) Presence in the media, networking and creation of a new mailing list. All the partners (especially those implementing the Action Plans) have developed strong contacts with local and national media. Overall, more than 100 contacts with the media (including TV reports and interviews, articles on newspapers and magazines, press-releases) have been reported by the partners implementing the Action Plans. A mailing list including 3,600 contacts has been developed at the beginning of the project, including different types of entries (representatives of national public administrations, local public administrations, experts, scholars, PHD students, etc.). The mailing list has been constantly updated and new contacts have been added reaching over 7,000 entries.
D) Presentations and papers. All the partners, during the project period, participated in conferences to present the project and published scientific papers. Around 100 papers, conference presentations and poster presentations have been overall reported by the project partners.
E) Public events at European level: mid-term workshop and final international conference
The mid-term international workshop of TRIGGER was organised on April 14th 2016 in London at the premises of the Birkbeck College (BBK - partner of the project). The Workshop was entitled “Transforming research institutions, gendering contents and gaining equality: a half way reflection”.
The event was aimed at presenting the current achievements of the TRIGGER action plans, defining the guidelines of the project and opening a public debate on new policies and instruments to transform research institutions and gain gender equality in research, by involving relevant and different stakeholders.
The Workshop was therefore organised with a view to facilitating an intense dialogue on these issues and by inviting not only the TRIGGER consortium members, but also representatives of the other EU-funded structural change projects and European and international experts. The seminar was attended by about 50 people and opened by welcoming speeches.
The first session of the workshop, entitled “The TRIGGER experience at mid-term” was devoted to a reflection on their experiences at mid-term point by each of the TRIGGER partner team.
In the second session, entitled “Negotiating institutional change with the leadership of research institutions: setting the scene”, the TRIGGER partners and the participants were invited to discuss what has worked in the TRIGGER Project in their own institutions up to now and what has not.
The third session, entitled “Negotiating institutional change with the leadership of research institutions: dialogue on practices”, was structured in an interactive group session on how to find solutions to some of the problems of negotiating institutional change with leadership in research institutions. In particular, groups were asked to brainstorm on the solutions for one specific key issue so as to produce quick wins and initiate actions that could be part of a longer-term action plan.
The Final Conference titled “#TriggeringGenderInScience” has been held in Brussels on November 28-29, 2017. It has been prepared and carried out under the responsibility of IRS, in cooperation with DPO and ASDO.
The aim of the event was to present the final achievements of the TRIGGER action plans and the final guidelines of the project and to open a public debate on new policies and instruments to promote structural change processes to achieve gender equality in science involving relevant and different stakeholders.
To this end, the Final Conference was organised with a view to allow an intense dialogue on these issues involving, not only the TRIGGER consortium members, but also representatives of the other EU-funded structural change projects, European and international experts, EC DG Research and Innovation officers, and representatives of EIGE.
Overall, around 80 people attended the meeting.
The Final Conference has been structured as follows: opening speech from EC and DPO representatives
− TRIGGER Action Plans presentation
− Poster presentation ad speech by a young Italian researcher
− Lessons learned from the TRIGGER project and future perspective of the European Strategies to promote institutional change. This part of the Conference includes two separate sessions namely: “Promoting institutional change towards gender equality in practice – Lessons learned from the FP7 and H2020”, including the presentation of the TRIGGER final guidelines, and a round table on “Future perspectives of the European strategies to promote institutional change towards gender equality”
F) Exploitation plan. The Plan for the Exploitation and Dissemination of Results has been drafted by IRS, based on the work initially planned and developed by the DPO, project coordinator and initially in charge of the project communication, and sets the stage for TRIGGER ’s communication and dissemination activities.
It provides the general communication strategy for TRIGGER, as well as a draft plan for the actions that have been taken all along the duration of the project and also beyond the lifespan of the project.
The general objectives of the TRIGGER communication activities are to:
• Communicate the results being obtained through the project
• Collect suggestions from the scientific community and from other relevant stakeholders
• Facilitate activities and knowledge brokerage through networking.
The Plan represents a roadmap for all TRIGGER communication and dissemination activities. The following sections are included in the Plan:
• The scope and objectives of the Plan (chapter 1)
• The identified target audiences (chapter 2)
• The communication material (chapter 3)
• A description of the communication strategy (chapter 4).
6.6. GENERAL MANAGEMENT
The general management of the project, ensured by DPO, included different types of activities, all of pivotal importance for the success of the TRIGGER project as a whole.
A) Project administration. DPO ensured the administration of the project as a whole, including the organisation of the project meetings related to the Steering Committee, the production and delivery of the periodic and final reports, the drafting of main documents related to the management of the project, and the development of all the documents related to the organisation of project events. Overall 6 main events have been organised, i.e.: a kick off meeting, 5 steering committee meetings. A strong support was also given to the organisation of the mid-term workshop and the Final Conference.
B) Relation with the EC. The DPO was in charge for the relations with the European Commission and DG Research. This included formal and informal exchange of information (letters, e-mail) with the EC project officer and financial officer as well as the organisation of meetings with them.
C) Internal communication. The DPO provided the partners with an assistance during all the phases of the project. In this regard, DPO has maintained regular contacts with the team members, keeping them informed of the progress/problems/delays and clarification related to the project. The DPO was also in contact with the administrative and financial officers of all the organisations of the consortium in order to provide the necessary support in filling the financial statements. The internal communication has been performed by e-mail messages and web-conferences.
Potential Impact:
The main potential impacts of the TRIGGER project are connected with the five Action Plans. Most of these impacts have been described above (see Description of the main S&T results/foreground). In this section, some considerations about impacts and sustainability of the Action Plans, drawn by the final evaluation report, are briefly provided.
To the aim of the project evaluation, the impact has been assessed both in terms subjective impact, i.e. satisfaction of the beneficiaries of the Action Plans and consensus among the other stakeholders and objective impact, related to the effects obtained in terms of real change within the organisations. Sustainability refers to the capacity of the actions implemented through the Action Plans to continue producing effects even beyond the end of the programme.
1.1. Università di Pisa (UNIPI)
The action plan has certainly produced numerous impacts, both "subjective" and "objective". With regard to the first aspect, it is noted that the AP has, overall, always recorded high or very high levels of agreement, by all the stakeholders involved. In particular, the direct beneficiaries expressed themselves in a very positive way, but also the managers and leaders of the organization, as well as the male component, showed their agreement.
Also the satisfaction with the activities carried out has always been considered high by all the components considered (managers/leaders of the organization, men of the organisation, the Internal support committee and others) and, even, very high by the direct beneficiaries of these actions.
With regard to the objective impact, it can be stressed, first of all, that important results have been attained, especially thanks to the increasing visibility and recognition of the project at UNIPI, allowing the Team to establish stronger relationships with the management and internal stakeholders.
Some of the most important impacts are reported below:
− inclusion of some amendments to the regulations of the University on the basis of the results of the Gender oriented analysis (Action 1.4.2.);
− definition and signature, following the results of the Satisfaction Survey (Action 1.2.1.) of some agreements with different cooperatives to match the need for child-related services not only for employees but also students, PhD students and other people working for the university, even if on a temporary basis;
− introduction of some changes in the Gender Budget at UNIPI in order to map the different dimensions of female participation following the line adopted in "Analysis of female careers and related awareness-raising activities" (Action 1.4.1);
− the acquisition of the database of the scientists (Action 1.6.1.) at the central and departmental level as a permanent tool for Human Resources offices.
No specific negative effects have been recorded by the team during the project lifespan. On the contrary, there have been numerous positive effects, such as a very high level of awareness concerning the gender dimension of work organization achieved thanks to the third Annual seminar with the Dean on career support (Action 1.3.1.) and the subsequent activation of a specific task force on this matter. Moreover, the promotion of a participative approach from the beginning of the project seemed to be very profitable to increase the awareness of the female researchers involved in the project as referents for the targeted Departments or as participants in different activities (seminars, course on the leaky pipeline, etc.). This approach fostered a sharing process inside the target departments which favoured women’s “voice” to emerge.
Furthermore, the Action Plan has allowed the launch of numerous relationships and collaborations, on different bases, with stakeholders outside the University. Among them we can mention, first of all, the National Conference of the Italian University of Equality Bodies (CoNaEB) that is a National Association between the Italian Universities Bodies for Equal Opportunities (named CUG, Guarantee Committee). This association has been inserted directly into the plan as beneficiary of one of the actions (1.1.2.) which aimed to provide this new association with training and support, so that it can achieve one of its statutory objectives, namely: "promote and support research and teaching on gender studies and monitoring of careers "in Italian Universities.
Collaborative relationships have also been initiated with other players such as: the National Institute of Health; the national Association "Health and Gender"; the National Journal "Noi Donne"; the Regional Administration of Tuscany; "La Limonaia", a Pisa-based association specialised in science communication.
The Team did not report any problems or recurrent constraints in designing and establishing sustainable arrangements in order to secure the continuation of the Action Plan. The key factor in defining the sustainability plan, according to the Team, was the adoption of a strategy aimed at sharing the action plan both with the university top level management and with young researchers and professors in different stages of their careers by adopting a bottom-up approach.
As it emerges from the sustainability plan, important achievements have been attained for the institutionalisation or continuation under other forms of actions initiated under the Action Plan. For many actions, sustainable institutional arrangements have been already developed, also thanks to the increasing cooperation of the Team with internal stakeholders as UNIPI management, and external ones, like the public and private bodies mentioned above.
Here below, some relevant achievements are listed.
− Two relevant institutional agreements with the Regional Administration of Tuscany Department of Health and with the National Institute of Health have been signed. These agreements are aimed at promoting and supporting gender-based health and medicine.
− A thematic section on Gendering Content and Methods in Scientific Research has been founded and embedded in the CoNaEB. Such section aims at sharing practices and results gained by researchers and professors, at national level, who introduced a gender-related approach in their research activities.
− Thanks to the key role played by the UNIPI TRIGGER team in the Standing Conference of the Presidents of the Single Degree Course in Medicine and Surgery, an amendment was approved recommending all Italian Degree Course in Medicine and Surgery to integrate their training offer with educational activities related to Gender Medicine, starting from the A.Y. 2017/2018
Furthermore, the institutionalization of many actions started under the Action Plan must be reported. These are actions for which new resources of different nature have been obtained both internally at the University of Pisa and externally, through the networking actions launched during the project. Among others, we can remember the following actions:
− The Database of female scientists (Action 1.6.2);
− The annual competition for theses with a gendered approach (Action 1.5.4)
− the Satisfaction survey with existing services and integration plan (1.2.1);
− Itinerant lectures on parental roles within the couple (1.2.2);
− Annual seminars with the participation of Deans on career support (1.3.1);
− Annual training course on the leaky pipeline phenomenon (1.3.2);
− Analysis of female careers and related awareness-raising activities (1.4.1);
− Gender-oriented analysis on the administrative documents (1.4.2);
− Testing innovative research tools for the gendering of research procedures (1.5.2);
− Permanent teaching module for PhD courses (1.5.3);
− Annual competition for theses with a gendered approach (1.5.4);
− Database of female scientists (1.6.1).
Also with regard to the sustainability of the Team involved in the implementation of the Action Plan, even if there is not a defined and institutionalized path for all the members, solutions have been prepared that will allow, at the end of the TRIGGER Project, to give new life to gender equality activities in the institution.
The individual team members, indeed, will remain involved in activities concerning gender equality at the University of Pisa. With reference to the two permanent staff members, they will continue their commitment within the university, having already taken on support and advisory roles that are consistent and coherent with the objectives of the TRIGGER project. As for the third Team member's contract, it has been extended by an additional two years (maximum term foreseen by Law 240/2010). She thus will remain involved in activities like the integration of a gender dimension in research and education in the Department of Political Science and the University of Pisa.
1.2. Vysoka Skola Chemicko-technologicka v Praze - (VSCHT)
The AP has shown a fluctuating trend of agreement and satisfaction among the different components considered, with the male component always lower than others. Direct beneficiaries, anyway, have always expressed a high agreement and satisfaction with the activities carried out.
These results are partially explained by the innovative and pioneering character of the project, whose arguments and activities are unusual in a technical and male-dominated Czech university, especially after the renewal of its management team with persons partially different from the ones who followed the TRIGGER Action Plan since its very beginning.
As regards the objective impact, it can be stressed, firstly, that, according to the TRIGGER Team, important results have been attained for what concerns: raising awareness on the gender issues within the organisation; changes in the strategic and internal documents; empowerment of women; increasing competences and knowledge on gender and diversity issues; introduction of the gender dimension in research content.
In particular, despite the difficulties occurring mainly in relation to establishing rules to support the female careers, some positive outcomes are visible:
- The amendment of the collective agreement concerning home working and flexible time
- The insertion of an objective of diversity management in the strategic plan of the institution
- The amendment of the internal regulations in the context of accreditation of HEIs with a new paragraph titled “The University should heed the equal opportunities”
- The implementation of the Julie Hamackova award
- The popularity gained by the book of interviews and related posters, also in terms of visibility and, to some extent, authoritativeness of the women researchers involved
- The establishment of the new Department “Advisory and Career Centre” which was approved by Academic Senate, thus becoming a part of the organisational structure
- The new project financed under the Operational Programme of the European Social Fund, and also within the Institutional Plan, where new activities as mentoring, career advice, and training in soft competencies have been integrated.
The team recorded on the actors involved both positive effects and negative ones, mainly in the first part of the project, in terms of support to the project team.
Furthermore, the Action Plan has allowed the launch of numerous relationships and collaborations with stakeholders outside the University, including other Czech universities, trade unions, the Czech Rectors’ conference, other organisations partnering in EU-funded gender equality projects.
Moreover, these collaborations, according to the VSCHT team, led to some results, and outputs of the Action Plan have been also used by other organisations:
- The National Contact Centre for Gender and Science (ISAS) has created the Working Group for Change, which organizes mutual learning events at national level to share experience about implementation. VSCHT team actively participates in it
- Cooperation has been established with the other institutions (in particular, Czech Globe) about the internal directives regarding home office and flexible working hours measures as well as the development of a gender sensitive communication charter
- Cooperation with the Technology Agency of Czech Republic (TA CR) has been established for sharing experience on sex and gender analysis in research topics, used in shaping the rules of the new TA CR programme
- Both team leaders of VSCHT and ISAS are members of the Working Group on the Action Plan for the HR and gender in research of the Ministry of Education
- The Masaryk University in Brno discussed the TRIGGER action plan and was inspired by it in setting up a proposal of an action plan to be funded under the Libra Project (H2020 project), which actually was selected for funding.
Finally, the team reported that some actions of the Action plan are being reproduced outside the University, and in particular:
− The interviews with women researchers (in order to enhance role models)
− The leadership programme for women researchers
− The contents of internal documents/rules (including gender equality/diversity) in strategic documents.
The VSCHT Team did not met specific problems or recurrent constraints in designing and establishing sustainable arrangements in order to secure the continuation of the Action Plan. The greatest difficulty in this regard is connected to the scarce budget allocated to administrative staff, which could probably prevent the current staff from following the continuation of activities.
All this notwithstanding, some relevant elements indicate that the sustainability of the Action Plan can be assessed as very positive. According to the team, some factors played a key role in defining this plan. Among these, the following must be mentioned: establishment of a new department at VSCHT Praha, the Advisory and Career Centre, that will ensure those parts of action plan as mentoring, career advice, trainings and courses; development of a new ESF project focused on institution policies improvement; development of a new Accreditation system of HEIs in the Czech Republic; higher competitiveness of other universities; increased internationalisation of the Czech HEIs.
From the point of view of the future sustainability of the activities included in the Action Plan, the VSCHT team remarked that at national level a closer cooperation was established with the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (agency supporting and financing research and innovation projects) for the preparation of the new programme ZETA supporting early stage researchers. It was the first time in Czech Republic that a support programme includes gender equality among evaluation criteria. This agency is also a partner in a H2020 GEP project. The team also mentioned the activation of a stable link with the network for cultural and institutional change. In this framework, a specific cooperation has been established with the Masaryk University Brno, also participant of project LIBRA.
To give continuity to actions initiated under TRIGGER, the VSCHT Team reported that some new economic, material or human resources were found from the Ministry of education and the European Social Fund through other projects for implementing some TRIGGER actions.
According to the Sustainability Plan of the Action plan No. 2 the following activities or activity areas, that were realised during the lifespan of the project, will continue after its end.
2.1.1 Statistical survey of students and academics female and male proportion on different levels of their career
2.1.2 Survey of needs, obstacles and challenges of VSCHT employees (academic and non-academic)
2.1.5 Workshops on gender diversity management
2.1.6 Network of women researchers to mutual support and empowerment
2.2 Actions promoting work-life balance
2.3 Actions supporting early-stage career-development
2.4 Actions challenging gender stereotypes and consequent horizontal segregation
2.5 Actions aimed at gendering S&T contents and methods
2.6 Actions promoting women’s leadership in the practice of research
2.7 Actions promoting women’s leadership in the practice of scientific management
With reference to linkages established with key-players to support the Action Plan or to favour its repeatability, the team involved staff and students from the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, the Ministry of Education, and the Czech Technical University in Prague in the seminars and workshops arranged by the TRIGGER team.
Finally, as for activities implemented or started to make the new operational setups activated by the actions definitive, the team reported the adoption of new regulations.
1.3. Birkbeck College University of London (BBK)
With regard to the subjective impact, it is noted that the AP has, overall, always recorded high or very high levels of agreement and satisfaction, by all the stakeholders involved. Almost all the actions aroused high satisfaction during the Action Plan.
With regard to the objective impact, the following facts can be mentioned.
- The Master of the College now opens appointments for senior positions to open competition rather than making appointments. In addition, data collection and analysis on gender equality now is a standard procedure.
- Unconscious bias training was built into College procedures, thanks to Action 3.1.1 (Systematic observation of potentially discriminating formal/informal behaviours), and the growing awareness of discriminatory behaviour towards women in the college backed up by TRIGGER evidence.
- Following the same process started with the action 3.1.1. Assistant Deans for Equality were appointed in each school from Summer 2017, including the School of Business, Economics, and Informatics (BEI).
- The appointment of a Research and Development Manager, i.e. a dedicated technology transfer officer in the BEI School, was adopted as a result of the research on commercialisation undertaken under Action 3.5.
- The adoption of a new Birkbeck People Strategy, “Building Success Together”, to whom the TRIGGER team contributed through Athena SWAN.
Another relevant change was represented by the fact that TRIGGER team is currently part of Athena SWAN Self Assessment Committee and the TRIGGER actions are feeding into Athena Swan applications (College and departments). This means that once TRIGGER will be over, the HR department will ensure their continuity.
Considering the effects on the actors involved, no specific negative effects have been recorded by the team during the project lifespan. Among the positive effects, it is worth mentioning, instead, a generally increased commitment towards gender equality by the top leadership of BBK and the acknowledgment of the need for a mentoring/leadership programme and its sustainability by the Athena SWAN self-assessment team, chaired by the Master and composed of different members of staff at BBK.
As for the unexpected effects on gender equality, it is firstly to stress the support the TRIGGER team is giving to the Athena SWAN (the governing Self Assessment Committee and the Action Committee) to work on the submission of a proposal for a bronze award. Furthermore, the team reported the creation of a discussion on gender equality at college level, with the setting up of a working group for the appointment of a Pro-Vice Master for Equality Issues and the emerging discussions on the need to foster commercialisation at Birkbeck: these have informed a proposal.
Concerning networking and raising awareness activities, during the project lifespan, the team promoted several networking events and PhD seminars, involved universities abroad (Dundalk, Lund) and the business sector in the implementation of the Mentoring programme and participated in the scientific debate on gender in science and technology through several journal articles or book chapters (6), edited books (2) and presentations in conferences and workshops other than the ones included in the TRIGGER action plans (9).
Through Action 3.1.2 on the establishment of collaborative networks, the Team involved organisations from both the private and public sector (such as: PwC; Cisco; Google; Mercer; Syngenta; Three; MWS Consulting; CBI; BIS; The Guardian Higher Education; Greater London Authority).
Furthermore, in 2015 a representative of the Dundalk Institute of Technology (Ireland) has invited the TRIGGER team leader to be a member of the Global Women’s Entrepreneurship Policy (WEP) Research Project. She has been also asked to chair the Regional Studies Association Committee on Gender equality, this representing a way for results of the BBK Action Plan to be used by other organisation.
The Team did not encounter any particular problems or recurrent constraints in designing and establishing sustainable arrangements in order to secure the continuation of the Action Plan. Only the search for funds for the PhD program caused delays, even if it was later solved with the grant awarded by the Birkbeck Graduate School. The key factor for defining the sustainability plan, according to the team, was the advices from the TRIGGER external and internal Boards.
Concerning the development of national or international contacts in order to access additional resources, two facts are worth mentioning. First, the TRIGGER team was involved with the Leadership Foundation which holds events and delivers publications on women in leadership. Second, BBK has joined WISE, a campaign for gender balance in science, technology and engineering, which enables and energises people in business, industry and education to increase the participation, contribution and success of women in STEM.
Moreover, a network is being built with other organisations, from the private and public sector, to maximize TRIGGER research impact and stable links were created with several bodies within and outside the institute, as for example: Human Resources Team, Institute of Directors, Athena Swan committee, Regional Studies Association, Higher Education Authority, Ireland and Taylor and Francis.
Furthermore, among the linkages established with key-players other than ones strictly involved with the implementation of the Action Plan to favour its repeatability, a strong support to the TRIGGER activities was received by Mercers, a city firm, and by the Dean of the Business School at Royal Holloway, University of London.
To support the implementation of the Action Plan, new funds were found. In particular: BEI School and College provided grants for networking including for events for to be held outside Birkbeck; the Graduate School is funding Seminars in the PhD programme; Taylor and Francis will support events in the continuing Leadership Programme.
Among the actions initiated in continuity with those promoted within the activities of the Action plan, the Mentoring programme (Activity 3.2.1.) the Leadership programme (Activity 3.4.1.) and the PhD programme (Activity 3.3.3.) can be mentioned.
The actions 3.2.1. and 3.4.1. have been included in the Athena SWAN action plan, and specifically: Athena SWAN-TRIGGER academic mentoring programme; seminars for aspiring professors/managers (2 per year); network for women professors. This means that these actions will be carried on after the end of TRIGGER and till end 2019 at least. In relation to action 3.3.3. the TRIGGER team has closely worked with the Birkbeck Graduate Research School (BGRS), the actor that at Birkbeck deals with PhD students’ training. BGRS revises its curriculum development plans on a yearly base, and funds have been asked to conduct the action in 2018; the proposal was successful. The TRIGGER Team leader at Birkbeck is in charge of ensuring funds for the following years.
After the end of the project, the team sustainability will be achieved as follows: Membership of the Team leader in relevant College bodies (Equality Committee and Athena SWAN self-assessment team); Consultancy-based contracts (till end February 2019) with one of the consultants and the project administrator working on TRIGGER impact in particular.
As a strategy to better embed gender equality at Birkbeck, the TRIGGER team has proposed the appointment of a Pro-Vice Master for Equality and Diversity. The decision process is still ongoing. Assistant Deans for equality have been appointed in each School. At the same time, the role and structure of the Equality Committee is being revised so to address changes in the College’s diversity strategy, including strengthening the gender equality agenda.
1.4. Université Paris Diderot, (UPD)
Concerning the subjective impact, the levels of agreement and satisfaction by all the stakeholders involved have been reported as high. Only with respect to some actions carried out in the early stages of the project, satisfaction was assessed at an intermediate level by both the male components and the Managers/leaders of the organization. It is also to be considered that in the last phase of the project, satisfaction for individual actions and for activities in general seems to be greatly increased.
With regard to the objective impact, important results have been achieved, especially thanks to the increasing sensitiveness to gender equality in the University community. Some of the most significant changes connected to the action plan are summarized below:
- The establishment of a new organisational unit dedicated to the fight against sexual harassment at the level of the Communauté Sorbonne Paris Cité (USPC)
- The adoption of a new rule giving priority for women in being awarded a sabbatical within the first two years after a maternity leave
- The adoption of measures to favour the turnover in administrative tasks
- The adoption and further application of a gender-neutral language in all human resources documents (encouraging women to apply)
- The achievement of the HRS4R (Human Resources Strategy for Researchers) European label, pertaining to the transparency of recruitment procedures
- The adoption of measures concerning career advancement, reward, and sabbatical overall aiming women to apply for higher career positions
- The start by the HR service of a reflexion on coaching for female assistant professors in order to encourage them to require to be full professor
- The extension of the training for masters students at USPC level
- The introduction of training for medical students
- The adoption of gendered-based statistics in the OVE (Student Life Observatory) and in the UPD social report (to a higher extent than established by law).
Considering the effects on the actors involved, the team recorded some negative effects as conflicts and resistances, or lack of full cooperation, from some university components (top leadership, male component and, in some cases, beneficiaries) related to the use of gender-neutral language, and a supposed male "discrimination" in specific actions. On the contrary, many positive effects have been reported in terms of strong support, offer of help for the realization of some activities, the request to present results and initiatives, etc., including:
- The director of the PhD school of the Communauté Sorbonne Paris Cité ;
− the director of the PhD training centre
− the directors of Biology and Physics departments (target institutes of the Action Plan)
- Many researchers and students addressing individual requests to the project team
- researchers asking the team to present the gender equality actions to their students
- organisational units asking for trainings on equality for their students
- student associations offering to help
- Some laboratories asking the team for training for their researchers/administrative staff.
Moreover, the involvement of the Team at national level (through the coordination of a national working group and the participation as member in different national working groups) largely helped it to gain much more credibility. At the institution level, both UPD leaders and researchers became much more supportive with the Team.
Finally, it must be emphasized that the impact of training for students and staff became really visible. When the team presented its new action plan to the Central Council in May 2017, both trade unions and elected students supported this action plan and asked for a new permanent position for the PEFH.
The Action Plan also allowed initiating numerous relationships and collaborations with external stakeholders. Among these, in the first place, it is worth mentioning some actors from the world of research and education such as the Communauté Sorbonne Paris Cité (especially the universities of Paris 3, Paris 5 and Paris 13), the CNRS, Science Po, and the CPED (Conférence Permanente des chargées de mission Egalité Diversité dans l’enseignement supérieur).
Reference is also to be made to institutional or private entities at the national and international level such as: French Ministry of higher education; ONU Femmes France; The Higher Council on gender equality; the Parliament delegation of women rights; Centre Hubertine Auclert; Generali firm; Clichy City; Institut en santé génésique; CLASHES (French student association against sexual harassment in higher education); Femmes et sciences, Laboratoire de l’égalité, Universcience, ANEF (Association Nationale des Études Féministes), the national association of the presidents of Universities, the national association of the presidents of the great schools, the national association of the presidents of the engineering schools, the association of young researchers on gender, The Association for the Women Leaders in the Higher education and Research, réseau the national network of legal offices in Higher Education and Research.
Moreover, thanks to their action, members of the team were invited to participate in radio broadcast or to answer interviews for traditional and online newspapers.
The Team had no particular problems or recurrent constraints in designing and establishing sustainable arrangements in order to secure the continuation of the Action Plan. Some elements played a key role in defining the sustainability plan, according to the team members. In particular, reference is made to: the national debate and the national context (new law on gender equality adopted); the involvement of the TRIGGER Project at the national level which represented a great opportunity for visibility; the increased attention given to gender issues within the university community thanks to the actions implemented.
In this framework some meaningful facts deserve to be highlighted as related to the possible future sustainability.
First of all, concerning contacts established with other external organisations that could play a role in the future to ensure long-term sustainability to the Actions launched under the Action Plan, the team mentioned several formal and informal partnerships established with national and international players (see above).
As for new economic and human resources identified/achieved to entirely or partially support the activities of the Action Plan or to give continuity to them, a second civil servant position for the PEFH will be created in 2018. In addition to the creation of this position, the PEFH budget will increase of a 40%.
UPD obtained the European label HRS4R. The PEFH participated to the draft of the project and mentioned the measures already implemented. This label ensures a gender equality policy at UPD, thus providing an argument to create a second civil servant position at the PEFH.
Among the new actions initiated in continuity with those promoted within the activities of the Action Plan, the Team reported that an external structure on sexual harassment was created. Moreover, a large part of the TRIGGER action plan at UPD is or will be extended to USPC. To this aim, some departments or laboratories asked the Team to provide new trainings.
As for the activities implemented or started to make the new operational setups activated by the actions definitive, the adoption of a new gender equality action plan (made up of actions drawn from the TRIGGER Action Plan) by the Central Council in May 2017 led to the establishment of new procedures (Actions 4.2.2. 4.4.3. and 4.7.2.).
Furthermore, all the student associations will sign a charter on gender equality and against sexist communication, which exclude them from funds and university support in case of violation.
1.5. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM)
The AP has, overall, always recorded levels of agreement and satisfaction more than positive by all the involved stakeholders. An exception is to be made for the male component, which in the initial phase of the activities manifested some skepticism by expressing intermediate levels of agreement. Such a diffidence seemed to be progressively decreased or even disappeared as the AP progressed.
As for the objective impact, according to the Team, some impacts turned out to be more significant in their capacity to introduce change within the organisation. They are:
- The setting up and the approval of the Equality Plan of the UPM
- The creation of the UNESCO Chair
- The "Women at UPM" reports that have been used in different presentations by the Equality Unit, in order to show the situation of women and girls at UPM
- The approval of a new inter-university Master Programme on gender (even if the process of negotiation on some legal issues is still ongoing) to be launched on 2019
- The introduction of a new Mentoring programme
- The review of the normative which ended up in the first Equality Plan of the UPM.
In general, some effects concerning the actors involved are reported by the TRIGGER team. At UPM most people have discovered or become aware of existing inequalities and what gender and equality is by some of the actions of TRIGGER, but also through informal conversations that happened spontaneously. The team reckoned this as positive overall, even if the reaction to this has not always been positive or producing supportive attitudes. Anyhow, the actions included in the AP succeeded in raising the people’s awareness. In many cases, people started thinking about gender inequality for the very first time in their life thanks to the project.
Mentoring programmes are leading to an empowerment of women, and some of them are becoming interested on the topic, even offering themselves as mentors of future mentees.
The activities related to the inclusion of gender in existing courses had led to two PhD theses at the School of Architecture (one finished and other ongoing), and a new student has shown interest in writing her Bachelor dissertation taking into account gender as the core of the topic. In all of the three pilot schools, the team has had different research articles/papers and participation in conferences including gender, so several students are discovering a new topic and methodology of research.
The creation of the Chair and its support from UNESCO is playing an essential role in the consolidation of gender and equality in UPM, especially regarding the support of the higher positions. The new management team is trusting very much in the visibility that the Chair may offer to the UPM.
Many dissemination activities concerning the Action Plan have also been carried out outside the university (in this regard, UPM TRIGGER activities were presented in international meetings in Turkey, Greece, Romania and Austria) and important relations have been established with external bodies. During the project lifespan, relevant collaborations have been started with public and private bodies, such as:
- IGME (Geological and Mining Institute of Spain)
- COAM (Professional Association of Architects in Madrid)
- Extremadura Regional Government and Canary Island Regional Government
- Fundación Mujeres x África
- Madrid City Council
- Gender4UP
- Network of Equality Unit of Spanish Universities
- AMIT- Association of Women Engineers and Technologist
- UN HABITAT – Habitat III
- Spanish Network for a Sustainable Develpment (Red Española para el Desarrollo Sostenible)
- National Association of Architects
As for the utilisation of the project results, it is to highlight that the report “Women at UPM” has been used by other researchers and in many activities as a database on the situation of women in technological studies; the guidelines to fight Sexual Harassment are being used by the RRI Tools project and included in the publication "GEAR Tool- Gender Equality in Academia and Research" published by EIGE; the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin) is reproducing the creation of a UNESCO Chair, following the same process followed by the UPM team.
The Team did not report problems or recurrent constraints in designing and establishing sustainable arrangements in order to secure the continuation of the Action Plan. Some elements, which represent the heart of the PA, have played, according to the team members, a key role in defining the sustainability plan. In particular, reference is made to: the Gender Equality Plan; the new Mentoring programme about leadership; the new Master programme on gendered contents; the UNESCO Chair (gender expertise in all the former issues and international representation of UPM).
Some interesting facts can be recalled as related to the possible future sustainability.
Different contacts have been established by the Team with national or international networks, associations or S&T organisations in order to access further human, material or economic resources to entirely or partially support the implementation of the Action plan or its sustainability beyond the conclusion of the TRIGGER project. In this regard, the following points can be highlighted:
− The mentoring activities and some related training are being supported by private and public funding, included in the new mentoring programme
− The new Master Programme will be funded by the Regional Government of Madrid
− The UNESCO Chair is signing different agreements and contracts with external institutions (public and private) that will ensure the continuity of the TRIGGER team for at least 1.5 year after the TRIGGER lifetime
− UPM has submitted a number of applications related to gender/equality projects to get funds from H2020 calls, one of which was successful (at the date of the end of December 2017).
With reference to the creation of stable links with other bodies involved in the implementation of gender equality initiatives in science, in enterprises or in other sectors, the Team primarily stressed that the UNESCO Chair is member of the Global Network of UNESCO Chairs on Gender. Moreover, other links have been established – among others – with the University Platform on women, gender and feminist studies, and the Network of Equality Units of Spanish Universities. The Equality Unit belongs to the working group Gender4UP (gathering the equality units from the four technological universities from Spain).
As for Actions initiated in continuity with those promoted within the activities of the Action plan of UPM, the Team mentioned the new mentoring programme, while the Equality Plan, approved in June 2017, can be considered as the major operational setup activated by the action plan allowing to make its outputs definitive. All in all, a large number of actions carried out during the AP will be implemented in the near future through the UPM Gender Equality Plan and the support of the aforementioned players.
List of Websites:
www.triggerproject.eu