LIBRA started with assessing Gender Equality at each partner institute, identifying procedures and practices that contribute to biases. Subsequently, the gender expert organisation of the consortium (ASDO) analysed the collected data and provided each institute with a diagnostic report. Each institute tailored the LIBRA GEP template according to their needs and chose an average of 36 actions to be implemented by March 2019. The implementation of the GEPs required a cultural and organisational change, especially at the level of the human resource and communication departments, and scientists, most importantly the Principal Investigators (PIs) and Directors. Therefore, LIBRA invited staff from the human resource departments to workshops on “Work-Life-Balance in research” and “Recruitment without gender bias”. As a follow-up of those two workshops the consortium produced (1) the LIBRA recruitment handbook with guidelines for inclusive, transparent and unbiased recruitment processes, that were implemented by the partners in the institutional recruitment policies, and (2) and an online tool for self-development including self-reflection and career stage analysis.
To increase the awareness of the importance of a balanced lifestyle LIBRA coordinated several activities amongst the partners: A campaign encouraged about 3000 institutes’ staff to take the Implicit Association test and learn about their own biases and a provocative poster campaign encouraged men to share the caring responsibilities traditionally taken on by women. The awareness campaigns were supported by professional training on unconscious bias that was delivered to 429 PIs, Department Heads, and supervisors. In addition a seminar series that highlighted how successful group leaders negotiated their career path while maintaining their life outside of the lab provided practical role models to aspiring young researchers.
LIBRA’s main activity to support the career development of women was the COMPASS programme, supporting 20 women postdocs from the partner institutes to break the glass-ceiling. The feedback was positive throughout, and participants believe that the programme helped them to manage the most critical step in their academic career. Until now, eight of the 20 postdocs succeeded in getting a job offer as a PI, and are currently setting up their own groups. Since career advancement depends mainly on the evaluation of other scientists, the director, or advisory board, LIBRA wrote a guide that provides considerations and practical advice for fair and gender inclusive promotion and evaluation processes.
Besides having more women in leading research positions, LIBRA helped partner institutes to include the sex and gender dimension in their research. The consortium collected good practices and case studies, and developed an online training module for scientists. Beyond the institutional context, LIBRA also advocated for the topic amongst the broader research community. LIBRA held a stakeholder workshop and engaged 58 delegates from 13 European countries from research, industry, publisher, and funding agencies into the discussion. 60% of the delegates that provided feedback were inspired to make changes in their organisation, which was the objective of the workshop.
Besides the participation in these LIBRA coordinated activities, the partner institutions also committed to many more institutional measures in their GEPs. These GEPs were subject to monitoring and evaluation by the gender expert organisation ASDO, and resulted a mid-term and final report which included a gender mainstreaming progress analysis and an analysis of internal stakeholder mobilisation to support the change process.
LIBRA resources on Zenodo:
https://zenodo.org/communities/libra/?page=1&size=20(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) Online Sex and Gender dimension in research training tool:
https://www.libra-sgr.eu(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) Online tool for Self-Development hosted by the LIBRA partner CEITEC:
http://libra.ceitec.cz/self-development-tools/(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)Implicit Association Test (from Project Implicit):
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)
