During the whole project period the consortium has been working as a team, committed to reach the common goals. Finally, it managed to achieve successfully the objectives set.
Initially, RPOs designed six Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) using the robust approach and methodology of the project. The consortium followed a process of different research activities starting by a State-of-the-Art analysis to investigate the situation at other research institutions and result in good practices, while in parallel the partner RPOs organized the groups of people to be involved in the process impacting gender equality operations, called GEPs Working Groups and they also investigated the national policy framework for gender equality in their countries resulted in the so called National mini reports. This in-depth investigation of best practices in combination with the gender related policy framework facilitated the transition to the next important phase of the project, which was the development of a Gender Audit methodology and its implementation to analyse the status of gender equality at each involved RPO. For this, two Capacity Building Sessions were organised presenting the methodological guidelines for internal gender audit within IST research organizations, and facilitating their adoption and customization by the EQUAL-IST RPOs.
As an initial step towards the design of GEPs, a thorough assessment of the internal state of the art was to be conducted by using a participatory auditing method. Τhe six RPOs proceeded, from February until end of April 2017 to implement Participatory Gender Audits at their organizations. The gender audits were conducted to get a complete picture based on existing available data of the internal situation of gender (in)equality in each IST/ICT Department Faculty and to start with a first round of internal consultations by way of an audit both with research purposes (collect information and assess perceptions, beliefs, resistances) and with action oriented goals (initiate a consensus building process about the more urgent challenges to be tackled, stimulate bottom up participation in collecting and discussing proposals, ideas and solutions) in view of the next step of crowdsourcing GEPs’ designed via the CrowdEquality platform.
The robust approach of the EQUAL-IST project involved the development and use of a crowdsourcing platform “CrowdEquality”. The rationale behind the crowdsourcing exercise was to collect ideas and trigger interesting discussions about the emerging challenges that were identified at each partner RPO during the internal audits. CrowdEquality facilitated the participatory co-design of tailored GEPs for each of the participating RPOs, but also strived to be an inclusive community that empowers men and women all over the world to freely discuss the issues of gender equality at research institutions. Each partner RPO had a dedicated anonymised space at the platform, where they could upload their internal challenges and start interesting discussions.
Following the above, the six project RPO continued the implementation of the GEPs until April 2018, called as 1st iteration phase. Then, for the next two months RPOs refined their initial GEPs based on the evaluation results of the 1st phase and continued the implementation of the updated GEPs during the period July 2018 until April 2019. Overall, RPOs received continuous support (online calls, workshops, on-line Toolkit) and specific support has been provided targeting at structural changes for gender equality at University or Research Organization level, through the EQUAL-IST Webinar Series “Towards the implementation of the Gender Equality plans”. In parallel to the implementation phases, both external and internal evaluation activities took place (online, physical meetings) to monitor the progress and secure that targets set will be achieved.
Turning to the GEP implementation assessment, EQUAL-IST has developed an assessment methodology and relevant indicators that can be used by any ICT-IST RPO who envisages to implement a GEP.
In terms of sustainability, all RPOs have been motivated and receive special guidance to keep the actions alive beyond the end of the project through structural changes. It has been impressive the fact that all RPOs designed their sustainability plans and presented that to the higher management level, who finally expressed their interest and confirmation to continue the actions, for at least the next two years.
