Final Report Summary - GENDERA (Gender Debate in the European Research Area)
Executive Summary:
The GENDERA project was gathering existing initiatives, making experiences and knowledge on the implementation of gender equality in research organizations available for exchange, analysis and use by all partners in the various national contexts. They are accessible in an online database. The definition of criteria for the development of a database was essential. A Manual on the Assessment of initiatives on gender equality initiatives in R & D organizations was developed and supported the collection and identification of good examples. All partners identified initiatives on gender equality in R & D organizations in their countries according to the manual and collected information on these best practices using the questionnaire prepared. The number of initiatives that were identified per country varied a lot, depending on the specific level of gender equality implementation in the partner countries. All identified best practices were systemized according to the barriers and career stages they are adressing and to the strategies for change they are applying. This makes the use of the database easy and efficient. Results on this collection were gathered in a Synthesis Report, containing the results of the best/good practice collection but also comparing the GENDERA countries in regard to gender equality and their innovation system.
The project partners have been working on increasing awareness on the importance of gender balance in science and research, involving the main players in debates on the national level. Specifically, partners have established National Task Forces and organized at least one meeting per year. Each project partner has prepared the invitation letter for the national Task Force based on the common structure. The letters were sent to the identified main players. Each partner has proposed a framework of collaboration with the Task Force Members in their country andindicated a plan of activities. The project partners, in collaboration with the corresponding National Task Force, have shaped the program of their GENDERA National workshop. By the end of the project, all the partners have organized the GENDERA National event in their country.
An important objective of the project was raising the awareness and increasing the knowledge base of the policy and decision makers regarding the available tools for gender balance policies. Within this general objective, two tasks were carried out: the organisation of an international roundtable and the elaboration of guidelines on gender policy for research organisations. The international roundtable was focused on gender and research funding, addressing the problem of gender equality measures and practices used or not used by funding organisations. The guidelines “Practical recommendations for research organisations to lead the change towards gender equality in science and technology” were compiled and printed in nine languages. The booklet contains practical recommendations for the leaders of research institutionshow to include gender equality policies in the organisations.
The GENDERA project aimed at proactively discussing and debating the subject of gender in the European research area. The project had from the beginning an ambitious and multifaceted work package to ensure that the subject of gender is put on the agenda in the member countries. The project partners continuously sought the exchange with relevant stakeholders, policy makers and leaders of research organisations throughout the project through different communication channels including print, radio, TV, press and personal exchange in the form of events. The partners have throughout the entirety of the project disseminated information on the major results achieved in other work packages to ensure that these are known about and shared with others, once again using the most appropriate communication channels. The partners have organised and attended workshops and conferences sharing their expertise with and learning from others. The knowledge gained has been summarised in a concise document, the policy brief of recommendations.The main conclusion drawn from the analysis of the good practice database carried out in the course of the project is that there is a need to focus more on issues of implementing gender equality initiatives in R & D organisations, as it is evident in the database that the good practices have to deal with several challenges and obstacles which impede their full potential. It is therefore necessary on the one hand to know more about the reasons which limit their impacts and on the other hand to support the implementation of gender equality initiatives through provision of financial and knowledge resources.
Project Context and Objectives:
The GENDERAproject brought together and discussed experiences in the practical realization of gender equality in research organisations and higher education institutions, with theoverall objective to facilitate the implementation of gender balance in science and create an enabling environment to integrate gender dimension into science policy throughout Europe. At the same time, the project boosted the awareness to promote the role of women in science, contributed to strengthenig the role of women in scientific research in specific disciplines and in scientific decision making positions, and to commit top governmental and institutional decision makers and policy makers to advance the current situation on gender balance in research positions.
The above general objectives were achieved through the following specific objectives:
• Experiences in gender equality policies and activities on gender balance in different research organisations (from the higher education sector, the government sector and the business enterprise sector) were collected, systematised and analysed.
• Best practices for the empowerment of women to get on the top of research organisations and scientific committees, as well as the factors limiting the participation of women (with special regard to the conditions of recruitment and career development) were identified and discussed with top policy and decision makers and other stakeholders at national and European level.
The main objective of collecting good practiceson gender equality measures have been to make experiences available and support learning and knowledge exchange between the GENDERA partners, but also from country to country, mainly in the different national bodies (Task Forces) established by the project partners. The best examples for the improvement of gender balance identified by the consortium was introduced in the Synthesis Report.. Having so differently developed countries from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, as well as from Israel made it possible to face the specific national challenges and strategies to deal with them and selecting those good practices which can be relevant for the given country.
Awareness on the importance of gender balance in science and research was increased by involving the main players in debates on the national level. This was addressed within three tasks covering establishment of the national Task Force, organization of the national workshops and preparation of the national action plans.In order to identify main players and establish the national Task Forces, the partners identified and approached the relevant top policy/decision makers and high-level representatives of public and private higher education and R & D organisations, as well as leaders of the formers’ representative bodies. They were invited to participate in the national Task Forces with the aim to involve them actively in local discussions and increase their commitment to advance the situation of gender balance in research positions. The national workshops encouraged discussions on the national level in all partner countries. In some cases gender policy experts from countries from or outside of the EU were invited to widen the “offer” of possible solutions and share experiences. Based on the discussions’ results, the main national problems related to gender equality in research wereidentified. Suggestions and exact recommendations to improve the local situation of gender balance in research positions - with special regard to recruitment and career development – were prepared with the active support of the Task Force members.
The best practices on gender balance were also discussed at the European level. All partners participated in the organisation and also suggesting international speakers for the international roundtable. Leaders of international research and RTD funding organizations and associations, like DG Research, DG INFSO, COST, as well as selected national funding research institutions from the countries participating in the project had been invited for a roundtable discussion on potential means to promote women’s participation in research – especially in fields where their proportion is still disproportionately low. The international roundtable was widely disseminated in each partners’ country.Guidelines about recommendations and tools for gender balance policies were compiled in a non-scientific language. The guidelines are addressed to top-level stakeholders who were identified in WP2 and management level of research or funding organisations. The guide was written in English and translated to the languages of the project partners: Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, English, German, Slovak, Slovenian and Greek. Additionally to the common version of the guidelines, each partner added some pages on specific information and/or data of his/her country.
Important tasks of the project were to actively communicate with relevant stakeholders in the gender debate at research and higher education institutions, supporting networking activities between these stakeholders and disseminating information about project activities and results throughout the 30 month project period.The aim was to achieve an international network of experts from all relevant stakeholder bodies by the end of the project which can be sustained after the completion of the project. A brand was created for the project including the development and dissemination of a project flyer in English which was used for national promotion purposes. The flyer was available in both printed and electronic versions. The flyer was the main information document for inviting stakeholders to join the individual task forces as well as being actively disseminated in existing networks.
An interactive website was designed and implemented. It transported information about the project and the partners, included project progress updates and complementary studies, events, statistics etc. that would be useful to a broad community. The website was updated regularly to keep it dynamic and all partners had access to the internal system in order to submit regular updates. A major element of the website was the interactive and searchable database of good practices.
1. The project partners interacted with other EU projects, European Commission institutions, the European Parliament as well as relevant stakeholders at the regional and national level.
2. The European GENDERA conferencetook place towards the end of the project. It offered a platform for networking, exchange of good/best practice in gender equality in research and was visited by relevant stakeholders including task force members, representatives from European bodies including the European Commission, the European Parliament, from Europe as well as experts from outside of Europe.
3. At the end of the dialogue after 30 months, a policy brief with recommendations from the project was created and disseminated to policy makers and stakeholders.
Project Results:
The main results of the survey of good practices on the promotion of gender balance in research and higher education institutions.
• In terms of products, the online database and the synthesis report are the main results.
• Relating to the content of the work package, a first result was to change the term ’best practice’ as used in the proposal to ’good practice’. This change was committed by all GENDERA partners as the collected initiatives have potential for further improvement. So using ’good practices’ as term in the database was seen better fitting.
• Looking for the factors of success, we could identify different framework conditions that are needed to make an initiative successful. They reach from overcoming a lack of awareness and lacks of commitment. Other relevant resources are gender expertise and experiences and overcoming possiblebureaucracy and inefficiencies.
Doing this final topical review on the outcomes of the WP in our scientific paper, we argue that not just the quantity of initiatives is important, but also the quality in terms of implementation, is important for more gender equality. The need to put more attention on the process of implementation is an import result of the analysis on the good practices in our database. It is necessary to overcome existing barriers and find strategies to deal with existing limitations in each specific context.
The third work package focused on the development of national dialogues with top-level policy/decision makers, leaders and research administrators of research institutions, higher education organisations and other relevant key players. The main results are the following:
• Development of instructions and timetable for forming Task Forces
• Initial database on the potential Task Force members
• Establishment of the Task Forces in 9 countries – name of Task Force members and the mission statement of the Task Forces are available on the project website
• Report on the establishment of Task Forces (D3.1)
• Discussions and meetings with the Task Force members
• Identification of the relevant topics to be covered in the GENDERA national workshop
• Development of the GENDERA national workshop program
• Establishment of the list of potential workshop participants
• Organization of the national workshops – title, location, program made available at the project website
• Shaping of the recommendations for the national action plan
• Report on the national workshops and the action plans (D3.2)
The project partners have developed instructions/criteria for forming the Task Force. This was followed by identifying the main players and establishing the national Task Forces during the first months of the project. Each project partner has prepared the invitation letter for the national Task Force based on the common structure. The letters were sent to the identified main players in their national language. Each partner has proposed a framework of collaboration with the Task Force Members in their country indicating a plan of activities. Each partner has also prepared an excel file with the contact details of all the invited key players.
GENDERA Task Force was formed for each of the countries, the number of the Task Force members per country as reported for D3.1 is the following: Hungary 17, Spain 10, Greece 6, Slovenia 12, Slovak Republic 8, Austria 20, Germany 20, Italy 19, Israel 12. These numbers may have changed during the duration of the project.
The partners have organized at least one meeting (in most cases a face-to-face meeting) during the first year of the project. The National Task force meetings focused on discussing: factors that limit the participation of women in research (specific disciplines, decision-making positions); best practices on gender balance; arguments supporting the importance of gender balance; European policies and documents. The partners have managed to achieve impressive profiles of their National Task Forces, involving the major players in their countries. In several cases, the discussions inside National Task Force and suggestions provided contributed to the content of the national additions to GENDERA guidelines.
Most partners have involved the established national Task Force members in shaping the workshop program inviting them to take an active role in the workshop and contribute to writing the national recommendations. In Hungary the national Task Force approved the National Recommendations for an action plan supporting scientific life (published after the event in 300 copies). Similarly in Slovakia, the Task Force agreed on the text to be included in the National Recommendations for Action. In Israel, the Task Force proved most important for dissemination and reaching decision makers, but it was hardly instrumental in setting up events and reaching a joint decision about the action plan.
All the Project partners have organized their national events, with the corresponding program of the events being publicly announced and available at the GENDERA Web site. As agreed, due to specificity of each country, the National events were all shaped around the same theme on gender equality, GENDERA synthesis report and good practices, and at the same time had different emphases adjusted to the national needs. All the partners were aiming at increasing awareness on the importance of gender balance in science and research by involving the main players in debate on the national level. At the same time, due to national specifics, the partner differ in deciding whom to involve in the debate, what topics were emphasized and in selecting and attracting the target audience for the national workshop. The specific topics include rethink the challenges and find new forms of interventions towards gender equality in R & D in Austria; reconsidering working cultures in German public research organizations and industry research; strengthening collaboration with statistics office in Greece to support development of statistics and indicators on gender equality in research; gender balance as a criterion in evaluation of research institutions in Israel; integrating the gender dimension into Spanish scientific and technical research content. In addition, Slovenian and Slovak workshops included balancing between national and international dimension via topic and the presentation language.
Slovenian http://videolectures.net/genderaworkshop2011_ljubljana/ and Greek http://ekt.gr/news/events/ekt/2011-11-23/index.html workshops were video recorded and the material is publicly available.
The national workshops were also an excellent opportunity for presenting good practices for the improvement of gender balance based on the GENDERA Synthesis Report and good practice database prepared in WP2. Furthermore, the workshops provided a good opportunity for discussing the main national problems related to gender equality in research and shaping recommendations to improve the national situation of gender balance in research positions. The recommendations for action plan are provided in each national activity report in addition to the report on national workshop (included in this document).
In addition to general discussion, the Slovak workshop included discussion on gender pay gap in academia with good practices from Finland, Austria, Czech Republic and presentation of the Slovak situation. This was accompanied by recognizing the need for raising awareness on gender equality as many in decision making positions are under the impression that there are no such issues in their research institutions. It is worth mentioning that Slovak committee for equal opportunities at Ministry of Labor is establishing a Women in Science group.
The target groups of the workshops were mainly organisational and institutional representatives who play a key role in science, technology and innovation policy, high level representatives from universities, research organizations, government and ministries. For Spain these include those responsible for the R & D National Plan, regional government plans, specialists in integrating the gender perspective into science and the Spanish scientific community in general. For Germany the main target group were representatives from the diversity and gender equality offices, as well as management level people in research – from public and private bodies. Italy focused on two target groups: research organisations and higher education organizations.
The majority of the workshop participants and speakers in all addressed countries were women. For instance, in Hungary out of 20 participants there was one male speaker. Slovakia had 70 registered participants with only three men present at the conference, and none of them as a speaker. Slovenia had 10% male participants at the workshop including one of the speakers. Italy had four male speakers but no additional man in the audience. In Israel, the two organized workshops had a total of 34 women and six men, one of the speakers was a man. In Austria two out of eight speakers were men, while in the audience a few more men were present.
In addition, all the partners contributed to GENDERA deliverable D3.2 by writing their National action plan with recommendations and the report on the organized GENDERA national events. Recommendations for Austria point out that a number of equality measures have been already implemented differentiated by duration, target group, career stage. This led to an increasing share of women in research, stronger than the general rise of research employment in Austria. Nevertheless, equality targets have not been achieved yet, especially women in leading positions are still very rare in R &; D institutions in Austria. It is recommended to consider changing the organizational culture in research institutions including a better work-life-balance and to implement focused governance on equality in R & D (organizational change has to happen on the mesolevel, in the different research institutions). In reaction to the national GENDERA workshop, taskforce members are now invited to a workshop at the Austrian Research Council to discuss how to develop science further. Moreover, the recommendations are to be submitted to a working group preparing the future Austrian technology and innovation strategy. Similarly as in Austria, in Germany the impression is that everyone is doing a lot for gender equality but the results are limited. Thus the recommendations discuss a challenge for a country with too many good practices and specifically a need for reconsidering working culture. Most of research and company environments still use the same traditional working cultures including the usual time and place for organizing meetings and making important decisions, measuring excellence, etc. The Spanish recommendations point out importance of three levels for overall gender equality strategy: presence of women, practices and processes and gender dimension in research content. The last one was selected as a focus of the Spanish national workshop working towards shaping a manifesto of the strategy to follow for integrating gender dimension into research contents. Recommendations for Slovenia point out that implementation of gender equality policies in research organizations in Slovenian has expended from basic and general towards spread, different and more specific issues related to institutional, mostly hidden discrimination. While equal opportunity in research for reaching higher positions was addressed with different measures, it still remains the area that needs more efforts. In addition, there is still a need for increasing the sensitivity to gender inequality at the level of academic institutions and to inform those occupying higher positions. Some good practices have been established in Slovenia, including Slovenian ministries appointing coordinators for equal opportunities. It is recommended to organize regular trainings for the appointed coordinators and ensure regular reporting on their activities. Slovenia would also benefit from coordinated and precise implementation of gender equality policies tailored to different micro-environments. Promotion of science and in particular women in science remains one of the priorities. This became even more evident from screening results of Slovenian Institute for Market and Media research in September 2011 showing that 90% of Slovenian people were not able to name any Slovenian female scientist! Practical recommendations on creating gender balance in Italy highlight addressing role of stereotypes, gender balance in management, time management and visibility, support for child care responsibility, career planning, promotion and progression, support for return to work. The Greece recommendations are formulated according to conclusions from meetings with the Task Force members and according to the EC report “Stocktaking 10 years of Women in Science policy by the European Commission 1999-2009, 2010”. Recommendations for supporting scientific life in Hungary included recommending cultural, structural, and the needs changes via taking some concrete actions. For instance, it is recommended to establish equality plans and committees, to influence women’s share in scientific life and research management. An example of the recommended cultural changes is a cultural change in the leader positions or implementing measures to increase the interest of high-school girls in a scientific career. The recommended needs change relate to offering a few tools which can help to create a more women friendly research and scientific sphere. The suggested changes are supported by concrete good practice examples applicable in Hungary.
Recommendations for Israel point out the need to monitor, inform, sanction and evaluate. Moreover it is recommended to define standards and manners by which gender mainstreaming in organizations can be measured. Recommendations for Action in Slovakia aim at pointing out at all important challenges in the area of gender equality in academia and research and are rather detailed – mainly because it is the first document of this type ever produced in Slovakia, and it will be the key starting point for the work of the newly created Women and Science group at the Ministry of Labour.
The aim of WP4 was raising the awareness and increasing the knowledge basis of the policy makers about the tools for gender balance policies. The International Gendera Roundtable ''Gender and Research Funding''took place in Bratislava on Tuesday, 18th May 2010. Fifty five participants from eight countries attended the workshop, which addressed the problem of gender equality measures and practices used or not used by funding organisations. Twelve speakers from both European institutions (European Commission and COST) and national funding bodies, research organisations and women’s associations presented interesting and inspiring practices aimed at promoting gender equality in research funding and project evaluation. All the information about the international roundtable and the speakers CVs are available in the project’s website (http://www.gendera.eu/index.php5?file=15).
On September 2010 CIREM presented the final version of the “Practical recommendations for research organisations to lead the change towards gender equality in science and technology” in English, with all comments and recommendations included. Four quotations for the graphic design were collected and finally was selected the best price-quality ratio.All partners translated the “Practical recommendations” from English to each language and prepared two additional pages for each country. Finally 1100 copies were printed in English and 400 for each other language. The main structure of the guidelines was the following:
• Why? Why are there so few women at the top of science? Why is their advancement so slow?
• What? What can an effective equal opportunity strategy do for research organisations?
• How? How can research organisations lead the change?
• Who?
• Some interesting statistics
• Additional national information
WP5 was dealing with communication and networking with relevant stakeholders and media at the European level. The project kick-off meeting served as the perfect opportunity to discuss the important issue of project branding with all the partners. The work package leader took the opportunity to discuss the elements of what the branding should include, how the branding can be used and to collect ideas from each of the partners. Work on the project logo, as the basic element from which the branding would be developed, commenced straight after the project meeting and the logo was designed and finalised by mid-December. At the same time work progressed on defining the text for the leaflet. All partners were included in the discussion providing invaluable input to the final text. This was particularly important as the flyer was to be used in all countries represented in the GENDERA project and therefore needed to include a text which was relevant to all countries, taking into consideration the status of the debate on gender equality in research in individual countries. The leaflet was finalised and printed and partners began disseminating it to the national stakeholders as well as at events and in their own organisations. The leaflet was sent to all partners for dissemination and used throughout the project’s duration. Some partners chose to use the template and translate the leaflet into the local language in order to facilitate the acquisition of task force members (who may or may not speak English). The leaflet also served later as the basis for developing a project poster which was then presented at several events.
Based on the project branding and the experience of the Work Package Leader, the interactive and dynamic project website was designed, developed and launched during the first project period. The technical staff worked closely with the communication staff to create a stable, interactive and logical web platform with English as the standard language. Much effort was put into the architecture of the website, in particular in relation to the good practice database. The database was created in a very fruitful collaboration with the work package leader of Work Package 2 (Definition and identification of good practices on gender balance in science and research). The final result is of high quality and is also very user friendly and sustainable. The website was created with different levels of user in mind:
• Read only: most of the content was made available to the public who were unable to add content themselves
• Partner access: each partner (numerous users per partner were possible) received a user name and password and received access to specific pages of the website including the pages for submitting new good practices for evaluation and finalisation before publishing as well as for adding announcements, studies, events, calls for speakers/posters to the “News” section, either for their own activities or those that they learnt about from their partner networks.
• Special partner access: in addition to the standard partner access, the Work Package 2 Leader 2 had a special status which allowed them to publish the evaluated good practices.
• Administrator access: the Work Package Leader had access to all areas and pages of the website and was able to create new pages and contents as required by the project partners and the evolving activities. New pages were added for example as an overview of the national workshops in each country and also as the main information portal of the European conference. The website actively interlinks with the website of Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum which meant that the online registration to the conference could take place without installing a new tool. The admin access also meant that large documents which needed to be accessed by all partners but which were a challenge to send by e-mail could be placed on the website for each partner to download.
The website had been used as a major platform for disseminating project progress and results and project events (national workshops, final conference, and publication of the electronic versions of the guidelines in 9 languages) and information on other important related events and publications. It had been updated regularly throughout.
The partners originally planned to host its own discussion forum on the GENDERA website. However, after many discussions between partners and between partners and their task force members, the consortium came to the conclusion that it would be more effective and sustainable to use a social network that is already implemented and has thousands of users with relevant groups rather than to invest heavily in a platform which would only be available short-term and would not have an immediate audience. Many of those with whom the issue was discussed mentioned that their host organisations do not allow the use of any social network on work computers. The platform selected by the consortium was LinkedIn. It was selected as it is used by more professionals (than Facebook) and is more internationally known (than e.g. Xing). The coordinator created a GENDERA group and the partners that are able to use the social network each created a sub-group for its country.
The regional, national and international networking was a further objective of WP5 in which it was foreseen that the partners interact with other EU projects, European Commission institutions, the European Parliament as well as relevant stakeholders at the regional and national level. The partners have had continuous opportunities to network throughout the project with each project activity offering the chance to network at different levels:
• Regional and national level: Good practices of gender in research. The partners contacted a broad range of organisations and in order to achieve a good practice, disseminated detailed information about the project and the issues and had in-depth exchange with each organisation to finalise a good practice.
• Regional and national level: Establishment and continuation of the task force (in WP2). In order to establish task forces, each partner contacted a broad range of stakeholders nationally and partly regionally. Some of those contacted joint the project as task force members, others were contacted throughout the project to just be informed about project progress.
• Regional/national and international level: the national workshops organised in each partner country (in WP3) offered the opportunity for the dissemination of information at regional, national and partly international level. Some workshops offered presentations by good practices or by task force members from other GENDERA countries or countries even not involved in the GENDERA project.
• Regional/national/international level: the guidelines produced by all partners (in WP4) in a total of 9 languages (the 8 partner languages and English) are available both in print and electronically from the website. All partners have disseminated the version in their own language regionally and nationally. The English version has been disseminated in advance of the conference to Members of the European Parliament and members of other important stakeholder networks.
• Regional/national/international level: the European conference (organised within WP5) offered members countries of the GENDERA project as well as other countries not involved in GENDERA to network with each other. This included speakers from Ireland, the Nordic Countries, Turkey and the United States of America.
• Regional/national/international level: The partners have all been invited to participate or speak at conferences organised by others or have taken part in TV, radio or press interviews disseminating information about gender equality in research. Through these additional activities, the partners have broadly disseminated information about the project and the national situations.
Quantifiable results are that, GENDERA has:
• Sent more than 170 invitations to stakeholders in 9 countries to engage within task force activities
• Organised more than 25 task force meetings
• Organised 12 national workshops with other 270 participants.
The European conference which took place in Month 29 of the project was final dissemination highlight. The high-level conference was organised with 29 speakers from 16 countries and a total of 116 participants from 23 countries. It offered a platform for networking, the exchange of good/best practice in gender equality in research between relevant stakeholders including task force members, representatives from European bodies including the European Commission, the European Parliament, European Platform of Women Scientists, European Centre for Women and Technology from Europe as well as experts from outside of Europe. The organisers were pleased that nearly 15% of participants were male.
All activities have been additionally accompanied by the publication of press releases, articles etc. regarding the main project outcomes and results.
The final public document that was created by the GENDERA project was the Policy Brief completed in month 30. The clear, concise and short document will be used by partners (after approval by the European Commission) to stimulate future discussions even after the project’s conclusion.
Potential Impact:
An impact during the GENDERA working period in the while collecting good practices and creating the database was that all partners could learn from experiences in the other countries and by that, stimulate their national discourse on the implementation of gender equality in research organizations. We notice in our own work on gender equality implementation that good practices are always relevant and useful, especially when new ’gender-agents’ enter the scene, when more and more institutions try to improve the situation and are happy to learn from others’ experiences.
WP3 has three main lines of potential impact, following the work package tasks. One relates to forming National Task Force by each partner, where the potential impact is via the Task Force Members that were informed on the GENDERA activities and collaborated in some of them. As the members were selected mainly as decision making representatives of government and academia, we expect that their involvement with GENDERA not only contributed to the quality and dissemination of the project results but also to raising awareness during and after the project via professional and personal communication of the Task force Members.
The second line of potential impact relates to the organization of national events presenting GEDENRA related content and attracting various participants. The events were also widely promoted on national level, in two cases the event was also video recorded with the recordings made publicly available from the GENDERA website. Specific dissemination activities of WP3 relate to the national event organization, what follows is the list of the organized events.
24. April 2012 German National Workshop, Zukünftige Arbeitswelten - eine Chance für mehr Diversity in den Chefetagen?, Literaturhaus, Stuttgart
12. April 2012 Spanish National Workshop, Barcelona
24. January 2012 Israeli National Workshop, GENDERA - From recommendations to action: gender balance as a criterion in evaluation of research institutes and academia, Open University, Raanana
18. January 2012 Israeli National Workshop, GENDERA - From recommendations to action: gender balance as a criterion in evaluation of research institutes and academia, Ort Braude College, Karmiel
12. December 2011 Slovenian National Workshop, Encouraging gender equality policy, Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana
30. November 2011 Austrian National Workshop, Marathon, km 15
Die nächste Etappe für mehr Chancengleichheit in FE Tech Gate Vienna.
23. November 2011 Greek National Workshop, Gender Equality in Greece: Challenges and Recommendations, National Hellenic Research Foundation
25. October 2011 Hungarian National Workshop, Situation and possibilities of women researchers in the European Research Area, Budapest Business School, Markó u. 29-31
29/30 September 2011 Slovakian Conference, Women in the Slovak / European Higher Education and Research Areas
11. October 2010 Italian National Workshop, Donne e Scienza, Il Caso Italiano
The third line of potential impact relates to the national action plan with recommendations that each partner has provided. The recommendations were shaped based on the discussions with the Task Force Members during the project, the discussions at the GENDERA national events, and in many cases the recommendations were also discussed at the national event. Furthermore, the partners have distributed the recommendations in some form at the national level.
When looking back to the overall activities related to establishing and sustaining the national task force, shaping and organizing the workshop and writing the recommendations, most of the countries report on difficulties while establishing the task force and sustaining the activity. In particular, in Hungary the hardest part was to establish and sustain the task force, because even though the person was interested to contribute in the group, their organization sometimes did not allow them to be a delegate of the institute. The frequent change of the government and the changing of responsible persons was also a barrier to sustain the Task Force. This is issue is hot potato in Hungary so we have to be gentle in raising this issue to the decision making level. Establishing and sustaining the Slovenian task force was rather demanding, but not as demanding as shaping and organizing the workshop and getting the participants. On the other hand, once we managed to have sufficient involvement of the task force members and the workshop was organized, creating and writing the recommendations was a natural follow up and run smoothly. Both Italy and Isreael report on struggling with time constraints of the task force members for sustaining the task force activity and ensuring their participation in the workshop. This we attribute mainly to other commitments of the selection of individuals of high position and responsible occupations. In Germany, the hardest bit was to understand and accept the different sensitivities among the German stakeholders. Given the competences and longstanding experience many of them have, it was not easy to chair a discussion. Several partners report on ensuring the workshop participation being challenging. Dissemination of the event to get high level experts on gender and science involved in the Spanish workshop (as speakers or participants) was experienced as a difficult task. Similarly, motivating people to participate in the Austrian workshop was difficult, despite the highly known speakers delivering interesting and provocative topics. We attribute that to a certain level of saturation on gender balance activities in these countries. An exception is Slovakia, where the most difficult part was the preparation and agreement on the text of the recommendations.
The main WP4’s dissemination activities carried out by the project partners were the following. Dissemination of the GENDERA guidelines in Italy via APRE’s monthly newsletter, website, weekly alert, and among APRE’s members and database.The Guidelines have been distributed in Spain through CIREM’s website and national contacts.GENDERA materials were also distributed at several national events as follows:
• Gender and ethics in research in science and technology workshop organized by the Directorate for Equality of theUniversity of the Basque Country (UPV / EHU). The seminar was held on the 23rd of September in the Vice-Chancellor’s Office of the UPV / EHU in Leioa (Vizcaya).
• National workshop on Scientific Innovations and the Gender Perspective, held on the 12-13th April 2012 in Madrid.
The guidelines have been distributed to all Austrian Task Force Members. The Project Leaflet and the Guidelines had been distributed at a FEMtech Networking Event on the 29th of November 2010. Around 80 to 100 copies were distributed each. The guidelines were made available for download on: http://www.femtech.at/index.php?id=144. The guidelines were sent together with the invitation to the whole Austrian technology and innovation scene. The guidelines had also been distributed at different conferences in Austria as well as internationally at the conference “Gender Paradoxes in Changing Academic and Scientific Organisation(s) on 20-21th October 2011 in Örebro, Sweden and also at other various events in the Austrian research landscape, at the national workshop, when talking to national stakeholders.
The Slovenian partner has promoted the project distributing GENDERA flyer and guidelines at the meeting of National Network for promoting research values for youth.JSI has promoted the project distributing GENDERA flyer, guidelines and giving a project presentation at the National Workshop on December 12th, 2012. GENDERA materials were also distributed at several national events as follows:
• 24.1.2012 we presented GENDERA project and hand out the project leaflet and guidelines at the event on promoting women in science organised by Slovenian national project SM-RIS. There were approximately 20 people, mainly students, teachers and mentors.
• 20.2. 2012 we send out 127 invitations for the GENDERA Conference by mail, attached was the conference program.
• 27.3. 2012 we presented GENDERA project and hand out the project leaflet and guidelines at the event on promoting women in science organised by Slovenian national project SM-RIS. There were approximately 20 people, mainly students and some teachers.
• 11.4.2012 we presented GENDERA project and the results reported in D3.2 at the consultation/conference on Women on leading positions in higher education in Slovenia organized by Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts. There were approximately 40 participants, mainly from researcher and academia, but also some from government and general public.
Partners from Greec and Israel disseminated the guidelines at the workshops. The GENDERA materials – Guideline - in Hungary had been disseminated continuously at all meetings, events related to the women and science issue.
The guidelines were regularly disseminated in Germany at SEZ events for industry, SMEs and universities. SEZ is the EU-Contact Point for Universities in Baden-Württemberg and the Director, Prof. Norbert Höptner (who is also the European Commissioner to the Minister of Economics of Baden-Württemberg) also takes copies of the guidelines to relevant meetings with important stakeholders in the region.
In Slovakia the guidelines were distributed to various stakeholders: sent to rectors of all Slovak universities, institutes of Slovak Academy of Sciences, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family; disseminated at the national conference.
The work package of dissemination at national and European level has made a contribution to achieving socio-economic impact to different extents within the partner regions. The starting point for each of the partners was different, although similarities between groups of countries can be found (these are well documented in the relevant deliverable reports submitted in the course of the project). Most importantly each country had the opportunity through the project to contact and build networks with the relevant players in their country/region to start effecting change in mindset and practice. With partners organising a whole range of events and meetings (within the other work packages), each of which having to be communicated externally, WP5 has been a central element for ensuring the project’s success. The tools used for dissemination were tailored to meet the requirements of the target groups, ranging from scientific papers and synthesis reports to the guidelines produced in nine languages which were written in a more normal language, understandable to the general public. This makes a contribution to the project having a wider societal implication on the general public at large. Another example of a wider societal implication is that the final conference was offered via different channels to a wide audience of organisations and people who may not typically be involved in gender issues, i.e. invitation by general newsletters (i.e. we did not just invite women networks for women scientists or the gender equality offices of universities). Even if those people did not attend, they have received information about current issues surrounding gender equality and the fact they are missing out on well-qualified staff if they do not actively integrate women in the working teams. The policy brief finalised at the end of the project will be used in the coming months as a concise and powerful overview of the project’s findings.
The project created and disseminated progress in many ways throughout the project’s lifecycle. As a result there was a continual flow of exchange between an individual partner and an external audience. Main dissemination activities include the design of an easily recognisable logo which was used for all communication about the project, i.e. on the information flyer, the poster, the website, the guidelines, the conference invitation, the reports within and outside the consortium. Due to the project’s structure, events have scheduled over the past 24 months of the project which have all been disseminated to a mixture of stakeholders. This begins with the creation of the national task forces in each country (where invitations were issued to a well-defined group of stakeholders with an interest in the topic) to the organisation of the international roundtable in Bratislava to the individual national workshops organised in each country to the final European conference organised in Stuttgart. Another main source of dissemination was the internet, with the project not only offering its own website but also interlinking with other websites, i.e. the websites of each host organisation, swapping links with other closely connected projects, the internationally established social network platform “LinkedIn”. Partners have also actively engaged with the media and have not only produced their own news releases (i.e. project launch, launch of the good practice database, event launches), but have had articles published in the popular press, target group media and scientific papers. The project was also featured in a video for the Euronews Webchannel (http://www.euronews.com/2012/03/07/breaking-science-s-gender-barrier/).
With the project now closed, all the partners know that they have created tools throughout the project that can continue to be used in order to further call and effect change in the regions. The results for exploitation include the website and the good practice database which will remain online for at least one year after the project end date. The internet platform offers a perfect opportunity for referencing the findings of the project. It includes the guidelines in nine languages which can be downloaded as long as the website is online by anyone that is interested in finding out what to expect (support and challenges) when trying to implement change in their (research) organisation. The searchable database is also a highlight that will remain valuable as tangible examples can assist those considering implementing a programme or projecting in their institution. The policy brief finalised at the end of the project takes into consideration the experience made within the different partners in different regions of Europe and can be used in future discussions surrounding research policy in Europe by any stakeholder.
List of Websites:
www.gendera.eu
The GENDERA project was gathering existing initiatives, making experiences and knowledge on the implementation of gender equality in research organizations available for exchange, analysis and use by all partners in the various national contexts. They are accessible in an online database. The definition of criteria for the development of a database was essential. A Manual on the Assessment of initiatives on gender equality initiatives in R & D organizations was developed and supported the collection and identification of good examples. All partners identified initiatives on gender equality in R & D organizations in their countries according to the manual and collected information on these best practices using the questionnaire prepared. The number of initiatives that were identified per country varied a lot, depending on the specific level of gender equality implementation in the partner countries. All identified best practices were systemized according to the barriers and career stages they are adressing and to the strategies for change they are applying. This makes the use of the database easy and efficient. Results on this collection were gathered in a Synthesis Report, containing the results of the best/good practice collection but also comparing the GENDERA countries in regard to gender equality and their innovation system.
The project partners have been working on increasing awareness on the importance of gender balance in science and research, involving the main players in debates on the national level. Specifically, partners have established National Task Forces and organized at least one meeting per year. Each project partner has prepared the invitation letter for the national Task Force based on the common structure. The letters were sent to the identified main players. Each partner has proposed a framework of collaboration with the Task Force Members in their country andindicated a plan of activities. The project partners, in collaboration with the corresponding National Task Force, have shaped the program of their GENDERA National workshop. By the end of the project, all the partners have organized the GENDERA National event in their country.
An important objective of the project was raising the awareness and increasing the knowledge base of the policy and decision makers regarding the available tools for gender balance policies. Within this general objective, two tasks were carried out: the organisation of an international roundtable and the elaboration of guidelines on gender policy for research organisations. The international roundtable was focused on gender and research funding, addressing the problem of gender equality measures and practices used or not used by funding organisations. The guidelines “Practical recommendations for research organisations to lead the change towards gender equality in science and technology” were compiled and printed in nine languages. The booklet contains practical recommendations for the leaders of research institutionshow to include gender equality policies in the organisations.
The GENDERA project aimed at proactively discussing and debating the subject of gender in the European research area. The project had from the beginning an ambitious and multifaceted work package to ensure that the subject of gender is put on the agenda in the member countries. The project partners continuously sought the exchange with relevant stakeholders, policy makers and leaders of research organisations throughout the project through different communication channels including print, radio, TV, press and personal exchange in the form of events. The partners have throughout the entirety of the project disseminated information on the major results achieved in other work packages to ensure that these are known about and shared with others, once again using the most appropriate communication channels. The partners have organised and attended workshops and conferences sharing their expertise with and learning from others. The knowledge gained has been summarised in a concise document, the policy brief of recommendations.The main conclusion drawn from the analysis of the good practice database carried out in the course of the project is that there is a need to focus more on issues of implementing gender equality initiatives in R & D organisations, as it is evident in the database that the good practices have to deal with several challenges and obstacles which impede their full potential. It is therefore necessary on the one hand to know more about the reasons which limit their impacts and on the other hand to support the implementation of gender equality initiatives through provision of financial and knowledge resources.
Project Context and Objectives:
The GENDERAproject brought together and discussed experiences in the practical realization of gender equality in research organisations and higher education institutions, with theoverall objective to facilitate the implementation of gender balance in science and create an enabling environment to integrate gender dimension into science policy throughout Europe. At the same time, the project boosted the awareness to promote the role of women in science, contributed to strengthenig the role of women in scientific research in specific disciplines and in scientific decision making positions, and to commit top governmental and institutional decision makers and policy makers to advance the current situation on gender balance in research positions.
The above general objectives were achieved through the following specific objectives:
• Experiences in gender equality policies and activities on gender balance in different research organisations (from the higher education sector, the government sector and the business enterprise sector) were collected, systematised and analysed.
• Best practices for the empowerment of women to get on the top of research organisations and scientific committees, as well as the factors limiting the participation of women (with special regard to the conditions of recruitment and career development) were identified and discussed with top policy and decision makers and other stakeholders at national and European level.
The main objective of collecting good practiceson gender equality measures have been to make experiences available and support learning and knowledge exchange between the GENDERA partners, but also from country to country, mainly in the different national bodies (Task Forces) established by the project partners. The best examples for the improvement of gender balance identified by the consortium was introduced in the Synthesis Report.. Having so differently developed countries from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, as well as from Israel made it possible to face the specific national challenges and strategies to deal with them and selecting those good practices which can be relevant for the given country.
Awareness on the importance of gender balance in science and research was increased by involving the main players in debates on the national level. This was addressed within three tasks covering establishment of the national Task Force, organization of the national workshops and preparation of the national action plans.In order to identify main players and establish the national Task Forces, the partners identified and approached the relevant top policy/decision makers and high-level representatives of public and private higher education and R & D organisations, as well as leaders of the formers’ representative bodies. They were invited to participate in the national Task Forces with the aim to involve them actively in local discussions and increase their commitment to advance the situation of gender balance in research positions. The national workshops encouraged discussions on the national level in all partner countries. In some cases gender policy experts from countries from or outside of the EU were invited to widen the “offer” of possible solutions and share experiences. Based on the discussions’ results, the main national problems related to gender equality in research wereidentified. Suggestions and exact recommendations to improve the local situation of gender balance in research positions - with special regard to recruitment and career development – were prepared with the active support of the Task Force members.
The best practices on gender balance were also discussed at the European level. All partners participated in the organisation and also suggesting international speakers for the international roundtable. Leaders of international research and RTD funding organizations and associations, like DG Research, DG INFSO, COST, as well as selected national funding research institutions from the countries participating in the project had been invited for a roundtable discussion on potential means to promote women’s participation in research – especially in fields where their proportion is still disproportionately low. The international roundtable was widely disseminated in each partners’ country.Guidelines about recommendations and tools for gender balance policies were compiled in a non-scientific language. The guidelines are addressed to top-level stakeholders who were identified in WP2 and management level of research or funding organisations. The guide was written in English and translated to the languages of the project partners: Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, English, German, Slovak, Slovenian and Greek. Additionally to the common version of the guidelines, each partner added some pages on specific information and/or data of his/her country.
Important tasks of the project were to actively communicate with relevant stakeholders in the gender debate at research and higher education institutions, supporting networking activities between these stakeholders and disseminating information about project activities and results throughout the 30 month project period.The aim was to achieve an international network of experts from all relevant stakeholder bodies by the end of the project which can be sustained after the completion of the project. A brand was created for the project including the development and dissemination of a project flyer in English which was used for national promotion purposes. The flyer was available in both printed and electronic versions. The flyer was the main information document for inviting stakeholders to join the individual task forces as well as being actively disseminated in existing networks.
An interactive website was designed and implemented. It transported information about the project and the partners, included project progress updates and complementary studies, events, statistics etc. that would be useful to a broad community. The website was updated regularly to keep it dynamic and all partners had access to the internal system in order to submit regular updates. A major element of the website was the interactive and searchable database of good practices.
1. The project partners interacted with other EU projects, European Commission institutions, the European Parliament as well as relevant stakeholders at the regional and national level.
2. The European GENDERA conferencetook place towards the end of the project. It offered a platform for networking, exchange of good/best practice in gender equality in research and was visited by relevant stakeholders including task force members, representatives from European bodies including the European Commission, the European Parliament, from Europe as well as experts from outside of Europe.
3. At the end of the dialogue after 30 months, a policy brief with recommendations from the project was created and disseminated to policy makers and stakeholders.
Project Results:
The main results of the survey of good practices on the promotion of gender balance in research and higher education institutions.
• In terms of products, the online database and the synthesis report are the main results.
• Relating to the content of the work package, a first result was to change the term ’best practice’ as used in the proposal to ’good practice’. This change was committed by all GENDERA partners as the collected initiatives have potential for further improvement. So using ’good practices’ as term in the database was seen better fitting.
• Looking for the factors of success, we could identify different framework conditions that are needed to make an initiative successful. They reach from overcoming a lack of awareness and lacks of commitment. Other relevant resources are gender expertise and experiences and overcoming possiblebureaucracy and inefficiencies.
Doing this final topical review on the outcomes of the WP in our scientific paper, we argue that not just the quantity of initiatives is important, but also the quality in terms of implementation, is important for more gender equality. The need to put more attention on the process of implementation is an import result of the analysis on the good practices in our database. It is necessary to overcome existing barriers and find strategies to deal with existing limitations in each specific context.
The third work package focused on the development of national dialogues with top-level policy/decision makers, leaders and research administrators of research institutions, higher education organisations and other relevant key players. The main results are the following:
• Development of instructions and timetable for forming Task Forces
• Initial database on the potential Task Force members
• Establishment of the Task Forces in 9 countries – name of Task Force members and the mission statement of the Task Forces are available on the project website
• Report on the establishment of Task Forces (D3.1)
• Discussions and meetings with the Task Force members
• Identification of the relevant topics to be covered in the GENDERA national workshop
• Development of the GENDERA national workshop program
• Establishment of the list of potential workshop participants
• Organization of the national workshops – title, location, program made available at the project website
• Shaping of the recommendations for the national action plan
• Report on the national workshops and the action plans (D3.2)
The project partners have developed instructions/criteria for forming the Task Force. This was followed by identifying the main players and establishing the national Task Forces during the first months of the project. Each project partner has prepared the invitation letter for the national Task Force based on the common structure. The letters were sent to the identified main players in their national language. Each partner has proposed a framework of collaboration with the Task Force Members in their country indicating a plan of activities. Each partner has also prepared an excel file with the contact details of all the invited key players.
GENDERA Task Force was formed for each of the countries, the number of the Task Force members per country as reported for D3.1 is the following: Hungary 17, Spain 10, Greece 6, Slovenia 12, Slovak Republic 8, Austria 20, Germany 20, Italy 19, Israel 12. These numbers may have changed during the duration of the project.
The partners have organized at least one meeting (in most cases a face-to-face meeting) during the first year of the project. The National Task force meetings focused on discussing: factors that limit the participation of women in research (specific disciplines, decision-making positions); best practices on gender balance; arguments supporting the importance of gender balance; European policies and documents. The partners have managed to achieve impressive profiles of their National Task Forces, involving the major players in their countries. In several cases, the discussions inside National Task Force and suggestions provided contributed to the content of the national additions to GENDERA guidelines.
Most partners have involved the established national Task Force members in shaping the workshop program inviting them to take an active role in the workshop and contribute to writing the national recommendations. In Hungary the national Task Force approved the National Recommendations for an action plan supporting scientific life (published after the event in 300 copies). Similarly in Slovakia, the Task Force agreed on the text to be included in the National Recommendations for Action. In Israel, the Task Force proved most important for dissemination and reaching decision makers, but it was hardly instrumental in setting up events and reaching a joint decision about the action plan.
All the Project partners have organized their national events, with the corresponding program of the events being publicly announced and available at the GENDERA Web site. As agreed, due to specificity of each country, the National events were all shaped around the same theme on gender equality, GENDERA synthesis report and good practices, and at the same time had different emphases adjusted to the national needs. All the partners were aiming at increasing awareness on the importance of gender balance in science and research by involving the main players in debate on the national level. At the same time, due to national specifics, the partner differ in deciding whom to involve in the debate, what topics were emphasized and in selecting and attracting the target audience for the national workshop. The specific topics include rethink the challenges and find new forms of interventions towards gender equality in R & D in Austria; reconsidering working cultures in German public research organizations and industry research; strengthening collaboration with statistics office in Greece to support development of statistics and indicators on gender equality in research; gender balance as a criterion in evaluation of research institutions in Israel; integrating the gender dimension into Spanish scientific and technical research content. In addition, Slovenian and Slovak workshops included balancing between national and international dimension via topic and the presentation language.
Slovenian http://videolectures.net/genderaworkshop2011_ljubljana/ and Greek http://ekt.gr/news/events/ekt/2011-11-23/index.html workshops were video recorded and the material is publicly available.
The national workshops were also an excellent opportunity for presenting good practices for the improvement of gender balance based on the GENDERA Synthesis Report and good practice database prepared in WP2. Furthermore, the workshops provided a good opportunity for discussing the main national problems related to gender equality in research and shaping recommendations to improve the national situation of gender balance in research positions. The recommendations for action plan are provided in each national activity report in addition to the report on national workshop (included in this document).
In addition to general discussion, the Slovak workshop included discussion on gender pay gap in academia with good practices from Finland, Austria, Czech Republic and presentation of the Slovak situation. This was accompanied by recognizing the need for raising awareness on gender equality as many in decision making positions are under the impression that there are no such issues in their research institutions. It is worth mentioning that Slovak committee for equal opportunities at Ministry of Labor is establishing a Women in Science group.
The target groups of the workshops were mainly organisational and institutional representatives who play a key role in science, technology and innovation policy, high level representatives from universities, research organizations, government and ministries. For Spain these include those responsible for the R & D National Plan, regional government plans, specialists in integrating the gender perspective into science and the Spanish scientific community in general. For Germany the main target group were representatives from the diversity and gender equality offices, as well as management level people in research – from public and private bodies. Italy focused on two target groups: research organisations and higher education organizations.
The majority of the workshop participants and speakers in all addressed countries were women. For instance, in Hungary out of 20 participants there was one male speaker. Slovakia had 70 registered participants with only three men present at the conference, and none of them as a speaker. Slovenia had 10% male participants at the workshop including one of the speakers. Italy had four male speakers but no additional man in the audience. In Israel, the two organized workshops had a total of 34 women and six men, one of the speakers was a man. In Austria two out of eight speakers were men, while in the audience a few more men were present.
In addition, all the partners contributed to GENDERA deliverable D3.2 by writing their National action plan with recommendations and the report on the organized GENDERA national events. Recommendations for Austria point out that a number of equality measures have been already implemented differentiated by duration, target group, career stage. This led to an increasing share of women in research, stronger than the general rise of research employment in Austria. Nevertheless, equality targets have not been achieved yet, especially women in leading positions are still very rare in R &; D institutions in Austria. It is recommended to consider changing the organizational culture in research institutions including a better work-life-balance and to implement focused governance on equality in R & D (organizational change has to happen on the mesolevel, in the different research institutions). In reaction to the national GENDERA workshop, taskforce members are now invited to a workshop at the Austrian Research Council to discuss how to develop science further. Moreover, the recommendations are to be submitted to a working group preparing the future Austrian technology and innovation strategy. Similarly as in Austria, in Germany the impression is that everyone is doing a lot for gender equality but the results are limited. Thus the recommendations discuss a challenge for a country with too many good practices and specifically a need for reconsidering working culture. Most of research and company environments still use the same traditional working cultures including the usual time and place for organizing meetings and making important decisions, measuring excellence, etc. The Spanish recommendations point out importance of three levels for overall gender equality strategy: presence of women, practices and processes and gender dimension in research content. The last one was selected as a focus of the Spanish national workshop working towards shaping a manifesto of the strategy to follow for integrating gender dimension into research contents. Recommendations for Slovenia point out that implementation of gender equality policies in research organizations in Slovenian has expended from basic and general towards spread, different and more specific issues related to institutional, mostly hidden discrimination. While equal opportunity in research for reaching higher positions was addressed with different measures, it still remains the area that needs more efforts. In addition, there is still a need for increasing the sensitivity to gender inequality at the level of academic institutions and to inform those occupying higher positions. Some good practices have been established in Slovenia, including Slovenian ministries appointing coordinators for equal opportunities. It is recommended to organize regular trainings for the appointed coordinators and ensure regular reporting on their activities. Slovenia would also benefit from coordinated and precise implementation of gender equality policies tailored to different micro-environments. Promotion of science and in particular women in science remains one of the priorities. This became even more evident from screening results of Slovenian Institute for Market and Media research in September 2011 showing that 90% of Slovenian people were not able to name any Slovenian female scientist! Practical recommendations on creating gender balance in Italy highlight addressing role of stereotypes, gender balance in management, time management and visibility, support for child care responsibility, career planning, promotion and progression, support for return to work. The Greece recommendations are formulated according to conclusions from meetings with the Task Force members and according to the EC report “Stocktaking 10 years of Women in Science policy by the European Commission 1999-2009, 2010”. Recommendations for supporting scientific life in Hungary included recommending cultural, structural, and the needs changes via taking some concrete actions. For instance, it is recommended to establish equality plans and committees, to influence women’s share in scientific life and research management. An example of the recommended cultural changes is a cultural change in the leader positions or implementing measures to increase the interest of high-school girls in a scientific career. The recommended needs change relate to offering a few tools which can help to create a more women friendly research and scientific sphere. The suggested changes are supported by concrete good practice examples applicable in Hungary.
Recommendations for Israel point out the need to monitor, inform, sanction and evaluate. Moreover it is recommended to define standards and manners by which gender mainstreaming in organizations can be measured. Recommendations for Action in Slovakia aim at pointing out at all important challenges in the area of gender equality in academia and research and are rather detailed – mainly because it is the first document of this type ever produced in Slovakia, and it will be the key starting point for the work of the newly created Women and Science group at the Ministry of Labour.
The aim of WP4 was raising the awareness and increasing the knowledge basis of the policy makers about the tools for gender balance policies. The International Gendera Roundtable ''Gender and Research Funding''took place in Bratislava on Tuesday, 18th May 2010. Fifty five participants from eight countries attended the workshop, which addressed the problem of gender equality measures and practices used or not used by funding organisations. Twelve speakers from both European institutions (European Commission and COST) and national funding bodies, research organisations and women’s associations presented interesting and inspiring practices aimed at promoting gender equality in research funding and project evaluation. All the information about the international roundtable and the speakers CVs are available in the project’s website (http://www.gendera.eu/index.php5?file=15).
On September 2010 CIREM presented the final version of the “Practical recommendations for research organisations to lead the change towards gender equality in science and technology” in English, with all comments and recommendations included. Four quotations for the graphic design were collected and finally was selected the best price-quality ratio.All partners translated the “Practical recommendations” from English to each language and prepared two additional pages for each country. Finally 1100 copies were printed in English and 400 for each other language. The main structure of the guidelines was the following:
• Why? Why are there so few women at the top of science? Why is their advancement so slow?
• What? What can an effective equal opportunity strategy do for research organisations?
• How? How can research organisations lead the change?
• Who?
• Some interesting statistics
• Additional national information
WP5 was dealing with communication and networking with relevant stakeholders and media at the European level. The project kick-off meeting served as the perfect opportunity to discuss the important issue of project branding with all the partners. The work package leader took the opportunity to discuss the elements of what the branding should include, how the branding can be used and to collect ideas from each of the partners. Work on the project logo, as the basic element from which the branding would be developed, commenced straight after the project meeting and the logo was designed and finalised by mid-December. At the same time work progressed on defining the text for the leaflet. All partners were included in the discussion providing invaluable input to the final text. This was particularly important as the flyer was to be used in all countries represented in the GENDERA project and therefore needed to include a text which was relevant to all countries, taking into consideration the status of the debate on gender equality in research in individual countries. The leaflet was finalised and printed and partners began disseminating it to the national stakeholders as well as at events and in their own organisations. The leaflet was sent to all partners for dissemination and used throughout the project’s duration. Some partners chose to use the template and translate the leaflet into the local language in order to facilitate the acquisition of task force members (who may or may not speak English). The leaflet also served later as the basis for developing a project poster which was then presented at several events.
Based on the project branding and the experience of the Work Package Leader, the interactive and dynamic project website was designed, developed and launched during the first project period. The technical staff worked closely with the communication staff to create a stable, interactive and logical web platform with English as the standard language. Much effort was put into the architecture of the website, in particular in relation to the good practice database. The database was created in a very fruitful collaboration with the work package leader of Work Package 2 (Definition and identification of good practices on gender balance in science and research). The final result is of high quality and is also very user friendly and sustainable. The website was created with different levels of user in mind:
• Read only: most of the content was made available to the public who were unable to add content themselves
• Partner access: each partner (numerous users per partner were possible) received a user name and password and received access to specific pages of the website including the pages for submitting new good practices for evaluation and finalisation before publishing as well as for adding announcements, studies, events, calls for speakers/posters to the “News” section, either for their own activities or those that they learnt about from their partner networks.
• Special partner access: in addition to the standard partner access, the Work Package 2 Leader 2 had a special status which allowed them to publish the evaluated good practices.
• Administrator access: the Work Package Leader had access to all areas and pages of the website and was able to create new pages and contents as required by the project partners and the evolving activities. New pages were added for example as an overview of the national workshops in each country and also as the main information portal of the European conference. The website actively interlinks with the website of Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum which meant that the online registration to the conference could take place without installing a new tool. The admin access also meant that large documents which needed to be accessed by all partners but which were a challenge to send by e-mail could be placed on the website for each partner to download.
The website had been used as a major platform for disseminating project progress and results and project events (national workshops, final conference, and publication of the electronic versions of the guidelines in 9 languages) and information on other important related events and publications. It had been updated regularly throughout.
The partners originally planned to host its own discussion forum on the GENDERA website. However, after many discussions between partners and between partners and their task force members, the consortium came to the conclusion that it would be more effective and sustainable to use a social network that is already implemented and has thousands of users with relevant groups rather than to invest heavily in a platform which would only be available short-term and would not have an immediate audience. Many of those with whom the issue was discussed mentioned that their host organisations do not allow the use of any social network on work computers. The platform selected by the consortium was LinkedIn. It was selected as it is used by more professionals (than Facebook) and is more internationally known (than e.g. Xing). The coordinator created a GENDERA group and the partners that are able to use the social network each created a sub-group for its country.
The regional, national and international networking was a further objective of WP5 in which it was foreseen that the partners interact with other EU projects, European Commission institutions, the European Parliament as well as relevant stakeholders at the regional and national level. The partners have had continuous opportunities to network throughout the project with each project activity offering the chance to network at different levels:
• Regional and national level: Good practices of gender in research. The partners contacted a broad range of organisations and in order to achieve a good practice, disseminated detailed information about the project and the issues and had in-depth exchange with each organisation to finalise a good practice.
• Regional and national level: Establishment and continuation of the task force (in WP2). In order to establish task forces, each partner contacted a broad range of stakeholders nationally and partly regionally. Some of those contacted joint the project as task force members, others were contacted throughout the project to just be informed about project progress.
• Regional/national and international level: the national workshops organised in each partner country (in WP3) offered the opportunity for the dissemination of information at regional, national and partly international level. Some workshops offered presentations by good practices or by task force members from other GENDERA countries or countries even not involved in the GENDERA project.
• Regional/national/international level: the guidelines produced by all partners (in WP4) in a total of 9 languages (the 8 partner languages and English) are available both in print and electronically from the website. All partners have disseminated the version in their own language regionally and nationally. The English version has been disseminated in advance of the conference to Members of the European Parliament and members of other important stakeholder networks.
• Regional/national/international level: the European conference (organised within WP5) offered members countries of the GENDERA project as well as other countries not involved in GENDERA to network with each other. This included speakers from Ireland, the Nordic Countries, Turkey and the United States of America.
• Regional/national/international level: The partners have all been invited to participate or speak at conferences organised by others or have taken part in TV, radio or press interviews disseminating information about gender equality in research. Through these additional activities, the partners have broadly disseminated information about the project and the national situations.
Quantifiable results are that, GENDERA has:
• Sent more than 170 invitations to stakeholders in 9 countries to engage within task force activities
• Organised more than 25 task force meetings
• Organised 12 national workshops with other 270 participants.
The European conference which took place in Month 29 of the project was final dissemination highlight. The high-level conference was organised with 29 speakers from 16 countries and a total of 116 participants from 23 countries. It offered a platform for networking, the exchange of good/best practice in gender equality in research between relevant stakeholders including task force members, representatives from European bodies including the European Commission, the European Parliament, European Platform of Women Scientists, European Centre for Women and Technology from Europe as well as experts from outside of Europe. The organisers were pleased that nearly 15% of participants were male.
All activities have been additionally accompanied by the publication of press releases, articles etc. regarding the main project outcomes and results.
The final public document that was created by the GENDERA project was the Policy Brief completed in month 30. The clear, concise and short document will be used by partners (after approval by the European Commission) to stimulate future discussions even after the project’s conclusion.
Potential Impact:
An impact during the GENDERA working period in the while collecting good practices and creating the database was that all partners could learn from experiences in the other countries and by that, stimulate their national discourse on the implementation of gender equality in research organizations. We notice in our own work on gender equality implementation that good practices are always relevant and useful, especially when new ’gender-agents’ enter the scene, when more and more institutions try to improve the situation and are happy to learn from others’ experiences.
WP3 has three main lines of potential impact, following the work package tasks. One relates to forming National Task Force by each partner, where the potential impact is via the Task Force Members that were informed on the GENDERA activities and collaborated in some of them. As the members were selected mainly as decision making representatives of government and academia, we expect that their involvement with GENDERA not only contributed to the quality and dissemination of the project results but also to raising awareness during and after the project via professional and personal communication of the Task force Members.
The second line of potential impact relates to the organization of national events presenting GEDENRA related content and attracting various participants. The events were also widely promoted on national level, in two cases the event was also video recorded with the recordings made publicly available from the GENDERA website. Specific dissemination activities of WP3 relate to the national event organization, what follows is the list of the organized events.
24. April 2012 German National Workshop, Zukünftige Arbeitswelten - eine Chance für mehr Diversity in den Chefetagen?, Literaturhaus, Stuttgart
12. April 2012 Spanish National Workshop, Barcelona
24. January 2012 Israeli National Workshop, GENDERA - From recommendations to action: gender balance as a criterion in evaluation of research institutes and academia, Open University, Raanana
18. January 2012 Israeli National Workshop, GENDERA - From recommendations to action: gender balance as a criterion in evaluation of research institutes and academia, Ort Braude College, Karmiel
12. December 2011 Slovenian National Workshop, Encouraging gender equality policy, Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana
30. November 2011 Austrian National Workshop, Marathon, km 15
Die nächste Etappe für mehr Chancengleichheit in FE Tech Gate Vienna.
23. November 2011 Greek National Workshop, Gender Equality in Greece: Challenges and Recommendations, National Hellenic Research Foundation
25. October 2011 Hungarian National Workshop, Situation and possibilities of women researchers in the European Research Area, Budapest Business School, Markó u. 29-31
29/30 September 2011 Slovakian Conference, Women in the Slovak / European Higher Education and Research Areas
11. October 2010 Italian National Workshop, Donne e Scienza, Il Caso Italiano
The third line of potential impact relates to the national action plan with recommendations that each partner has provided. The recommendations were shaped based on the discussions with the Task Force Members during the project, the discussions at the GENDERA national events, and in many cases the recommendations were also discussed at the national event. Furthermore, the partners have distributed the recommendations in some form at the national level.
When looking back to the overall activities related to establishing and sustaining the national task force, shaping and organizing the workshop and writing the recommendations, most of the countries report on difficulties while establishing the task force and sustaining the activity. In particular, in Hungary the hardest part was to establish and sustain the task force, because even though the person was interested to contribute in the group, their organization sometimes did not allow them to be a delegate of the institute. The frequent change of the government and the changing of responsible persons was also a barrier to sustain the Task Force. This is issue is hot potato in Hungary so we have to be gentle in raising this issue to the decision making level. Establishing and sustaining the Slovenian task force was rather demanding, but not as demanding as shaping and organizing the workshop and getting the participants. On the other hand, once we managed to have sufficient involvement of the task force members and the workshop was organized, creating and writing the recommendations was a natural follow up and run smoothly. Both Italy and Isreael report on struggling with time constraints of the task force members for sustaining the task force activity and ensuring their participation in the workshop. This we attribute mainly to other commitments of the selection of individuals of high position and responsible occupations. In Germany, the hardest bit was to understand and accept the different sensitivities among the German stakeholders. Given the competences and longstanding experience many of them have, it was not easy to chair a discussion. Several partners report on ensuring the workshop participation being challenging. Dissemination of the event to get high level experts on gender and science involved in the Spanish workshop (as speakers or participants) was experienced as a difficult task. Similarly, motivating people to participate in the Austrian workshop was difficult, despite the highly known speakers delivering interesting and provocative topics. We attribute that to a certain level of saturation on gender balance activities in these countries. An exception is Slovakia, where the most difficult part was the preparation and agreement on the text of the recommendations.
The main WP4’s dissemination activities carried out by the project partners were the following. Dissemination of the GENDERA guidelines in Italy via APRE’s monthly newsletter, website, weekly alert, and among APRE’s members and database.The Guidelines have been distributed in Spain through CIREM’s website and national contacts.GENDERA materials were also distributed at several national events as follows:
• Gender and ethics in research in science and technology workshop organized by the Directorate for Equality of theUniversity of the Basque Country (UPV / EHU). The seminar was held on the 23rd of September in the Vice-Chancellor’s Office of the UPV / EHU in Leioa (Vizcaya).
• National workshop on Scientific Innovations and the Gender Perspective, held on the 12-13th April 2012 in Madrid.
The guidelines have been distributed to all Austrian Task Force Members. The Project Leaflet and the Guidelines had been distributed at a FEMtech Networking Event on the 29th of November 2010. Around 80 to 100 copies were distributed each. The guidelines were made available for download on: http://www.femtech.at/index.php?id=144. The guidelines were sent together with the invitation to the whole Austrian technology and innovation scene. The guidelines had also been distributed at different conferences in Austria as well as internationally at the conference “Gender Paradoxes in Changing Academic and Scientific Organisation(s) on 20-21th October 2011 in Örebro, Sweden and also at other various events in the Austrian research landscape, at the national workshop, when talking to national stakeholders.
The Slovenian partner has promoted the project distributing GENDERA flyer and guidelines at the meeting of National Network for promoting research values for youth.JSI has promoted the project distributing GENDERA flyer, guidelines and giving a project presentation at the National Workshop on December 12th, 2012. GENDERA materials were also distributed at several national events as follows:
• 24.1.2012 we presented GENDERA project and hand out the project leaflet and guidelines at the event on promoting women in science organised by Slovenian national project SM-RIS. There were approximately 20 people, mainly students, teachers and mentors.
• 20.2. 2012 we send out 127 invitations for the GENDERA Conference by mail, attached was the conference program.
• 27.3. 2012 we presented GENDERA project and hand out the project leaflet and guidelines at the event on promoting women in science organised by Slovenian national project SM-RIS. There were approximately 20 people, mainly students and some teachers.
• 11.4.2012 we presented GENDERA project and the results reported in D3.2 at the consultation/conference on Women on leading positions in higher education in Slovenia organized by Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts. There were approximately 40 participants, mainly from researcher and academia, but also some from government and general public.
Partners from Greec and Israel disseminated the guidelines at the workshops. The GENDERA materials – Guideline - in Hungary had been disseminated continuously at all meetings, events related to the women and science issue.
The guidelines were regularly disseminated in Germany at SEZ events for industry, SMEs and universities. SEZ is the EU-Contact Point for Universities in Baden-Württemberg and the Director, Prof. Norbert Höptner (who is also the European Commissioner to the Minister of Economics of Baden-Württemberg) also takes copies of the guidelines to relevant meetings with important stakeholders in the region.
In Slovakia the guidelines were distributed to various stakeholders: sent to rectors of all Slovak universities, institutes of Slovak Academy of Sciences, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family; disseminated at the national conference.
The work package of dissemination at national and European level has made a contribution to achieving socio-economic impact to different extents within the partner regions. The starting point for each of the partners was different, although similarities between groups of countries can be found (these are well documented in the relevant deliverable reports submitted in the course of the project). Most importantly each country had the opportunity through the project to contact and build networks with the relevant players in their country/region to start effecting change in mindset and practice. With partners organising a whole range of events and meetings (within the other work packages), each of which having to be communicated externally, WP5 has been a central element for ensuring the project’s success. The tools used for dissemination were tailored to meet the requirements of the target groups, ranging from scientific papers and synthesis reports to the guidelines produced in nine languages which were written in a more normal language, understandable to the general public. This makes a contribution to the project having a wider societal implication on the general public at large. Another example of a wider societal implication is that the final conference was offered via different channels to a wide audience of organisations and people who may not typically be involved in gender issues, i.e. invitation by general newsletters (i.e. we did not just invite women networks for women scientists or the gender equality offices of universities). Even if those people did not attend, they have received information about current issues surrounding gender equality and the fact they are missing out on well-qualified staff if they do not actively integrate women in the working teams. The policy brief finalised at the end of the project will be used in the coming months as a concise and powerful overview of the project’s findings.
The project created and disseminated progress in many ways throughout the project’s lifecycle. As a result there was a continual flow of exchange between an individual partner and an external audience. Main dissemination activities include the design of an easily recognisable logo which was used for all communication about the project, i.e. on the information flyer, the poster, the website, the guidelines, the conference invitation, the reports within and outside the consortium. Due to the project’s structure, events have scheduled over the past 24 months of the project which have all been disseminated to a mixture of stakeholders. This begins with the creation of the national task forces in each country (where invitations were issued to a well-defined group of stakeholders with an interest in the topic) to the organisation of the international roundtable in Bratislava to the individual national workshops organised in each country to the final European conference organised in Stuttgart. Another main source of dissemination was the internet, with the project not only offering its own website but also interlinking with other websites, i.e. the websites of each host organisation, swapping links with other closely connected projects, the internationally established social network platform “LinkedIn”. Partners have also actively engaged with the media and have not only produced their own news releases (i.e. project launch, launch of the good practice database, event launches), but have had articles published in the popular press, target group media and scientific papers. The project was also featured in a video for the Euronews Webchannel (http://www.euronews.com/2012/03/07/breaking-science-s-gender-barrier/).
With the project now closed, all the partners know that they have created tools throughout the project that can continue to be used in order to further call and effect change in the regions. The results for exploitation include the website and the good practice database which will remain online for at least one year after the project end date. The internet platform offers a perfect opportunity for referencing the findings of the project. It includes the guidelines in nine languages which can be downloaded as long as the website is online by anyone that is interested in finding out what to expect (support and challenges) when trying to implement change in their (research) organisation. The searchable database is also a highlight that will remain valuable as tangible examples can assist those considering implementing a programme or projecting in their institution. The policy brief finalised at the end of the project takes into consideration the experience made within the different partners in different regions of Europe and can be used in future discussions surrounding research policy in Europe by any stakeholder.
List of Websites:
www.gendera.eu