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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EQUAL-IST (Gender Equality Plans for Information Sciences and Technology Research Institutions)

Teaser

Summary

It has been demonstrated that Information Sciences and Technology (IST) is among the research sectors most affected by gender inequalities at all levels. For addressing and solving issues of horizontal and vertical segregation in research and administrative careers, work-life balance, gender imbalance in student enrollment, and gender neutral/blind approach to IST research, the EQUAL-IST project is aimed at influencing organizational structures, discourses, and behaviours.

EQUAL-IST kicked off during June 2016 as a challenging 36 months project, involving 9 project partners, 8 universities from 7 countries, with the goal to design and implement Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) for IST Research Institutions. The main objectives of the project include a) setting up of the scene for the implementation of structural changes in the involves IST research institution towards the promotion of gender equality, b) the enhancement of gender equality at those involved research institutions through the design and implementation of tailored GEPs containing specific measures (activities/practices/interventions) to address gender imbalance, c) the monitoring and assessment of the results of GEPs implementation by refining the gender equality measures and ensuring their effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability and d) boost of gender equality in research organisations at national and international level.

Work performed

During the first reporting period, 6 Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) designed using the robust approach and methodology of the project. The consortium followed a process of different research activities starting by a State-of-the-Art analysis to investigate the situation at other research institutions and result in good practices, while in parallel the partner RPOs organized the groups of people to be involved in the process impacting gender equality operations, called GEPs Working Groups and they also investigated the national policy framework for gender equality in their countries resulted in the so called National mini reports. This in-depth investigation of best practices in combination with the gender related policy framework facilitated the transition to the next important phase of the project, which was the development of a Gender Audit methodology and its implementation to analyse the status of gender equality at each involved RPO. For this, two Capacity Building Sessions were organised presenting the methodological guidelines for internal gender audit within IST research organizations, and facilitating their adoption and customization by the EQUAL-IST RPOs.

As an initial step towards the design of GEPs, a thorough assessment of the internal state of the art was to be conducted by using a participatory auditing method. Î¤he 6 RPOs proceeded, from February until end of April 2017 to implement Participatory Gender Audits at their organizations. The gender audits were conducted to get a complete picture based on existing available data of the internal situation of gender (in)equality in each IST/ICT Department Faculty and to start with a first round of internal consultations by way of an audit both with research purposes (collect information and assess perceptions, beliefs, resistances) and with action oriented goals (initiate a consensus building process about the more urgent challenges to be tackled, stimulate bottom up participation in collecting and discussing proposals, ideas and solutions) in view of the next step of crowdsourcing GEPsâ€™ designed via the CrowdEquality platform.

The robust approach of the EQUAL-IST project involved the development and use of a crowdsourcing platform â€œCrowdEqualityâ€. The rationale behind the crowdsourcing exercise was to collect ideas and trigger interesting discussions about the emerging challenges that were identified at each partner RPO during the internal audits. CrowdEquality facilitated the participatory co-design of tailored GEPs for each of the participating RPOs, but also strived to be an inclusive community that empowers men and women all over the world to freely discuss the issues of gender equality at research institutions. Each partner RPO had a dedicated anonymised space at the platform, where they could upload their internal challenges and start interesting discussions.

The crowdsourcing process followed the Ideation, Review, Voting, and Implementation phases.
The Ideation phase was to brainstorm and discuss all possible ideas addressing the identified challenges, while the Review phase facilitated an internal process at each RPO, where the GEP Working Group Members discussed the identified challenges and ideas with the top management level of their department/university to select the ideas for the Voting Phase. The Voting phase was to identify the winning ideas that were considered for inclusion in the GEPs to be further implemented in practice. The winning ideas were identified by upvoting or downvoting the ideas pre-selected in the Reviewing phase. The Implementation phase was to preserve information about the winning ideas for each challenge. The involved stakeholders at each university/research institution have the opportunity of posting updates about the implementation of the winning ideas or sharing experience. During the crowdsourcing exercise 57 challenges were revealed, 111 ideas were introduced as solutions to the identified challenges and more than 4

Final results

EQUAL-IST is moving beyond the state of the art with its robust approach of participatory co-design of GEPs. The added value is to deliver new knowledge at fostering permanent institutional changes through the design and implementation of GEPs. The project will contribute to the achievement of ERA objectives by involving more female researchers helping to the advancement of their careers, involving them in decision making and governance structures, improving their working conditions and attracting more women in the IST sector. In particular, EQUAL-IST targets at a wider societal impact by increasing the number of RPOs and RFOs implementing GEPs as well as in the long term the number of female researchers advancing their careers mobility, and, consequently, their research intensity, by improving the social value of innovations integrating the gender dimension in research programmes and content.

The project sustainable approach tries to identify the potential benefit of the produced results for the targeted stakeholders which consists of many different key players including RPOs, RFOs, gender experts, research centers, policy makers, etc. The toolkits, guidelines, and methodologies developed during the EQUAL-IST project and the lessons learned will be disseminated in Europe and other CIS countries.