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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CHANGE (CHAlleNging Gender (In)Equality in science and research)

Teaser

Summary

The project CHANGE â€“ â€˜CHAlleNging Gender (In)Equality in science and researchâ€™ is an implementation project aiming at gender equality in science and research. Many â€œgender in scienceâ€-research projects in the past finished with stating current gender in-equalities, naming several barriers for womenâ€™s careers, and giving recommendations for gender equality in science and research. Due to knowledge-to-action gaps, respectively research-to practice-gaps, these recommendations were too seldom put into action. Above these translation gaps and the politics of feminist knowledge transfer and power issues led to a situation where gender equality often stay nice words on a website, but the real problems have not been tackled in many academic and research performing organisations (RPOs) as well as in research funding organisations (RFOs). Although gender experts and scholars have provided enough evidence and knowledge, we are still lacking strategies to translate this knowledge in an appropriate way for relevant stakeholders and to put this knowledge into practice.
CHANGE aims at tackling these two major problems in the following ways:
First, the knowledge-to-action gap will be closed by integrating relevant actors and stakeholders from the beginning to co-produce gender equality knowledge together in order to generate practical knowledge which is relevant for and will be accessible by the respective actors in RPOs andresearch funding organisations (RFOs).
Second, power issues (â€œthe politicsâ€) of the feminist knowledge transfer will be tackled by integrating so called transfer agents (TAs), and later also more stakeholders of RPOs and RFOs in the project consortium and build regional communities of practices (CoPs). The TA-concept of has been tested in a former EU-FP-7-project (GenderTime) as relevant institutional actors who are committed to gender equality and structural change and most importantly have a certain authority within their organisation. The idea of co-producing knowledge and building CoPs has been tested in other knowledge brokerage and RRI projects and has proven as a very successful strategy to enable structural changes. CHANGE is combining these specific approaches.

Work performed

At the given point in time CHANGE is in its second project year. As a basis for the development of tailor-made GEPs, all implementing partners conducted an exploration of the current state of the art by doing institutional gender benchmarking in order to analyse the situation of women and structural barriers in their organisations. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to gain an overview on existing gender discrimination. In addition, the most important decision making processes and bodies in the organisations were analysed in regard to their gender composition. This gender benchmarking will also provide a baseline for evaluating the impact of CHANGE.
Based on the results of these gender benchmarking, partners started to plan short-, middle- and long-term actions for their GEPs, and already implemented quick actions. For instance, awareness raising seminars and gender trainings were organised, brown bag meetings were introduced, surveys were launched, and informal gatherings were initiated. The implementation of middle- and long-term actions was started only recently, and related activities are at still at an early stage.
On a national and regional level all partners started connecting and networking with relevant key players and practitioners in the field of gender equality in science and research, which it is a first step towards the establishment of Communities of Practice, which are going to represent one of the sustainable project outputs.
As knowledge co-production and mutual learning is an essential issue within CHANGE, three knowledge co-production workshops were implemented, which involved the CHANGE consortium in knowledge exchange activities. One of these workshops engaged also members from the CHANGE International Advisory Board, and the CHANGE transfer agents to discuss the results from gender benchmarking and to plan activities for the GEPs.
The CHANGÃˆ team was very active during the first 18 months in regard to implementing a magnitude of various dissemination and communication activities, which reached from stakeholder meetings to joint workshops with EC-funded \'sister projects\' to meetings at the national Ministry and a science broadcast on National Radio. Stakeholder Mappings were carried out right from the project beginning in order to address relevant stakeholders in an appropriate way, and to plan communication and engagement activities most efficiently.

Final results

The main aim of CHANGE is to support research performing organisations (RPOs) to design and implement gender equality plans. This will be achieved by involving TAs from each partner organisation, who will together with the core consortium partners transfer co-produced gender equality knowledge within their institutions. This innovative approach will ensure the promotion and sustainable institutionalisation of the gender equality action plans (GEPs) beyond the project duration. Furthermore, through mutual learning and networking CHANGE will enable partners to become resource centres skilled to provide gender equality knowledge and expertise to other RPOs and also RFOs. With this co-production of knowledge approach and by building communities of practice among RPOs in each participating region, support and mentorship structures will be established. Regular inclusion and exchange with national and European stakeholders will ensure a spill-over effect of CHANGE results to other RPOs and RFOs in their respective countries as well as with other ministries in the whole European area.
As one of the results, CHANGE will produce policy papers based on this strategic stakeholder involvement including actual policy makers and relevant stakeholders in the policy paper production. Thereby the project will contribute to closing the research-to-action gap, respectively the theory-to-practice gap. By stimulating institutional cultural change towards gender equal work environments in RPOs, CHANGE contributes to a structural change towards gender equality in the European Research Area. Moreover, CHANGE also aims at strengthening the relevance of gender dimension inclusive research and innovation programmes by addressing the research funding landscape through the engagement of stakeholders from RFOs.