Our conference Towards New Horizons is over. Read an opening word from the Project Coordinator

Dear colleagues and friends,

For the past four years I have had the honour to work in GENDERACTIONplus with amazing colleagues to coordinate and enhance inclusive gender equality policies in European Research and Innovation through the work of our incredibly motivated Communities of Practice of national authorities and research funding organisations. Today, we are meeting to celebrate what we have achieved together, and what our consortium members have achieved in their national and organizational settings.

This entire time, we have worked in an unprecedented period of positive policy development.

This was the time that the issue of gender-based violence started to be addressed at the policy level for the first time, with Czech Presidency kicking off the new ERA Policy Agenda in 2022 with a conference on ending gender-based violence, followed by the Spanish presidency the year after, and the Zero Tolerance Code of Conduct adopted by the ERA Forum subgroup on gender equality last fall. At member state level, too, we have seen the adoption of robust policies as well as more ad hoc actions. And it was the first time that European Research Funders in our Community started exploring the responsibility they have in tackling gender-based violence.

This was also the time that the European Commission introduced Gender Equality Plans as an eligibility criterion in Horizon Europe, and more than half of the member states came to have a GEP eligibility criterion of their own. Some countries moved to monitoring GEPs and we in GENDERACTIONplus have developed tools to guide and coordinate monitoring and evaluation of Gender Equality Plans by national authorities.

This was the time that the concept of intersectionality as an analytical tool entered policy documents and a policy consensus has been built on the need to move toward gender+ approaches and inclusiveness, with our policy coordination efforts focused on increasing the conceptual clarity and building a policy discourse around the concept.

What made these past four years unprecedented was the political alignment between the Commission, Member States, Research Funders as well as higher education and research organisations and their umbrella organisations. Things can move forward when these different actors act in alignment – when we have a broad understanding of our joint endeavour, when we have a policy platform to work together, support each other and learn from each other, when we have leadership that takes the baton and forges forward. The 2021 Ljubljana Declaration and the Horizon Europe GEP eligibility criterion are a testament to this.

The wins are tangible, and they have required a lot of sustained effort that goes back to 2012 when gender equality became a priority in the European Research Area and managed to transition as a priority to the new period of ERA implementation from 2020 onward. We are in the thirteenth year of gender equality in Research and Innovation being a political priority and this also puts into perspective the speed of change.

Our GENDERACTIONplus benchmarks make crystal clear what a long way we still have to go.

The policy area of inclusion and intersectionality is at an initial phase of development, there is a lack of research and disaggregated data at national and European levels and our approach to overlapping grounds of inequality continues to be additive rather than intersectional.

Conceptual confusion, inconsistencies and contradictions persist in policies and among the relevant actors (Wroblewski, 2024). This is visible in relation to the notions of intersectionality and inclusiveness (Holt Zachariassen et al., 2023) and the gender dimension in research and innovation, which continues to be confused with gender balance in research teams (Rogg Kosvik et al. 2023).

In relation to Gender Equality Plans, there is a lack of consistent monitoring and evaluation at national and EU levels, and we currently lack the basis on which to assess the long-term impact of gender equality actions and thus ensure the sustainability of GEPs.

Critically, the policy progress outlined above is undercut by the elimination of monitoring of ERA Action implementation at the national level (Wroblewski, 2024).

Forms of resistance to inclusive gender equality continue to manifest and new ones emerge. For example, the discourse of academic freedoms is deployed to counter the demands for integrating the gender dimension, and university autonomy is used to refuse the adoption of new measures, for example, to counteract GBV and gender equality more broadly.

You could say that we have just gotten started!

The past one month has revealed with painful clarity how volatile the situation is and how fragile gender equality, inclusiveness and diversity wins are. The speed of dismantling hard-won policies that we see in the US is staggering.

In Europe we are now coming to a period of intense negotiation. The current policy cycle is coming to an end and negotiations of the next Framework Programme are underway, in a dramatically changed political landscape in Europe too, with a Commission that does not centre gender equality to the same extent the previous one did, and with a European Parliament with political forces that are keen to undo the past progress. Elections are coming up in several member states where major gains are expected for political forces that actively oppose equality and inclusiveness. The architecture of the Framework Programme as such is under threat.

Competitiveness once again has claimed the policy narrative, together with cutting red tape and simplification.

When this happened in the past, on the transition from FP6 to FP7, this resulted in the elimination of the gender dimension and gender action plans. It also meant a focus on fixing women as if systemic institutional barriers and biases can be tackled by negotiation skills, assertiveness training and childcare facilities staying open until 9 pm.

As we look toward to future, we must focus on preserving what we have but also imagine where we want to lead, and maintain our ambition. This is my vision for today, for us to consider the risk to think boldly forward.

Before we start our programme today I want to extend my thanks:

I want to thank the Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU for the Patronage and our amazing colleague Magdalena Chrobak-Tatara for her incessant support and dedication. It gives me so much hope to have the Polish patronage over an event dedicated to inclusive gender equality.

Huge thanks to GENDERACTIONplus Work package leaders, Heidi Holt Zachariassen on intersectionality and inclusiveness, Fredrik Bondestam on gender based violence, Lydia Gonzales on the inclusive gender analysis, Jennie Rothwell on institutional change through GEPs and Angela Wroblewski on monitoring gender equality policy in the ERA.

Together with their teams and task leaders they have generated important insight, exciting tools and policy advice which we will be discussing today and which you can find in your electronic Goodie bags.

Huge thanks to the co-leads of our Communities of Practice, Sophia Ivarsson and Moa Persdotter together with Helene Schiffbanker for the RFO CoP, and Sophia Myers, Liv Baisner Peterson and Molly Occhino on the policy CoP.

Thanks, also, to Elena Simion and her team for supporting our capacity building actions.

Thanks to Maria Hagardt and Helen Garrison for taking care of our stakeholder engagement events and for taking care of the audience engagement today.

Today would be impossible without my colleagues at the Institute of Sociology, Barbora Schneiderova who is taking care of our communication and dissemination, Emmalynn Hansen who engages our stakeholders all around, our project manager Martina Fucimanova who has not only taken care of all the technical details of today but has also taken incredible care of our consortium, and I really want to stress the word care, together with kindness and openness.

OK.

Let’s enjoy each other’s company today, let’s get nourished, let’s get motivated, let’s get equipped with insights.

Thank you to all of your for joining us, and let us get started.

More information about our final event will be provided soon.