Events

ERA of Inclusive Gender Equality. Conference by GENDERACTIONplus

ERA of Inclusive Gender Equality Keeping the Momentum, Addressing Challenges through Joint Action When: 13 February 2024 | Where: BOSA, Brussels The conference was organised by Horizon Europe GENDERACTIONplus project under the auspices of the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU  Date: 13 February 2024 from 9:00 am CET to 5:00 pm CETVenue: BOSA, WTCIII building, 30 rue Simon Bolivar, 1000 Brussels, Belgium You can find more information in this article. The conference brought together relevant stakeholders to discuss the future priorities for inclusive gender equality in the European Research Area. This has been done against the backdrop of the results of GENDERACTIONplus benchmark studies on gender equality policy implementation in European research, which have identified ongoing challenges and gaps and highlighted advances achieved in recent years. The debates highlighted the need for advancing intersectional and inclusive approaches to gender equality policy, focusing on creating an inclusive research...

GENDERACTIONplus consultation gathers stakeholder insights across Europe on national Gender Equality Plan monitoring guidelines

The EU-funded GENDERACTIONplus project recently hosted its second stakeholder engagement event on 29 November 2023 to gather input and feedback on draft guidelines for establishing Gender Equality Plan (GEP) monitoring systems at the national level. Representatives of national authorities from 14 European countries actively participated in the online consultation, sharing valuable insights, needs and challenges. The event was organised and moderated by VA (Public & Science) as part of its stakeholder engagement work in the project. Developed by partners within the GENDERACTIONplus project, the guidelines aim to provide concrete guidance on how to set up an effective monitoring system at the national authority level to monitor GEP implementation. Incorporating multiple levels of proposed monitoring, they are designed to meet the needs of both Member States and Associated Countries at different stages of national gender equality policy implementation, where GEPs are a mandatory state requirement as well as where they are...

RFOs CoP meeting in Vienna

The RFOs CoP has met twice during the consortium gathering in Vienna. The main purpose of the pre-meeting on 22 April 2023 was to get to know each other and the work of the various RFOs in implementing gender equality in the research and innovation funding process. The main objective of the RFO COP workshop organised following the consortium meeting and mutual learning workshop on intersectionality on 25 April 2023 was to share and scale knowledge and practises between RFO CoP members on intersectionality in the R&I funding process. The workshop was organised by using the NOW, HOW, WOW model. The NOW entailed an introduction and state-of-the-art presentation by Vinnova with the aim to get all members on the same starting point before entering the WOW; this took the form of a workshop in smaller breakout groups to discuss what achievements would be desirable to reach during the project time....

Consortium meeting and MLW on Intersectionality

Between 22 and 24 May, GENDERACTIONplus consortium met in Vienna, Austria, to discuss the work ahead and learn more about intersectionality and what it means at the research and innovation policy level. More than fifty representatives of beneficiaries and associates partners engaged in lively discussions that moved us forward in understanding the issues we face and clarifying mutual expectations. The event took place on the premises of our partner Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF). On 22 May the two communities of practice, one of RFOs and the other of national authorities, meet to discuss the upcoming work and priority topics. On 23 April, after the opening speeches of Roberta Schaller-Steidl from the hosting BMBWF and the project coordinator Marcela Linková, the meeting participants were updated by Heidi Holt Zachariassen (Committee for Gender Balance and Diversity in Research) and Fredrik Bondestam (University of Gothenburg) on the results...

Webinar: Gender Dimension in Research and Innovation (GiRI)

The webinar held online on the 26th of April 2023 was designed for RFO CoP members, but all other GENDERACTIONplus partners were welcome to participate. Members of the policy CoP learned about the challenges of RFOs and become aware of potential support measures.  For years now, the Commission has requested that beneficiaries integrate the sex and gender dimension into research content and innovation (GiRI) in order to increase scientific excellence and innovation. GiRI has become of increasing relevance since it was included as a recommended thematic area in the Gender Equality Plans mandatory for Horizon Europe funding.  By taking gender (and other social dimensions like age, disabilities, ethnical background etc) into account in the production of knowledge and innovation (in research questions, data collection and analysis, prototypes etc) research funding outcomes will be more useful and beneficial to all members of society.  The main aim of this webinar was to...

Webinar: Relevance of a national Gender Equality discourse in R&I

The webinar, part of WP7 capacity building activities, was held online on the 25th of April 2023 and was dedicated to all GENDERACTIONplus consortium members. The aim of the workshop was to discuss the relevance of a national policy discourse for the successful implementation of gender equality policies in R&I. Participants became familiar with what is meant by a gender equality discourse and what are central elements of a gender equality discourse. They became aware of the relevance of a comprehensive national policy discourse for a successful implementation of gender equality policies in R&I at national level. The workshop discussed the need for and advantages of embedding the national gender equality discourse in the European discourse, and the ways in which the EU and national levels can support developments in each. National authorities acknowledge their responsibility for pursuing a national gender equality discourse and build capacities to develop their national...

News from RFOs CoP

On 30 March, more than 20 representatives of our Research Funding Organisation Community of Practice met to exchange experiences from work in the field of gender equality. Apart from the presentation of the webinars and other events now being prepared in the GENDERACTIONplus consortium, a new allied partner to the RFOs CoP, the Malta Council for Science and Technology, was warmly welcomed into the Community. We are sure that it will be a much-appreciated contribution to the CoP! The ongoing work of two Working groups was introduced in the second part of the meeting. Emer Cahill from Irish Research Council explained how to mitigate gender bias in the research and innovation funding process. In her contribution, she presented a detailed list of aspects to be taken into account and concrete examples of interventions from practice. She also emphasized the need to monitor the success of implementing measures. The second block...

Stakeholder & citizen engagement workshop

On 17 January 2023, our consortium partner, Vetenskap & Allmänhet (VA) held an online workshop focused on increasing the robustness and buy-in of the work being undertaken by the project. The 2.5 hours workshop covered the following topics: VA (Public & Science) is a national expert hub for public engagement, citizen science and science communication in Sweden, with many years’ experience of running engagement activities both within EU-funded and national projects. The stakeholder and citizen engagement workshop was part of WP7 Capacity Building activities.

GENDERACTIONplus consortium meeting

In February, we met online and discussed the first findings from the benchmarking study. We were also happy to welcome a new member of our Advisory Board, Agota Dávid. Elin Rekdal Müller from Kilden introduced the upcoming task of creating national impact plans (NIPs). She presented the overall goals of these plans, the timing of the work and the support that will be provided to project partners. Our Austrian colleagues shared their experience with implementing their NIP in the previous GENDERACTION project, which has helped them to successfully implement project recommendations.

RFOs CoP on gender-based violence

The third meeting of the GENDERACTIONplus RFO Community of Practice took place at the end of January 2023. In addition to sharing information on new developments in the field of gender equality in RFOs, the results of the needs assessment were presented, and Fredrik Bondestam from the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Reasearch, the WP3 leader, gave a talk about the role RFOs play in mitigating gender-based violence in academia. One of the results from the need assessment survey is to build capacities on intersectionality, something that the upcoming mutual learning workshop in Vienna in May 2023 will address, questions were posed to the RFO CoP members in the Menti platform about the challenges they have encountered and if they have any best practices to share at the Vienna workshop. In the second part of the CoP meeting, Fredrik Bondestam presented the findings from the UniSAFE project on gender-based violence (GBV)...