The aim of this white paper is to draw attention to the roles and responsibilities of higher education and research organisations in addressing gender-based violence. These roles and responsibilities may not be recognised or are downplayed, and this results in institutions failing to take appropriate action to ensure safe environments for students and staff. Secondly, the white paper aims to explicate the essential features and elements of effective policies and actions and lastly, to highlight the critical role of institutional leadership in making the policy frameworks and actions work.
This white paper is primarily intended for: institutional leaders and top management; staff responsible for the design, adoption and implementation of institutional policies; staff appointed to support victims and survivors; and any other member of the academic community committed to ending gender-based violence. It builds on the results of the UniSAFE research, including the prevalence study (Lipinsky et al. 2022, Humbert et al. 2022), the institutional policy analysis (Huck et al. 2022), case studies (Ranea-Triviño et al. 2022), interviews (Blazyte and Pilinkaite 2022), and stakeholder and expert workshops (Yellow Window 2023a, 2023b), the purpose of which have been to gain insight into and test emerging policy solution.
The Redesigning Equality and Scientific Excellence Together (RESET) project involves seven large multidisciplinary universities from Europe. RESET will address the challenge of Gender Equality (GE) in Research Institutions, with the objective to design and implement a user-centered, impact-driven and inclusive vision of scientific excellence and to achieve a structural and cultural change in partner universities. For this purpose, RESET experiments with and develops a “co-design approach”, an innovative approach for addressing gender equality in higher education institutions. Co-design enables the RESET consortium to politically frame and sustainably implement gender and diversity-friendly practices in the work environment. Mainstreaming the co-design approach as an institutional practice for efficient gender equality policy-making and greater stakeholder engagement and support will underpin high-quality and high-impact actions. This deliverable contains the co-design starter kit (D9.2), part of Work Package 9 – Manage RESET and ensure the quality of its implementation. The purpose of the deliverable is to introduce co-design, including its theoretical background, principles, and practices as well as to offer support for its implementation. The latter is achieved by discussing aspects relating to how to take the context into account in co-design in different contexts as well as by offering a set of tools (example methods) to use within different co-design practices. This starter kit is based on decades of research on participatory, userand human-centered design with different computing and design disciplines. Initial empirical research has also already been conducted in RESET partner universities on contextual factors shaping co-design of gender equality, from which some empirical insights are presented. In Part A, this starter kit contains a conceptual framework that discusses the background, principles, and practices of co-design as well as its context-sensitivity. Part B contains altogether 16 tools derived from the literature on co—design, categorized into different practices of co-design: 1) Understanding and sensitizing with the topic; 2) From insights to ideas; 3) Creating design solutions; and 4) Reflecting on and evaluating the designs. For each practice, four example tools are provided, aiming at showing versatility in the method repertoire than can be used. These are complemented with a section on considerations of context. For each method, it is emphasized that tailoring and modification can be done whenever needed. For each method, it is important to acknowledge that familiarizing with the method in more detail is always needed before its use. This document contains only a limited overview of each method. After the tools, a set of questions with which to reflect on and prepare for the contextual aspects intermingled with co-design of gender equality are presented. This co-design starter kit is a workin-progress and closely interwoven with the ongoing work of the RESET project. It will be enriched as the project evolves during the next three years timespan.
Mainstreaming the gender dimension in research activities and outcomes is a topical challenge related to excellence. The gender dimension in research activities requires an ethically sound process in creating high-quality results. Major research funding organisations are increasingly interested in analyses of the gender dimension in research, thereby challenging researchers to review their research plans accordingly. The Gender Impact Assessment (GIA) aims to tackle this challenge. The GIA is not a strict methodology but rather an approach to be further co-designed by local GIA communities of practitioners (CoPs) to ensure its fit into each academic research setting in aiming to improve equality and quality of the knowledge produced. The GIA approach also effectively supports Horizon Europe’s mission-oriented work, in which European research and innovation missions have the objective of delivering solutions to some of the greatest challenges that our world is facing, all of them having gender impact. The GIA guidelines introduce the approach as an institutional and operational set-up. They describe the institutional structures, processes, and resources needed for successful application of the GIA approach, and identify the key stakeholders within a university that are central for its institutionalization and operationalization — the GIA CoPs. Further, the guidelines propose institutional structures needed for gender impact assessment operations to make them standard procedures in an institution. Local GIA CoPs are in a central position to ensure a perfect fit of the GIA within a particular institutional setting as well as its sustainability.
