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New tools, New successes, Remaining gaps
There is much positive news to report from the presentations and discussions that took place at the Gender Summit 9 Europe, in Brussels on 8-9 November 2016. In this blogpost, we want to draw your attention first to the several practical and effective tools now available to support gender equality actions in institutions to improve existing processes and practices. Also, we can report on examples of real improvements made and the emerging convergence of efforts to share experiences; and, in particular, the new efforts and approaches to improve reliability and scope of STEM gender equality indicators not only in research but also in innovation and socio-economic development. You can access almost all the presentations, posters and the photos of the event at via the GS9Eu Programme page. Here we draw your attention to the following:
1. Guidelines for Gender Mainstreaming: Academia developed and extensively tested by the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research, and ready to use.
2. The GEAR Action Toolkit for implementing Gender Equality Plans, developed by EIGE, which builds on the experience of several EU-funded projects that have implemented GEPs in research and higher education organisations.
3. SciDEV training courses on intergrating gender into your scientific research, launched at the Summit by Director, Nick Perkins, produced for researchers and science communicators working development, designed to show how to promote gender awareness in research practice and uptake in science communication and advocacy.
4. Implicit gender bias video developed by Centres de Recerca de Catalunya explaining how implicit bias can demonstrate itself and influence panel recruitment decisions. The video was part of the presentation on Practicing Excellence in the European Research Council (ERC) Panels from Helene Schiffbaenker.
5. How to increase applications for research grants from women - a much-welcomed example of a successful method developed by Science Foundation Ireland presented by its Director General, Mark Fergusson.
6. Improving quality of STEM gender equality indicators – a topic that included the UNESCO’s SAGA project presented by Martin Schaaper, Chief of UNESCO Statistics Institute; the latest She Figures, presented by David Campbell, Chief Scientist at Science Metrix; Nordic She Figures, presented by Lotta Strandberg, Senior Adviser at Nordforsk; analytics for extracting gender indicators from published sources, presented by Rachel Herbert, Senior Analyst at Elsevier Analytics; and measuring STI gender gaps in Latin America, presented by Matteo Grazzi, Senior Economist at InterAmerica Development Bank.
From the feedback we received, three topics have emerged where a continuing dialogue to share knowledge and experience would be particularly useful
• Improving STEM gender equality indicators, including for innovation, e.g. to improve Innovation Union Score Card; make EIT more gender friendly, and help increase the number of women nominated for the Millennium Technology Prize
• Developing and implementing gender equality measures for fair advancement in STEM careers – to share and agree what works and what does not; and avoid repetitions of mistakes or duplications of effort
• Bringing closer together the already available within EU mechanisms for structural change: e.g. GEPs, EURAXESS, HRS4R, Code of Practice for Research to create greater synergy and impact.
We are establishing practical ways in how the Gender Summit platform can support such dialogue in between the summit events, working, in particular, with the GenPORT portal, www.genderportal.eu.
We thank those who contributed to the GS9Eu as speakers, chairs and attendees for helping make the programme and the discussions so interesting and well focused, and all of you who subscribe to this Newsletter. Special thanks go to the members of the European Parliament’s FEMM Committee who hosted the first part of GS9Eu at the amazingly impressive Hemicycle. The added value of this action was that since public are allowed to observe proceedings at the Hemicycle from the gallery, the audience included perhaps 100 or more EU citizens, with many men and young people! You can now download the report from GS9 to the European Parliament and the European Commission.
Dr Elizabeth Pollitzer
Gender Summit co-founder
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