The pandemic has made visible the need for hospitals to offer the adapted working conditions and to deliver a service of the highest quality. Healthcare workers are leaving the sector faster than ever because of poor working conditions, lack of an adequate work-life balance, and work-related safety and health risks, which were exacerbated during the pandemic. Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) are a proven method to initiate a process of sustainable institutional change to the benefit of the quality of care, that is linked to the motivation and well-being of the people working in hospitals.
Establishing a Gender Equality Committee is a key way for institutions to show commitment towards workplace gender equality and drive change towards a more diverse and inclusive culture. But it can be challenging to even know where to start.
In this guidelines, we have put together advice, based on the collective experience of the research centres at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), that we hope will be useful to others to start this path.
Hate crime against LGBTIQ* persons is the most severe form of expression of homophobia and transphobia and not uncommon in Germany and in other European states, be it in the public or private sphere. For those affected, this represents a considerable burden and stress as well as a restriction of freedom and participation in social life.
The Working Paper shows that on the one hand, changes in criminal law are needed to fight hate crime against LGBTIQ* persons more effectively. On the other hand, non-legal measures – for instance in the work and training of the police, the judiciary and within victim support – need to be developed and implemented.
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.
