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In support of gender rights and academic freedoms: our solidarity statement

 

By the SUPERA Consortium

We, members of the EU-funded SUPERA initiative, express our deepest concern for the reiterated and coordinated attacks on gender rights and academic freedoms in several EU member States such as Hungary, Poland or Romania, and our most resolute support to those who, from the civil society or the institutions, defend the values of gender equality and non- discrimination and the rule of Law enshrined in EU treaties.

We manifest our strongest solidarity with women-led strikes in Poland and our firmest contempt for the attempts to undermine gender equality, gender rights – including the rights of LGBTQ persons and sexual and reproductive rights, as well as free speech and the freedom of research at universities in any member state of the European Union and beyond.

Those rights and freedoms are fundamental to open, democratic and diverse societies, and should be firmly defended wherever threatened.

Read and download the solidarity statement.

2021-03-25T12:14:05+02:00November 30th, 2020|Tags: , , , |

The Central European University GEP now available for download

In May 2020, the Central European University has approved its first gender equality plan. Now the full document is fully available at this link.

Read the interview to Andrea Krizsan, research fellow at CEU’s Center for Policy Studies and Ana Belen Amil, gender equality officer at CEU, about the GEP approval: https://www.superaproject.eu/ceu_gep/

2021-03-25T10:38:00+02:00November 6th, 2020|Tags: , , |

Join us! The institutional SUPERA video is online

By Manuela Aru and Paola Carboni, University of Cagliari

The SUPERA values, methods and key action areas to foster gender equality in research organisations can now be presented in a new format to anyone interested in knowing more about gender mainstreaming in Academia: the SUPERA institutional video is online!

This project outcome is the result of an intense work that involved all the partners in exchanges and interaction to define the creative concept and the best way to communicate it: from the voiceover to the selection of images, and to the translation of the subtitles. It is worth noting that the Cagliari-based team who implemented the video (editing, illustrations, animations, production) it is totally composed by female professionals.

At first, we had planned to develop the institutional video by making interviews to key actors during the Consortium Meeting that was meant to be held in Cagliari las June. Due to the spread of the Covid-19 crisis, the whole event was held on Zoom. For this reason, we had to radically rethink the initial concept. The new idea was to be developed completely in a distance-mode, without the chance to film or interview tany of the key people we had in mind. The new video concept is based on the animation of photographs and original graphics, created to represent and communicate gender inequalities and our actions to fight them.

A special attention was devoted to adotp a gender-sensitive, non-stereotypical and inclusive communication register. The video will be available soon with subtitles in English, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

For the first European Gender Equality Week on October 26-29, we started a communication campaign marked by the hashtag #JoinUs, representing an invitation to all the people  interested in engaging with our initiatives toward gender equality and social justice in research and academia. The #JoinUs campaign is now live on SUPERA social media channels and several European institutional accounts are sharing it.

Watch the video and follow the #JoinUs campaign on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube: two short videos will be released in the next days!

2021-03-25T10:38:49+02:00November 6th, 2020|Tags: , , , |

Experience exchange between Research Funding Organisations: register to the webinars

Among RFOs, there is an increasing interest on the design and implementation of measures to improve the impact of their funding schemes on gender equality. Sometimes these measures may take the form of a Gender Equality Plan, or of a policy, or other individual measures.

SUPERA is launching a series of webinars and online workshops to facilitate experience exchanges between Research Funding Organisations (RFOs) that develop – or plan to develop – a Gender Equality policy.

The first two webinars will take place on 13 and 18 November, 2020. Each webinar has a 90 minute duration and starts with two RFOs that explain their experience linked to the theme of the webinar. This is followed by a 40-minute Q&A and exchanges with the audience.

Webinar #1 – 13 November 2020 from 10:00 to 11:30 am CET
“Gender Equality in RFOs, two experiences”
Experiences from the Autonomous Region of Sardinia (RAS) and the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) on the steps in developing a comprehensive policy.

Click here for the registration form.


Webinar #2 – 18 November 2020 from 10:00 to 11:30 am CET
“How can RFOs fight gender bias”
Experiences from French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TA CR) on measures to avoid gender bias.

Click here for the registration form.

To complete and enhance these initiatives, Yellow Window developed a tool that brings together resources and examples of measures that RFOs can take (and in several cases are already taking). The tool follows the typical journey or cycle of a call for proposals and is available as a web page at this link and as a board on Miro at this link.

2021-03-25T10:39:32+02:00November 6th, 2020|Tags: , , |

Overcoming gender gaps in research funding organisations: RAS approves its Gender Equality Plan

By Autonomous Region of Sardinia core team

The Regional Programming Centre of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia directly supervises and manages the regional funds for research and innovation. These funds finance basic research projects, young researchers and the investments in support of the innovation system. These functions and responsibilities of the Sardinia Region are carried out on the basis of a specific law, the Regional Law n. 7/2007, in favor of research and innovation, which currently has no any reference to gender policies. Therefore, the objective of the RAS in the activities within SUPERA project has been focused on creating an operational tool aimed at intervening on gender issues in the research field in Sardinia: the Gender Equality Plan (or GEP).

With the goal of building a GEP that could have the most effective impact, RAS started its activities by verifying the possible existence of a gender gap in the provision of resources to support research. The aim was to give indications to the policy maker and to create a favorable environment for the access to resources.

Specifically, this first phase was carried out following three guidelines:

1) ANALYSIS. This step concerns: the reference regulatory framework; the scope of applicability of the gender discipline in the research field; gender differences in the provision of grants for the implementation of research projects.

2) LISTENING. A shared and participatory path has been started among regional stakeholders on gender issues. The goal was to bring together in a hub the internal and external stakeholders, capable of providing data, suggestions and ideas useful for the drafting of the GEP. So far, the following external stakeholders participated in the hub: the Department of General Affairs and Personnel of the Sardinia Region, the agency Sardegna Ricerche, the Regional Councilor for equality, the Regional Commission for equal opportunities, Giulia Giornaliste, Corecom Sardegna, the Equality Councilor of the Metropolitan City of Cagliari and the Formez PA. This phase is dynamic as the hub is always open to the adhesions of new members. The stakeholders will support the GEP throughout its implementation phase.

3) OBJECTIVES. The definition of the objectives of the GEP led to the drafting of the Plan.

The first objective identified by the GEP is to bring about a structural change in the approach to gender issues in the Sardinia Region. Within the actions carried out to achieve this goal, it is important to emphasise the inclusion of the SUPERA principles in the PRS – Piano Regionale di Sviluppo (RDP – Regional Development Plan) 2020-2024. The RDP is the five-year regional planning document that defines the strategies and policies that Sardinia intends to implement over the course of the legislature. Consequently, the inclusion of SUPERA in the Plan represents a clear political commitment on the part of the President of the Region and his Council towards gender policies.

The second objective of the GEP is focused on Regional Law 7/2007 and it is intended to introduce corrective actions aimed at guaranteeing gender equality within the calls for basic research.

The third objective recalls the results of the descriptive analysis and the suggestions of stakeholders within the project hub. In particular, it considers the criticalities of the system of evaluation of research projects, which is not very sensitive to gender issues.

In conclusion, it is emphasised again that the GEP is conceived as a dynamic and constantly evolving tool, which can always lead to positive updates. Its structure has been defined by using the Logical Framework Approach (LFA) and indicates objectives, actions and indicators providing for appropriate actions throughout the life span of SUPERA.

The RAS Gender equality plan is available at this link.

2021-03-25T12:18:44+02:00November 5th, 2020|Tags: , , , , |

Working conditions, time usage and academic performance in Covid-19 times: preliminary UCM survey results

By Maria Bustelo, Paula de Dios Ruiz and Lorena Pajares – Universidad Complutense de Madrid

As part of the planned work at the SUPERA project, the UCM team had started to design a study on gender roles and academic time usage when the Covid-19 crisis broke out, last March. This initial idea turned into a specific survey of how gender roles apply to situations of lockdown for academics and researchers. In May 2020, a survey on working conditions, academic time usage and academic performance during the Covid-19 crisis was designed, and in June 2020 it was launched at the Complutense University of Madrid with a high response rate: more than 27% of the total Faculty Population, reaching almost 1.600 responses.

The preliminary results are clear in confirming strong gender roles’ segregation in academic time usage & performance, and significant differences between female and male academics in many of the studied variables. Moreover, these differences have aggravated and increased during the pandemic, while in general female faculty have experienced a significantly harder time working remotely during the Spring confinement than their male counterparts.

The presentation shows some preliminary results related to the fact that female faculty staff have experienced a much harder time during the lockdown than their male colleagues. For example, women show significant differences in claiming that they have felt more sadness, preoccupation, anxiety and stress, feeling overwhelmed, and of losing control than men. Also women ranked significantly higher in working at unusual hours, in having difficulties for working without being interrupted, and in using concentrating on work as a way of dealing with the situation. Men claim more than women that they have taken advantage of the lockdown to catch up with academic work.

Differences in time devoted by women and men to care and domestic work have been aggravated during lockdown. Gender roles in academic work are not only confirmed before the pandemic, but also aggravated during lockdown: women claimed to devote more time to class preparation and to students’ attention, and men to writing and sending to publish papers/articles.

Regarding the academic time usage perception, before lockdown females claimed to devote slightly less weekly time than men to academic work (approx. 20 minutes less), but during lockdown figures reversed, claiming women one hour and a half more weekly than men.

Further analyses are being performed by the SUPERA-UCM team, who is also working, along with the Gender Equality Nodes Network at the UCM, on the development of recommendations and proposals for actions to be integrated as part of the upcoming GEP.

Short outline of the first results (presentation on SlideShare).

Video of the presentation of the first survey results, given by Maria Bustelo (Associate professor of Political science and Public administration at UCM and SUPERA Coordinator).

2021-03-25T12:22:58+02:00November 3rd, 2020|Tags: , , , , |
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