A European project coordinated by Unimore will help reduce gender inequalities in research institutions in Europe
An international pool of male and female researchers will help reduce gender inequalities in research institutions in Europe, thanks to the European project Leading Towards Sustainable Gender Equality Plans in research institutions (LeTSGEPs), coordinated by professor Tindara Addabbo of the Department of Economics Marco Biagi at Unimore.
This ambitious project, that will last 4 years and has been granted by the European Commission a 2,429,053.75 euro financing within the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework programme, is intended to design and implement Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) for research institutions and universities.
Many European institutions still feature a strong heterogeneity as for the obligation to implement Gender Equality Plans, their actual presence and their impact, and therefore - given the persistence of marked gender inequalities to the detriment of women - the project aims at carrying out an analysis of gender impact of the actions and the design of more incisive and disseminated plans.
LeTGEPs rose to the challenge contained in the European invitation to tender by bringing the multi-year experience of the research team currently operating at Unimore, which boasts consolidated interactions with other international research groups, to the study of the factors determining gender inequalities and of the policies aimed at contrasting them. Such knowledge resulted in the implementation of practices in different (local, national, and international) contexts and is now made available to European research institutions, which follow the instructions of the European Commission to value and reach gender equality.
Gender balance, an integral part of the project, - as professor Tindara Addabbo of the Department of Economics Marco Biagi at Unimore and project coordinator states - will considerably improve the effectiveness and sustainability of GEPs, by identifying the resources and the impact of the actions in terms of gender equality. Training and cultural awakening initiatives relative to gender equality inside the institutions involved in the project are also planned. The set of methodologies we want to apply to the design, implementation, and assessment of GEPs are focused on obtaining actual and measurable improvement in terms of gender equality in the institutions that have believed in the project and that we will lead through it.
The project will use the knowledge gained and the best practices in the EQUAL-IST project that has just been completed obtaining an extremely positive evaluation by the European Commission. Professor Claudia Canali of the Enzo Ferrari Department of Engineering, and responsible for the Unimore team of the EQUAL-IST project, states that The project, which saw the active participation of Unimore in its various stages also by means of a participated approach, has developed actions aimed at introducing structural changes in ICT research institutions to reach gender equality.
Together with professor Tindara Addabbo and professor Claudia Canali , professor Ulpiana Kocollari of the Marco Biagi Department of Economics will also participate for the Unimore team. Other university and research institutions of various European countries will also be involved, such as RWTH of the University of Aachen (Germany), the Mathematical Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgrade (Serbia), the University of Studies of Messina, the Faculty of Economics of the University of Tirana (Albania), the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science of Munich (Germany), the Spanish National Research Council, and in particular the Institute of Marine Sciences of Barcelona (Spain) and the Théorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications (ThEMA) of the University of Cergy-Pontoise (France).
In addition to methodological progress aimed at combining GEPs and gender balance, the project includes the context analysis of the institutions involved in terms of gender equality, the design of specific Gender Equality Plans for each institution, together with a set of indicators that will be used in the monitoring and assessment stages of the activities carried out.
Training and cultural awakening activities on GEPs and gender balance will anticipate GEPs actual implementation followed by the impact assessment.
What will be the best practices inside the partnership will become a background of knowledge that can be widely shared and applied by disseminating the results as planned during the various research stages.
The scientific supervision of the project has been assigned to a Committee made of professor Siri Terjesen of the Norway School of Economics (NHH) of Bergen (Norway), and Director of the American University Center Innovation (USA), professor David Card, professor of Economics -University of California, Berkeley (USA), Director of the Labor Studies Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (USA), professor Ronald Oaxaca of the Department of Economics of the University of Arizona (USA), professor Arthur Van Soest, teacher of Economics at the University of Tilburg (The Netherlands), professor Elena Stancanelli of the Paris School of Economics (France), of professor Gulay Gunluk-Senesen of the Department of Political Science of Istanbul (Turkey), professor Angela OHagan of the Department of Social Sciences - Glasgow School for Business and Society and Deputy Director of the Wise Centre for Economic Justice (United Kingdom), and professor Anita Thaler of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Technology, Work and Culture (IFZ) in Austria.
Categorie: International - english
Articolo pubblicato da: Ufficio Stampa Unimore - ufficiostampa@unimore.it il 26/08/2019