What is a Gender Equality Plan?
Gender equality plan is a set of commitments and actions that aim to promote gender equality in an organization through a process of structural change. This policy instrument strives to sustainably transform organisational processes, cultures and structures within the field of research and innovation (R & I) to combat and reduce gender imbalances and inequalities. It should be holistic and comprehensive in the way that it addresses the whole organisation, engages all relevant stakeholders and tackles several gender equality issues in your organisation. Therefore, GEPs should not focus only on promoting career opportunities and equal access to resources for one gender; rather, they should be inclusive and target women and men in all their diversity.
Consequently, a GEP is a systematic and strategic instrument that establishes priorities and concrete objectives (based on a thorough status quo assessment), and the specific measures that will be implemented to improve gender equality within organisations and in the field of R & I. The timelines of the measures to be implemented and for measuring progress and success should be included in your GEP. You should also take into account that GEPs are to be designed as tools promoting reflexibility and learning by encompassing monitoring and evaluation activities. Finally, a GEP needs to establish clear responsibilities for different activities and to specify the general governance and leadership accountability for steering the GEP implementation and for the GEP’s progress and results.
Developing and Implementing GEP
The process of developing and implementing a GEP can be broken down into six different steps, each requiring specific types of activities and interventions.
Step 1: getting started. In this step, you will need to familiarise yourself with the GEP concept and how it fits with your organisation and the specific context of your organisation. You also need to identify and approach potential allies and supporters of a GEP in your organisation.
Step 2: analysing and assessing the status quo in your organisation. In this step, sex-disaggregated data is collected and organisational procedures, processes and practices are critically reviewed to detect any gender inequalities and their causes.
Step 3: setting up a GEP. In this step, you will need to identify objectives, set your targets and measures to remedy the identified problems, allocate resources and responsibilities, and agree on timelines.
Step 4: implementing a GEP. In this step, you will implement the planned activities and undertake outreach efforts to gradually expand the network of stakeholders supporting the GEP implementation.
Step 5: monitoring progress and evaluating a GEP. Through monitoring and evaluation activities you will assess the implementation process and the progress achieved against the aims and objectives identified in your GEP. Findings from the monitoring and evaluation exercise(s) allow you to adjust and improve your interventions.
Step 6: what comes after a GEP? Based on the results of steps 4 and 5, you need to develop a new GEP that builds on your experiences, learnings and achievements and that also ensures the sustainability of the efforts started in previous GEP implementation rounds.
Rationale for gender equality change in research and higher education institutions
Setting up and implementing a gender equality plan (GEP) requires strong arguments about the benefits of working towards gender equality in research and innovation (R & I). These supporting arguments are of different nature and outreach. They can be combined in different ways to build the case for gender equality within your organisation, and to reach different categories of stakeholders.
As stated in UN sustainable development goal 5, ‘gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world’. In this sense, the main types of benefits of gender equality in R & I are as follows.
Fairness
Gender equality and equal treatment is about fairness in organisations and in society at large. Everyone needs to have the same opportunities to participate and contribute meaningfully to R & I, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, social background, age, etc. Committing to fairness and equality, and introducing organisational changes to meet these commitments, is a value in its own right. Increasing the fairness of organisational processes and practices contributes to more transparency and legitimacy of decision-making and organisational procedures. Therefore, increasing fairness and transparency in R & I can bring additional benefits to individuals and organisations.
Attracting and Retaining Talent
Research activities are highly intensive in human capital. Training qualified and creative researchers and innovators is costly, and bringing them up to their full potential takes time. Moreover, research organisations are involved in an intense competition for talent. This also requires retaining research staff over time and giving them the opportunity to achieve their personal and professional objectives and potential.
It has been shown that women are abandoning their scientific careers in much greater numbers than men. Described as the ‘leaky pipeline’ of women in science, this phenomenon has a considerable impact: a loss of knowledge, an organisational cost, and a reduced and limited perspective in scientific research. It also feeds a vicious circle: as women leave research in greater numbers, research becomes less attractive to women. Implementing GEPs to promote structural and cultural change in your organisation can contribute to attracting and retaining talented women – or rather diverse talent – in your organisation.
Creating a Better Work Environment
Promoting gender equality in your organisation can contribute to a more engaging and inclusive work and study environment, in which people feel safe, valued and comfortable. This will increase the well-being, work satisfaction, sense of belonging and motivation of staff members in your organisation, regardless of their gender. Your organisation will also benefit from these individual gains in terms of innovation performance, effectiveness and talent retention.
Excellence and Research Quality
Bringing a gender dimension to R & I content improves the overall quality of research design, hypotheses, protocols and outputs in a large variety of fields. It makes it possible to address gender bias and to build more evidence-based and robust research, and also contributes to pluri-disciplinarity. As R & I is increasingly framed as working for/with society, thereby creating social impact and benefits, and contributing to solving the main societal challenges of our time, reflecting the diversity of final users, their needs and boundary conditions from the early research stages has become a must. ‘Gender blindness’ (understood as the lack of consideration for gender-related aspects) often goes with neglecting other relevant social or experiential parameters. Challenging this blindness, on the contrary, creates awareness for a broader set of variables than sex and/or gender. The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly shown how the integration of sex/gender analysis into research not only increases the quality or excellence of research, but also provides better data and evidence for developing targeted solutions for public health, social welfare or economic policies