During the meeting, held from 26 to 28 of January, the partners discussed about the strategies to address the existing gender bias in scientific organizations.
From 26 to 28 January, the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM) hosted virtually the annual meeting of Leading Towards Sustainable Gender Equality Plans (LeTSGEPs) project, a European initiative aimed at ending gender imbalance in research centers through the use of Gender Equality Plans (GEPs). The event brought together more than 30 attendees who have taken the opportunity to share their experiences in the GEPs implementation.
The consortium members also explained what have they done so far to address the existing gender bias in their organizations and exchanged some of their methods, for example, to involve personnel to end with this imbalance. Finally, they talked about the next steps of the project, which include the development of the ICM Equality Plan, that should be ready by April 2021.
“During this meeting, transversal working groups helped us discuss about gender dimension in the research content and decipher how to include gender-sensitive transversal processes within our institution, which is one of the main objectives of LeTSGEPs project”, exposes Esther Garcés, the coordinator of this project at the ICM.
About the work being carried out at the ICM within LeTSGEPs project, Garcés explained that “at the Institute we are identifying specific gender issues and proposing tools to have more information and an in-depth analysis about this matter. Once identified we will to propose actions to trigger a transformative change on this”.
An Equality Plan for the ICM
The new ICM Equality Plan will respond to the current Equality Law and will fit with the CSIC's Plan for Equality between Women and Men. Also, it will include new measures aimed at promoting the integration of the gender dimension in the field of scientific research.
GEPs help, on the one hand, to achieve structural changes in academic and research institutions and breakdown gender equality barriers of the research system, and on the other hand, to incorporate gender perspective into institutional practices related to human resource management, funding, decisions and research programs.
Within the LeTSGEPs project, which is funded with more than 2 million euros by the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program, the formulation of any Equality Plan contemplates the use of the gender budget (GB), which promotes gender mainstreaming at all levels of budgeting process and resources. Thus, the GB approach places gender equality at the heart of decision-making on resources collection and allocation at research centers.