The XI European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education is approaching

By the Local Committee of the 11th GEHE Conference 

The Spanish institutions organizing the 2021 online edition of the GEHE Conference (15th – 17th September) are proud to present an inspiring and diverse program with high-level contributions received from the gender & science community and practitioners. Our goal is to provide the space for them to share their knowledge and expertise so that the public authorities can design better and more effective policies.

When the organizers of the XI GEHE Conference had to take the difficult decision to postpone the 11th GEHE Conference to September 2021, the situation was uncertain both due to the global health emergency and in relation to the organization of the Conference. Today, after considerable efforts to launch a new call for abstracts in 2021 and to adapt the whole program to an online event, the organizers are glad to communicate that the agenda for the upcoming 11th edition of the GEHE Conference has been published in our website and the registration has been closed.

Since the beginning of 2021, the Women and Science Unit of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Ministry of Universities, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, with the financial support of the Spanish Institute for Women, resumed work on the organization of the Conference. First, the organizers decided to open a new call for abstracts in order to give the opportunity to present new works. Indeed, given the importance acquired by the impact on the confinement in women’s research careers and the sex/gender analysis of research on covid-19, the organizers added a new topic. Then, our international scientific committee once again proceeded to evaluate the new proposals submitted following the same evaluation criteria. Taking into account both 2020 and 2021 call for abstracts, this 11th edition received more than 200 proposals, what can be considered as a success of the Conference given the difficult conditions. The organizers are grateful to the scientific community and practitioners for their committed work revealing persistent inequalities and producing valuable knowledge to build better science and innovation systems.

The online registration process was opened during June and thanks to the dissemination work conducted, more than 300 people have registered for the Conference. Our attendees come from institutions in 23 different countries, mostly European countries, but also Brazil, Canada, India, South Africa, among others. This is indicative of the global dimension of this research field and the interest in advancing gender equality policies in R&I in different global regions.

As a result of all these joint efforts, the agenda for the three days of the Conference includes 144 oral communications and 12 workshops/symposia on the different topics of the Conference. Attendees will be able to choose between more than 30 experiences with gender equality plans, more than 20 discussions on fostering scientific-technical vocations and more than 30 presentations on the integration of the gender dimension in university teaching, among other topics. The impact of the confinement on women’s research careers, to give another example, will be addressed by at least 10 presentations. In addition to workshops and oral communications, around 30 posters on the different topics will be exhibited in an ad-hoc space of the online platform of the Conference.

Moreover, the program offers two plenary conferences on the 15th and 17th. Thamar Heijstra (University of Iceland) will give the opening lecture “Academic career making in a gendered environment: Men as the norm, women as the deviant and feminists as double deviants”, while the closing conference “Building feminist futures in European research: major shifts, continued contestations, new challenges” will be in charge of Marcela Linkova (chair of the ERAC Standing Working Group on Gender in Research and Innovation). The conclusions of the three days of the Conference will be addressed during the roundtable on gender equality policies in R&I moderated by the head of the Women and Science Unit. This panel includes high-level profiles at the European level, including representatives from EU institutions, civil society and academics.

The organizers hope that this interesting and inspiring program due to the high-level contributions received from the gender & science community and practitioners will contribute to reinforce the knowledge production on gender equality policies in R&I and will motivate further steps at national and supranational levels. Last but not least, the Conference discussions will be enriched by the participation of researchers, practitioners and students as attendees to the Conference. All of them are invited to learn as much as possible from the oral communications, posters and workshops/symposia as well as to make new professional contacts taking advantage of the online networking space provided by the online platform. One of the objectives of this Conference is also to enhance the European Network on Gender Equality in Higher Education, precisely in times of difficult connections and gendered impacts of the global health emergency at all levels.

For more information about the XI GEHE Conference visit the website and the Twitter profile.

XI European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education: save the date!

The Women and Science Unit of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Ministry of Universities, in cooperation with the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), the Spanish Institute of Women, and the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), are pleased to invite you to the 2021 Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education: https://www.genderequalityconference2021.com/

The European Conference Gender Equality in Higher Education (GEHE) is an academic forum to communicate new research and analysis on gender and science. These conferences also welcome presentations on the development of gender equality policies as well as on the implementation of gender equality plans in research performing organizations (RPOs) and research funding organizations (RFOs). The topics of the Conference that include a new thematic area on gender, science and COVID-19.

The 11th edition of GEHE was planned to be hosted by the UPM, Madrid, in September 2020 but the pandemic led to postpone the event. The Conference will be online from the 15th to the 17th of September 2021. More than 200 abstracts were already received and evaluated by our international scientific committee last year.

The online edition will include different activities:

  • Plenary conferences by main speakers.
  • Oral communications in parallel sessions.
  • Symposia/workshops.
  • High-level panel as closing event at ETSI Industriales –UPM (live streaming).
  • Online networking activities.

Follow the news on #GEHE2021 in the webpage: https://www.genderequalityconference2021.com

XI European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education: call for abstracts

The Women and Science Unit of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Ministry of Universities in cooperation with the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) are pleased to announce a new call for abstracts for the 2021 Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education:

https://www.genderequalityconference2021.com/call-for-abstracts/

More than 200 abstracts already received and evaluated in 2020
New deadline for abstracts submission: 24th of March, 2021
See the topics of the Conference that include a new thematic area on gender, science and COVID-19

The European Conference Gender Equality in Higher Education (GEHE) is an academic forum to communicate new research and analysis on gender and science. These conferences also welcome presentations on the development of gender equality policies as well as on the implementation of gender equality plans in research performing organizations (RPOs) and research funding organizations (RFOs).

The 11th edition of GEHE was planned to be hosted by the UPM, Madrid, in September 2020 but the pandemic led to postpone the event. The Conference will be online from the 15th to the 17th of September 2021. More than 200 abstracts were already received and evaluated by our international scientific committee last year. The aim of this new call for abstracts is to give the opportunity to present new research, analysis and experiences from the gender and science community across Europe.

The online edition will include different activities:

  • Plenary conferences by main speakers.
  • Oral communications in parallel sessions.
  • Symposia/workshops.
  • High-level panel as closing event at ETSI Industriales –UPM (live streaming).
  • Online networking activities.

Follow the news on #GEHE2021 in the webpage: https://www.genderequalityconference2021.com

Decentralized pathways for the integration of a gender dimension in R&E at the University of Coimbra

By Francisco Rodrigues, CES-UC

The UC SUPERA team has been in direct connection with the rectorate from the beginning of the project, and more so since the transition from the baseline assessment to GEP design and subsequent implementation strategies.

Although central support and a reliable working relation are fundamental for the success of the project, this is not the most streamlined approach in the initial stages of implementation. The formal approval process is complex, requiring input from a myriad of relevant stakeholders and decision-making bodies.

For that reason, but primarily to create a decentralized platform that enables the development of specific solutions within the diverse contexts in UC, we adopted a sort of centrifugal approach. This means securing institutional backing at the highest level and leveraging it to capitalize on the various levels of autonomy within the University’s structures. The cornerstone of this approach are Focal Points for the main Research and Education Units, as they were nominated by the respective unit Directors following a direct request at a Senate session. Through capacity-building for gender mainstreaming, providing its members with adequate competencies and data on the institution’s state-of-play, such a network enables the detection and maximization of windows of opportunity for institutional change, not only at the Unit level.

As these Units enjoy scientific and pedagogical autonomy, the integration of a gender dimension benefits from this platform. Directly, it has so far led to the proposal of a seminar for final-year medicine students on gender biases in medicine (teaching, research and practice), as the Focal Point for the Faculty of Medicine identified a window of opportunity in the restructuring of that curriculum. Even though the current public health crisis postponed this process for a year, we are confident that the seminar will be integrated and work in tandem with ongoing parallel efforts in other contexts, while inspiring similar initiatives throughout the University.

Although that is encouraging, more tangible achievements have come from a different source within that decentralized approach. Shortly after confinement was imposed, we were contacted by the recently created Strategic Areas Unit, which sought to encourage female academics to apply for ERC grants. This team had come to us through the Focal Point of the larger Unit it is lodged in, the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research.

Due to the nature of the Institute and the Strategic Areas Unit, they work directly under the supervision of the Vice-Rector for Research. This allowed for that initial contact to blossom into a fully-fledged for the integration of the gender dimension in the UC’s scientific outputs and subsequent betterment of its scientific production.

This initiative entails a number of activities: a EEA grant application for combatting gender-based discrimination; the gender-sensitive revision of research-funding applications produced in the UC; the construction of a repository of relevant resources and inspiring practices with regards to the integration of a gender dimension in research; a communication campaign for the encouragement of academic excellence of researchers of the underrepresented sex in various fields and the development of a training course on the integration of the gender dimension in research, directed to researchers on all levels and fields, designed to take advantage of existing gender competencies throughout the fields and enlarging the group of gender-sensitive researchers (first edition scheduled for mid-September). This cooperative relation is promising for sustainable gender mainstreaming in the University’s scientific activities, as it is grounded on top-level strategic commitment, as well as the devotion of the supervising research structure’s resources.

The instances described are illustrations on the benefits of a decentralized approach, particularly in topic as varied and difficult to implement as integrating the gender dimension in research. For the UC SUPERA team, the most relevant takeaway from this experience is that investing in the embracement of a large and diverse number of stakeholders is complicated, time-consuming, and therefore often frustrating, but gratifying when it is time for returns, as they signify impactful and structural change.

Postponement of the XI European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education in Madrid

The XI GEHE Conference: Advancing gender mainstreaming in Academia, Research and Innovation needs to be postponed to September 2021 due to the global health emergency

By the Local Committee of the 11th GEHE Conference

The Spanish Ministries with competences in science, innovation and universities had announced the XI European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education  in Madrid (16-18 September 2020). The Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) would host this Conference, also supported by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). The European Network on Gender Equality in Higher Education has been also assisting in this task. Other national stakeholders have been mobilized for the success of the Conference and its dissemination within the Spanish system of science, technology and innovation. For this purpose, a National Committee devoted to support this Conference has been established at the Spanish Observatory for Women, Science and Innovation.

However, after careful consideration of the situation and the uncertain prospects regarding travelling in the coming months, the Local Committee for this Conference has decided with great regret to postpone the 11th GEHE Conference to 15 – 17 September 2021.

All the organizing institutions are convinced that the 2021 edition of the GEHE Conference will enhance the discussion and exchange among gender experts and practitioners as well as will provide original insights on the topics suggested: sex/gender analysis into the research content, structural change, gender equality plans, scientific-technical vocations, among others, with two cross-cutting areas such as Gender and Intersectionality and Application to Polytechnic Universities, including special focus on STEM fields and Women in STEM, as well as on STEM-SSH interdisciplinarity.

The ultimate goal is to produce valuable knowledge that can help design better and more effective gender equality policies in Research and Innovation (R&I) systems as well as in Higher Education Institutions across Europe and beyond.

This edition has made an effort to include experts on gender, science and innovation from Southern Europe in the International Scientific Committee while maintaining the experience gained in former Conferences. This group of high-level experts is responsible for evaluating more than 200 submitted proposals for communications, posters, symposia and workshops. These numbers speak volumes on the great interest this edition has generated among the gender community from Europe and beyond.

Follow the news on the 11th GEHE Conference on the official website.

2021-03-25T11:57:01+02:00April 23rd, 2020|Tags: , , , , |

Resilience and gender structural change in COVID-19 times

By María Bustelo, Complutense University of Madrid

If someone had told us last Christmas that our life was going to be so different three months later, we would just have simply not believed it. We would have never imagined the changes in our work and personal life due to the Covid-19 crisis, and we still do not know well what the future will look like, even if we all try to guess different scenarios in order to survive by planning (or just learning how not to plan). Who knows?

As our European sister projects, we aim at producing structural change through formulating and implementing sound Gender Equality Plans (GEPs). In SUPERA, we do that in 4 universities (Central European University, University of Cagliari; University of Coimbra; Complutense University of Madrid) and 2 research funding organisations (Spanish Ministry of Science and Autonomous Region of Sardegna), while the life in our institutions, as everywhere, has completely changed over the last two months.

Interestingly, in SUPERA we had started to think and talk earlier in our project about the need to adapt to broad contextual changes. Not as a routinely theoretical or conceptual exercise, but as an urgent need. Among the six implementing partners in our Consortium, since the beginning of our project in June 2018, we had already experienced changes of Rectors and rectoral teams in two universities (UC, UCM), and of the governments leading our two RFOs. In a third university, CEU, a decision of moving to another country was made. All these changes and their consequences were either not expected at all (or, at least, not as fast as they came) at the time we prepared the proposal, and neither when we started it. So, early in our project, apart from the intrinsic difficulties of gender structural change, we added to our landscape of concerns a need to be ready to revisit certain diagnoses about our institutions, and to adapt to changing targets and stakeholders among top leaders and decision makers. SUPERA partners started then to talk about resilience.

The term resilience comes from engineering and has been used for expressing the ability of materials in buildings and infrastructures to absorb assaults without complete failure. Borrowed from engineers first, nowadays it is widely used by psychologists for expressing an individual’s ability to adapt in the face of adverse conditions. But the perspective on which I would like to focus today is the one from organisational sciences, which considers the ability of a system to withstand changes in its environment and still functions.

In SUPERA, we started thinking about resilience because of the changes most of us were facing as early as in our first year of our project, which was really critical as we were in the first stages of our institutional change processes. But we found resilience was also an incredibly useful concept for dealing with the inevitable resistances we all find in our gender structural change endeavour. What can we do with those resistances? In principle we need to identify, recognise, study, even understand them; then, we must assess where and from whom they come from and whether they can be neutralised or counteracted, if we want to successfully overcome them. But very frequently, this is not going to be possible in a direct way: these resistances are not going to disappear, and as our Advisory Board member Jean-Michel Monnot showed us, it is not worth to spend time trying to convince the 10-20% people who will be immune to gender change, no matter what we do. Therefore, the ability to find and use workarounds through identifying windows of opportunity and through creative thinking and co-creation among ourselves and with our different stakeholders became crucial. An ability to adapt while still functioning because we can find diverse ways to (try to) hit our objectives. This is also resilience.

It is clear then that we will need an extra dose of resilience for this Covid-19 crisis, as the changes in environment are huge and affect all. Universities are struggling to cope with a sudden, not expected and total conversion to remote education. In parallel, institutions are fighting to work in a remote work mode for which they are not technically or cognitively prepared yet. These struggles will probably push down Gender Equality to the bottom of the list of priorities in our institutions, as urgencies come first, even if we know important things should not be relegated. How are we going to recover the attention of our communities towards Gender Equality issues?

My point here is that, although we as SUPERA partners have had an extra opportunity to deal with a great deal of uncertainty and to practise resilience, all the colleagues working in gender structural change in academia and research know well about this exercise too. We all know how to deal with resistances, explore windows of opportunities, and use workarounds that, even frequently on a trial and error basis, finally find ways to start breaking gender gaps, biases and stereotypes and open ways for structural and sustainable change.

As well as some resistances to gender, the social distance needed to overcome the pandemic, and the deep changes this situation will produce, are going to remain for a long time, even after the crisis be gladly over. We are not going to be able to do too much about it, but to adapt and find alternative ways to attract the attention to a clearly still necessary gender structural change in our institutions. Let me insist here that I am sure we are quite used to alternative thinking and innovative exploration. A further diagnosis of the implications from a gender perspective of the lock down and its social, economic, political and institutional consequences in academic life; the study of a new work life balance scenario, which requires new measures and puts old gender issues on the radar screen; and the possibilities of online exchanges and remote education, training & capacity development, are only a few to start with. Let’s go for it!

2021-03-25T11:58:50+02:00April 21st, 2020|Tags: , , , , , , |

Patrick Zaky’s arrest: the solidarity of the SUPERA Consortium

By the SUPERA Consortium

Despite the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, the Supera Consortium remains concerned about the conditions of Patrick George Zaky, a 27-year-old Egyptian postgratuate student enrolled in the “GEMMA” Erasmus Mundus Master’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Bologna, Italy, who is held in custody in Egypt.

On February 7 2020 Patrick Zaki was arrested by the Egyptian authorities, apparently in connection with his activism and research in the area of human rights and gender issues. The international network Scholars at Risk has reported that after five months of studies in Italy, Zaki returned to Egypt for a family visit. Upon his arrival at Cairo Airport Zaki was reportedly detained, interrogated by members of the Egyptian National Security Agency (NSA) and then taken to an undisclosed location, where he was allegedly subjected to torture, including beatings and electric shocks.

According to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a human rights organization based in Cairo, Egyptian authorities are investigating a number of allegations against Zaki, but have not publicly disclosed the grounds warranting  Zaki’s arrest. Zaki has been denied family visits, and has only had limited contact with legal counsel.

As of today, Zaki has been moved several times, and court hearings have been repeatedly put back due to the Coronavirus crisis.

The University of Bologna has issued a motion, calling for “Patrick Zaky’s safe and rapid return to Bologna, so that he can resume his studies. Until then, it is our duty to make sure that the Italian Government and the European Union continue to do their utmost to ensure Patrick’s return to our community.”

Responding to this motion, several international university networks have expressed their solidarity to Patrick Zaky.

Motion of the University of Bologna

The Conference of Italian Universities Rectors

Crue Universidades Españolas

Conférence des Présidents d’Université

Magna Charta Universitatum Observatory

European University association EUA

Scholars at Risk

2021-03-25T12:01:27+02:00March 21st, 2020|Tags: , , , |

XI European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education: save the date and call for abstracts

The Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, in collaboration with the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the support of the European Network on Gender Equality in Higher Education and other Spanish stakeholders, is pleased to invite you to the 11th European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education that will be held in Madrid on 16-18 September 2020. The aim of the #XIGEHEConf is to promote a gender-sensitive culture in the academic and R&I systems, in light of the global challenges ahead of us.

The theme of the conference is “Advancing gender mainstreaming in Academia, Research and Innovation”. The International Scientific Committee welcomes high-level contributions in the following thematic areas:

• Gender approaches in fostering scientific-technical vocations, especially in STEM fields
• Integration of the gender dimension in university teaching (undergraduate, postgraduate and pre-doctoral training)
• Policies fostering the incorporation of the gender dimension into the content of research, knowledge transfer and innovation
• Policies fostering structural change for gender equality in the research, technology and innovation system
• Gender Equality Plans and strategies in research, technology and innovation institutions

With two cross-cutting dimensions for all the conference areas:
• Gender and Intersectionality
• Application to Polytechnic Universities, including special focus on STEM fields and Women in STEM, as well as on STEM-SSH interdisciplinarity

Proposals are expected to present research-based analysis, good practices, evaluation and impact of strategies and measures on the above mentioned areas.
NEWS: the deadline of the Call for abstracts has been extended until March 3rd, 2020. Please consult the  Abstracts Guidelines  and visit the conference website for additional infos.

Contact infos:
XI European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education
CONFERENCE 16-17-18 September 2020 at ETSI Industriales -UPM-
Technical School of Industrial Engineering of Madrid, Spain
secretaria@genderequalityconference2020.com
Twitter account: @XigeheConf #XIGEHEConf
Conference website

Join us in Madrid to celebrate the 11th European Conference on GEHE!

2021-03-25T12:16:49+02:00January 20th, 2020|Tags: , , , , |