Gender Equality Index conference 2020

Soumia Akachar is a senior policy officer at the Directorate for Gender and LGBT Equality within the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture.

Together with representatives of the Departments for Internal Affairs, Social Affairs and the Inspectorate of Social affairs, Soumia is currently involved in the organisation of a hackathon aiming to raise awareness on (unconscious) gender biases in the use of AI in recruitment and selection processes. Prior to her position at the directorate, Soumia was an assistant professor at the Free University Amsterdam. Her research interests included the position of structurally disadvatanged groups and gendermainstreaming in diversity and inclusion policies.

Asha Allen is an expert on women’s rights and EU Digital Policy, working as Policy & Campaigns Officer at the European Women’s Lobby.

Asha coordinates specific areas of the broader EWL work on eradicating all forms of violence against women, specifically coordinating EWL’s #HerNetHerRights project, which maps the prevalence of violence against women in the digital space from a holistic perspective. Asha similarly supports EWL’s work on women’s socio-economic independence, specifically on gender budgeting and the position of women in the European digital economy.

Davide is working since 2016 in EIGE, as Statistic officer involved in the analysis and elaboration of Gender Equality Index, producing analysis and statistics elaboration on Beijing Platform of Actions (BPfA) areas of concerns and administrative data sources on gender-based violence.

He has previously worked as senior researcher in policy evaluation, development and implementation of methodologies and techniques for the analysis and evaluation public policies. He has worked for years in projects related to gender equality policies and labour market with particular attention to the introduction of gender perspective into the projects and programs financed by Structural Funds.

Ulrika Biesèrt is the Chief Human Resources Officer for IKEA Retail (Ingka Group). In her role, she leads the overall people agenda with the aim to enable business and people to grow together.

During her 22 years with IKEA, Ulrika has had several assignments both in Sweden and abroad and has worked in all core business areas of IKEA including its supply chain. Before joining IKEA, Ulrika worked as a family counsellor. Ulrika holds a Master’s degree in Social Sciences, Psychology and Economics. With a keen interest in people’s behaviours as well as in organisational development, Ulrika is passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace and society.

Ms. Elena Bonetti is Associate Professor of Mathematical Analysis at the University of Milan.

Graduated in Mathematics in 1997 at the University of Pavia, in 2002 Ms. Bonetti obtained a PhD in Mathematics at the University of Milan. She is committed to the Scout Movement and has experiences in the field of education and youth. On 5 September 2019, Ms. Bonetti was appointed as Minister for Equal Opportunities and Family by the President of the Italian Republic.

Carola Bouton currently works as a senior policy officer in the European Commission’s Directorate-General Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. Ms Bouton is responsible for policy development on the Future of Work within the Commission’s Employment Strategy Unit.

With a background in political and social sciences, Ms. Bouton joined the European Commission in 1989 and has served in a Commissioner’s Private Office, the Commission’s Secretariat-General and employment & social policy units in the Directorate-General Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion.

Olaf Bruns is a Brussels-based journalist, documentary director, and conference moderator.

A former Deputy Head of the Brussels office of the international TV news broadcaster Euronews, he now works as a freelancer. Amongst others, he is the deputy editor-in-chief of the quarterly magazine Progressive Post and writes for the European Green Journal. Via Crown Media he provides media training and teaches journalism at the Brussels-based media school IHECS. He holds a master's degree in Social Anthropology from Paris VIII University with several years of social science research work in various African countries.

Jakub Caisl is currently a statistics officer at the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) in Vilnius, Lithuania. EIGE is a regulatory agency of the European Union. It supports the EU and its Member States in promoting gender equality, fighting discrimination based on sex and raising awareness about gender issues.

Previously, Jakub worked as a senior policy consultant in the private sector, focusing on the areas of gender equality, economics and education. He started at EIGE in 2018, and was responsible for managing the research that went into the review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action − Beijing +25. Apart from that, he actively contributes to other research at EIGE, most notably the Gender Equality Index. He is also involved in the work on EIGE’s Gender Statistics Database and the data collections that this database covers.

Claire has an extensive experience of policy work, research and project coordination in the social field at the local and European levels. She has worked with social NGOs at the European level for more than 13 years, and contributed to efficient lobbying and awareness raising strategies aimed at developing social cohesion.

In her previous job, she coordinated a project gathering NGOs, local authorities, services providers, Foundations, as well as international organisations aiming at fostering the transition from institutional to community-based care for children and dependent people in the European Union. Previously, she has been active to promote the rights and the participation of people experiencing poverty, discrimination and social exclusion. She has also been working with local authorities for 7 years. Claire studied Political Sciences and Sociology.

Helena Dalli is the first EU Commissioner for Equality since December 2019. Her role is to deliver on the Union of Equality chapter within the Political Guidelines of President von der Leyen, by strengthening Europe’s commitment to equality and inclusion in all of its senses.

Prior to taking her role as Commissioner, Dalli held various political roles in Malta including Member of Parliament (1996 to 2019), Minister for European Affairs and Equality (2017 to 2019), and Minister for Social Dialogue, Consumer Affairs and Civil Liberties (2013-2017). She was also opposition Shadow Minister for public administration, equality, public broadcasting and national investments (1998-2013) and Junior Minister for Women's Rights in the Office of Prime Minister (1996-1998). Dalli holds a PhD in Political Sociology from the University of Nottingham, and lectured in Economic and Political Sociology, Public Policy, and Sociology of Law at the University of Malta.

As a former BBC correspondent and radio presenter, Claire Doole is skilled at driving conversations forward, ensuring editorial flow and generating audience interaction in the virtual and non-virtual world. She is a sought-after moderator, facilitator and Master of Ceremonies, having facilitated high-level international conferences attended by government ministers, business leaders and senior experts.

Earlier this year, she moderated at EIGE’s 10th anniversary event as well as facilitated a strategic brainstorming session for the management board and expert’s forum in Vilnius. A Swiss and British citizen, Claire is based in Geneva and is fully committed to the European Union and its values!

Mr. Laurberg is an economist at the Confederation of Danish Employers. He is a labour market economics and statistics specialist and has conducted numerous analyzes of Scandinavian and European labour markets. These include, among other things, analyzes of wages, working conditions, gender equality, forms of employment and the different labour market structures across the EU.

He also specializes in collective agreements and has a profound insight into both private and public sector agreements, including the relationship between social partner agreements and labour law.

Anja Lahermaa works as a lawyer for STTK, one of the trade union confederations in Finland. She is responsible for issues dealing with gender equality, diversity and work and private life balancing. She is a member of ETUC’s Women’s Committee and also a substitute member for its presidium. She also belongs to EIGE’s Expert Forum.

Irene Mandl is Head of Unit, Employment, at Eurofound. She is mainly involved in research on labour market developments (including new forms of work and employment, digitalisation, restructuring and related public policy approaches) and topics at the intersection of employment and entrepreneurship (such as job-creation, workplace practices, small and medium-sized enterprises, business start-ups and scale-ups and internationalisation).

Before joining Eurofound, she worked in policy-oriented socioeconomic research in Austria in the fields of employment and the labour market, as well as entrepreneurship and industry analysis. She holds Master’s degrees in international business administration and in business and law.

Blandine Mollard works as a member of the Research and Indices Team of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) in Vilnius. Her work has focused on developing the measurement of the phenomenon of violence against women in the EU in the context of the Gender Equality Index.

She also authored EIGE’s report on gender, youth and digitalisation in the context of the Austrian presidency of the Council of the European Union as well as several chapters of the 2019 edition of the Gender Equality Index focusing on Work-Life Balance. Before joining EIGE in 2016, she worked on Research and Statistics on gender issues in the Pacific Island Region for the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and in the Gender Coordination Unit of the International Organization for Migration in Geneva.

Dimitrios Papadimoulis is Vice-President of the European Parliament, Chair of the High-level Group on Gender Equality and Diversity and Head of the SYRIZA delegation.

He was born in 1955 in Athens. He graduated with distinction from Varvakeio Junior High School of Athens and studied with scholarship at the School of Civil Engineering of NTUA (National Technical University of Athens). He has worked as an engineer and business executive for 25 years (1980-2004). He was Member of the European Parliament between 2004 – 2009, Member of the Greek National Parliament between 2009 – 2014, and was re-elected Member of the European Parliament in 2014.

Uma Rani is Senior Economist at the Research Department and joined the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 2008. She holds a Ph.D in Development Economics from University of Hyderabad, India. Within the broad area of development economics, she has worked on rural livelihoods, informal economy, minimum wages and social policies.

Since 2016, her research focus has been on digital economy, wherein she explores how labour and social institutions interact with public policies and shape the patterns of economic and social inequality. In 2018, she has published and co-authored a report on Digital labour platforms and the future of work: Towards decent work in the online world and is currently leading the flagship report of the ILO on “Ensuring decent work and fair competition on digital labour platforms”.

Evelyn Regner is a European politician of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and Member of the European Parliament, since she was firstly elected in 2009.

As trade unionist and feminist, Evelyn Regner's main focus has always been on labour and women's-related affairs. She is the voice of workers and taxpayers when it comes to regulation of companies and financial markets, and is standing up for women's rights and gender equality. In her current mandate, she was elected chair of the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) and is a member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON).

Jolanta Reingarde PhD has been a senior researcher/analyst at the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) since 2010. She leads the programme on research and statistics. The development of the Gender Equality Index and annual progress reports on the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action in the EU are two major research areas of the programme.

Jolanta studied Sociology at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas (Lithuania), followed by a Ph.D on violence against women. She also has wide experience researching EU gender equality policies, measurement of gender equality, gender equality and economy, and work-life balance.

Jill Rubery is Professor of Comparative Employment Systems, and Director of the Work and Equalities Institute at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester.

She is an international expert on gender and employment: for fourteen years she co-ordinated the European Commission’s expert group on gender and employment. She has worked extensively as consultant for the EU and the ILO. Her research focuses on wages, working time, precarious work and the gendered impact of crises. Recent research includes an edited a book on women and austerity and two studies for the ILO on closing the gender pay gap.

Carlien Scheele is the Director of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) in Vilnius, Lithuania. EIGE is the only European Union agency focusing exclusively on gender equality. By providing reliable and policy-oriented research, it supports the EU and its Member States to strengthen the promotion of gender equality.

At EIGE’s helm since February 2020, she oversees the Institute's strategic programmes of activities and budgets. Ms Scheele aims to cement EIGE’s position as the EU’s knowledge centre on gender equality and deepen collaboration within and beyond Europe. Before taking up her post at EIGE, Ms Scheele worked as a Senior Gender Equality Adviser/Senior Human Resources Adviser in the Council of Europe, seconded from the Dutch government. Previously, she worked as the Director for Gender and LGBT Equality for the Dutch government, where she coordinated the national gender and LGBT equality policies.

Juliane Seifert was born in 1978 in Kiel. After her Abitur in Bayreuth, she studied History and Political Science in Düsseldorf, Florence and Berlin. In addition, she holds a Master degree in European Governance and Administration.

Since 2005, she held different high level positions in institutions on federal and state level, such as the federal Ministry of the Interior (2009-2011) and the Chancellery of Rhineland-Palatinate (2013-2016), specialised in Labour and Social Affairs. Since 2018 Juliane Seifert has been the State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

Throughout his professional career Christian has worked with issues pertinent to gender equality. His contributions to the field began when he started working at gender equality department of the at the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs. Currently he works as a stakeholder relations officer at the European Institute for Gender Equality. In this position, he is responsible in linking the Institute’s work with the EU policy processes. He holds MA in Sociology from Tallinn University, where his focus was on sociology of gender.

Mariana Vieira da Silva was born in Lisbon in 1978. She holds a degree in Sociology from ISCTE-IUL and has completed the coursework for the PhD in Public Policy at ISCTE, being currently finishing a dissertation on health and education policies in Portugal.

She has worked as a researcher at CIES-IUL in the area of public policies, health policies, education policies and justice policies, with several publications on these topics. Also worked as a trainer at INA and IPPS-IUL. She was part of the organizing team of ISCTE’s Public Policy Forum and was a member of the Advisory Board of "Descobrir" - Gulbenkian Program for Culture and Science, from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. From 2009 to 2011, she served as Advisor to the Secretary of State Assistant to the Prime Minister, and between 2005 and 2009 worked in the cabinet of the Minister of Education. She became member of Government in 2015, holding the position of Secretary of State Assistant to the Prime Minister (from November 2015 to February 2019), and as Minister of the Presidency and of the Administrative Modernization (from February to October 2019). In the current XXII Constitutional Government, she was appointed as Minister of State for the Presidency (of the Council of Ministers).