Gender equality in regional R&I activities is little studied in Finland. This seminar series targeted small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and prompted them to consider the business benefits of using the expertise of both women and men in R&I activities. Arranged with the University of Tampere as part of “Research and innovation in the Pirkanmaa region: gender equality as a solution”, the seminar emphasised joint development and sharing of concrete tools.
The Grant Agency of Masaryk University developed its Career Restart scheme to support researchers returning after a career break (e.g. after parental leave) and assist their reintegration into research teams. The funding (CZK 500,000 per year) is to be used for personnel costs only, including supporting researchers‘ families and covering childcare expenses. This measure may help to reduce the leaky pipeline effect, which is quite evident among post-doctoral academics in Czechia, especially due to long parental leave and a lack of affordable childcare for children under three years.
Since 2016 the ‘Cascade’ measure deals with gender inequality in career progression. The measure aims to fight the phenomenon known as the ‘leaky pipeline’, especially to combat the loss of gender equality at the highest levels of the academic career by encouraging women, from the beginning of the academic careers, to apply to promotions. This measure applies to promotions from October 2017 to the titles of professor (Grade B) and full professor (Grade A).
Since 2016, the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST) has developed and implemented a number of cross-curricular programmes to expose students to a range of study units, both those traditionally attracting mainly women and those typically attracting men students. This is intended to improve gender balance in the pursuit of scientific studies and careers in Malta. The take-up of these programmes has been very limited, most likely because students prefer to focus on their own area of study rather than straddling two specialisations.
The government’s trade and innovation agency, Enterprise Ireland, launched the “2020 Action Plan for Women in Business: Fuelling growth through diversity”. The Action Plan aims to drive national economic success by increasing the participation of women in entrepreneurship and business leadership, creating funding that targets women entrepreneurs and women researchers with the potential to advance their research into viable business propositions, and piloting an initiative to include women leaders/senior managers in project teams from third-level institutions.
The global objective of the CNRS`s gender advisor measure is to reduce possible gender bias in recruitment and promotion committees. The idea was to observe gender balance and possible biases in real time, while the committees are in the process of consulting. The measure concerns the recruitment and promotion of CNRS researchers (it will be extended to administrative and technical staff in the future).
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) is a public research and higher education institution in engineering, architecture, science and technology. Gender stereotypes mean that UPC has a low percentage of women students (less than 30 % of BSc and MSc students). This percentage is similarly low across all categories of academic career, falling to its lowest percentage in the full professor category.
The national R&I funding programme, FUSION, is managed by the MCST. The funding rules were revised in 2017 to make the implementation of gender equality the decisive factor in cases where two or more research projects score the same in their evaluation. The specific provision states that “if two or more projects obtain the same mark following evaluation, then [the] MCST shall give priority to that project which provides the best consideration to the implementation of gender equality in the research project”.
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The Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF) in Cyprus seeks to address gender inequalities and imbalances in R&I through the development and implementation of a context-specific GEP, which was developed as part of the TARGET project. The overall objective of the GEP 2018–2020 is to build institutional capacity to facilitate cultural change that goes beyond the formal adoption of a GEP.
In the summer of 2019, the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) began its Irène Curie Fellowship (ICF) Programme. The Programme opened up academic jobs exclusively to women applicants for six months in a bid to achieve a greater balance between women and men in academic positions. Although widely supported, the measure also met with some criticism. In May 2020, it was halted following a ruling by the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights (Het College voor de Rechten van de Mens, CRM), which stated that TU/e’s approach of opening up jobs exclusively to women was disproportionate.
Riga Stradins University (RSU) has yet to adopt a GEP. However, the “Sustainable Development Goals” section of its website emphasises “the person” as the RSU’s main value. It notes that gender equality is an integral value of the university and one of the basic elements for successful work, stating “gender equality = sustainable development”. RSU publishes current information on the topic of gender equality on its website, while its professors and students share their opinions in various conferences and public discussions.