Dear LeTSGEPs friends!
a year has passed since the start of our beloved project, in February we celebrated the International Day of women in science and many national and international LeTSGEPs events took place: what a better moment for an outlook to what we did this year and for a glance to the next challenges that we will face in the next months.
First of all, let’s remind to newcomers what LeTSGEP is: an Horizon project connecting several research-performing organisations to plan and perform actions that will result in systemic institutional transformation concerning gender prejudices. LeTSGEPs will promote the use of the GEAR tool by EIGE and Gender Budgeting methodology (GB) to face discrimination against women by integrating them in the budgetary process, aiming to eliminate marginalisation and exclusion from economic and political activities.
8 amazing partner are part of the consortium and contribute with determination to achieve the projects’ goals:
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Leading partner, Italy), RWTH Aachen University (Germany) Mathematical Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Serbia), University of Messina (Italy), University of Tirana (Albania) Max Planck Society (Germany) Institut de Ciències del Mar (Spain), CY Cergy Paris Université (France)
This year was, no doubt, a very tough one for everybody. As soon as we started the project on 20/21 January 2020 with the kick off meeting, where we all met in person for the first time, pandemic entered in our lives and still hardly influences them.
But we didn’t lose our hearts: full intensive smart working and online meeting allowed us to go ahead with the project. Today we all regret and miss the beautiful human side of the European projects, but at the same time we are all doing our best to overcome obstacles, reorganize activities, keep high spirits and socialize in our frequent online meetings.
Yes, because against all odds, LeTSGEPs worked a lot this year!
At internal level the consortium was committed to study and research in order to deliver the documents needed to develop Gender Equality Plans: the State-of-the-Art report was useful to understand where to start from, the GA and GB methodology of analysis was important to share common tools for analysis and evaluation.
Following the adoption of a LeTSGEPs Gender Equality Training Strategy, a wide and intensive training activity was also carried online, both on Gender Budgeting and on Gender Equality Plans, with a very large and interested participation from researchers and administrative personnel of the partners.
In order to sensitize the partners’ academic and institutional context to the urgency and importance of Gender Equality Plans, several public events were also organized by all partners:
Internal events:
MISANU 29th July, 17th November and 12th December 2020; MPG 15th and 19th October 2020, ICM-CSIC 06th November 2020, CY 3rd December 2020, UT 15th December 2020, UNIME: 11th January 2021 ,
National Stakeholders events:
ICM 10th December 2020, UNIME: 14th January 2021, CY: 4th February 2021, UT: 4th February 2021, MPG: 12th February 2021, MISANU: 17thFebruary 2021
International Workshop on Gender Budgeting:
MISANU, 22nd February 2021
LeTSGEPs participation in other conferences and events
Besides, many consortium partners were invited to present LeTSGEPs at public events and webinar: yes, there is much interest in our project! UT: 15th October 2020, MISANU: 12thNovember 2020, UT: 13thNovember 2020, UNIMORE &UNIME 3rd4th December 2020, UNIMORE & RTWH 11thJanuary 2021,
Project management activities:
All the activities were supported by an intensive activity of project management, reporting activity, monthly projects’ meetings and specific bilateral meetings to meet partners’ specific technical needs.
Besides, three days of online events were organized by ICM: on the 26th the Transversal working groups, in which Partners discussed and debated on RPOs gender issues useful for their GEPs, on the 27th the Biannual Project meeting and on the 28th the Steering committee.
…and for the future?
Well, many events and news are foreseen for the upcoming months: context analysis and first GEP deliverables are in progress in these days and are due by late spring. We are all very excited for the partners implementing GEP at their institutions for the first time: expectations for true transformative change at RPOs are very high indeed.
Dissemination and social activity will also be implemented in the near future together with the content’s development, so there will be plenty of time for sharing results, ideas, but also hopes and enthusiasm.