In June 2021 the LetsGEPs Consortium has achieved the fundamental milestone of the project: the official approval of the Gender Equality Plans for its six implementing partners. It was a very tough target to hit, since none of them had ever implemented a Gender Equality Plan before, and, above all, the debut coincided with the pandemic period: not exactly the best one to promote transformative changes!
Nevertheless, despite fears for Covid, smartworking, work overloads, hilled colleagues to replace, all partners managed to structure and approve their first GEP: a result we are all very much proud of.
In these weeks all the GEPs are on the way of the implementation process, and project teams are working hard to realize the gender equality measures planned.
In the next months we will therefore report on activities and results, but now we think that a synthetic presentation of the actions and objectives of LeTSTEPs’ GEPs may be helpful to other RPOs willing to engage into the GEPs process.
After all, what a better encouragement: if we managed to release GEP in these conditions, everything is possible!
Today we present here to you the GEP of ICM:
The Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM) is the fourth largest research institute of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the largest dedicated to marine research.
The ICM GEP covers eight fields of action, based on the results of an extensive data collection and analysis, to be implemented by 14 measures.
The first field, Women Participation in research, career progression and development, is composed of various measures to help women researchers overcome the glass ceiling (e.g. individual support for women with potential to be PIs), with the help of professional career development plans for young female researchers, which contains a mentoring program along with the integration of gender dimension in internal funding.
The second field of action is Gender Balance in decision making. Work in this area will start with a presentation of the GEP to the Governing Board and an analysis is also the further on the possibilities of regulating the equal representation of women and men in governing boards. It will proceed with gender equality training for the Governing Board and promotion of the candidacies of women to positions in the governing board. The institutionalization of both the so-called Equality Task Force (former Gender Equality Committee) and the GEP will also be pursued by, for example, negotiating a yearly budget for the Equality Task Force, as well as of the Gender Monitoring by, for example, creating guidelines for systematic inclusion of gender in all data collection, statistics and reports produced by ICM.
The third field is Gender in research. Among other measures, it is planned here to identify ICM’s research areas that could incorporate a gender dimension and provide the required training.
The fourth field of action is Improving work-life balance. In addition to further data collection in order to better understand how matters of career-family conciliation impact the careers of women researchers, specific measures include improving the management of research grants so that persons in parental leave still get full enjoyment of the grant, and scheduling work meetings only within core hours, among many other measures.
The fifth field addresses the subject of developing sexual harassment and gender-based violence prevention and action through the creation of prevention and support structures and channels, readily available and accessible, and by assigning responsibility for the topic to a reference person, which will receive adequate training. Another key aspect is raising awareness on sexual and gender-based harassment for all staff and to promote a better knowledge of the Protocol of sexual harassment at ICM
As a sixth field ICM is striving for a Gender-inclusive institutional culture by training on the inclusion of gender dimension within ICM and several measures to increase gender awareness, like, for example, involving key stakeholders in discussions about concept of excellence from a gender perspective, or increasing the presence of ICM’s women staff in external events, among other measures.
The seventh field is Remuneration policy. It is focused on implementing a Gender Budgeting approach and on actions specifically targeting the gender pay gap.
The eighth and final area deals with promoting the use of inclusive and non-sexist communication. Besides an in-depth data collection on the topic, it foresees an internal regulation for all ICM staff, a guide to the gender-sensitive use of language and training on the issue, as well as the review of already existing documents.
Overall, the ICM GEP is characterized by an enormous depth of data collection and analysis and by a very broad range of measures, which are described in great detail and already well designed to the level of individual steps needed for its implementation. This is a good practical example of how a GEP can already detail the implementation phase to a great extent, which can be very helpful to prevent obstacles and counteract resistances.
The full GEP report of ICM is available here: https://www.icm.csic.es/sites/default/files/2021-06/GEP_ICM_2021.pdf