LeTSGEPs’ project aims at developing Gender Equality Plans of our RPOs within a Gender Budgeting perspective. A significant part of each partner’s activities consists therefore in implementing GEP measures, some of which may be defined “Best Practices” because of their innovative approach. Thanks to a scientific methodology developed by LeTSGEPs’ partner ICM, we selected a “Best Practice” measure for each of our six partners, and we are now very happy to share them with the RPO’s community.

In this post you find the presentation of the Best Practice N. 1 by our Partner ICM (Institut de Ciències del Mar – Spain), you can find the other Best practices at these links: MISANU, MPIN, CY, UNIME, UT.  

Should anybody be interested in further details, please contact us: info@letsgeps.eu 

 

 

 BEST PRACTICE TITLE: INTEGRATING GENDER DIMENSION IN RESEARCH AT ICM: Engendering the internal funds

 The Context and the Identified need(s)/ Inequalities addressed

In the ICM, there is a clear imbalance in the success of women in calls for funding applications and there is also a marked difference in the propensity of women to apply for funding. These differences affect both European and national funds and those obtained through contracts and agreements.

Since it is not possible to influence external calls, ICM intended to influence the internal resources available for research obtained by ICM through the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation (1 € million).

Best Practice Description:

The action focuses on the ICM internal funds and aims to ensure that the granting of funds through internal calls was gender sensitive. A verification procedure is created for all competitive calls for internal funds by ICM gender experts.

At two levels:

  • On the one hand, the introduction of clauses in the Framework regulation of the Severo Ochoa funding actions aimed at promoting gender Highlight, among other clauses, the one related to: “All calls will follow equal opportunities policies, with special emphasis to ensure that the eligibility and evaluation criteria do not introduce any gender bias. All calls will feature a clause addressing the gender dimension. Endorsement and approval by the Equality Task Force is mandatory to publish the call”.
  • On the other hand, the review of each individual call to ensure that the conditions of participation and the award criteria guarantee gender equality. This implies a prior evaluation of the gender impact of the calls according to the target group or groups and the introduction of “tailor-made” clauses and criteria in each call to guarantee Considering this, for example, in the calls with feminization of the target group, a proportionality clause is incorporated in the allocation of funds against a parity clause since this would go against women.

This review is being done by the ICM- LeTSGEPs team (whose members are part of the Equality Working Group), but in the future there should be a gender expert from the Equality Working Group to join the committees that prepare the calls and to participate in their design.

Main achievements:

Before the LeTSGEPs’ best practice was adopted, the funds obtained by ICM women researchers in 2019 represented 19.8% of total funds (only 13.1% in the case of European funds).     In addition, there was also a significant imbalance between the different research groups, of which only 21.4% have female PIs, but in which women make up 44.8% of the members (grades A, B and C.)

After the LeTSGEPs’ Best Practice started, during the first years of the GEP, there were 7 internal calls, all of them with at least 50% of women granted:

In global terms, 60% of the people who have been granted funds are women.

In terms of funds, 48,5% have been granted to women

Strengths of the measure/action and key elements for success:

  • It is an institutionalized procedure with the endorsement of the management
  • Guarantees equal treatment and gender opportunities in access to internal funds by incorporating the gender approach into the procedure but also linking gender equality efforts with money (Gender Budgeting)
  • Implies coordination and cooperation between the institutional actors involved and it’s committed to transparency and accountability (based on performance indicators on gender equality).
  • Standardised quality assurance of the integration of the gender approach with the standardised participation of the Equality Task Force

 

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