As announced, the Final Conference of LeTSTEPs, organised jointly with the sister project CALIPER, took place in Brussels on the 23rd of November, 2023. It represented a milestone for the LeTGEPs project, being the public conclusion of four years of hard work on Gender Equality Plans and Gender Budgeting.
In detail, the conference focused on how GEPs and other equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives can be promoted, supported and sustained and how challenges can be overcome.
For the completion of the CALIPER and LeTSGEPs projects, best practices emerged, reflecting on how challenges can be addressed to achieve long-term, inclusive and sustainable institutional change. To make GEPs sustainable, for instance, the importance of integrating Gender Equality Plans into the budget cycle was noted, evaluating the programs put in place regarding their impact on gender equality through gender budgets.
The conference was developed through four consecutive panels on the projects’ key topics: gender equality and structural change, intersectionality, gender budgeting, and innovation ecosystems.
The final session shared the two key outcomes of the projects:
- CALIPER’s Charter for the promotion of inclusive gender equality in R&I organisations and ecosystems within the geographical, socio-economic, organisational and cultural contexts in which they operate and
- the LeTSGEPs Handbook that provides guidelines for implementing GEPs and gender budgeting to support organisations in drafting GEPs and monitoring them.
The conference aimed to disseminate further the objective of interacting with public institutions to create a gender-equitable environment.
The scientific coordinator, Prof. Tindara Addabbo of Unimore, presented the vision and main achievements of LeTSGEPs. At the same time, LeTSGEPs partners intervened on their specific experience in the project, talking about the GEP measures they implemented and that they were more proud of.
The event was participated by 100 people attending, and another 116 people registered for online participation. Direct feedback from the participants in Brussels was of great appreciation.
The Final Conference then also had a follow-up for LeTSGEPs Consortium on the 24th of November, where Region Emilia Romagna, the Region of Unimore, hosted a workshop on “Gender budgeting in context. RPOs, regions and local authorities together for a gender-equal environment.
There are many people we want to thank for the conference’s success:
- The partners from the LeTSGEPs consortium, who attended the event with great interest, availability and proactive attitude;
- Our colleagues from CALIPER, with whom we co-organised a very rich but complicated programme and who offered strong support in terms of networking, logistics and social media;
- Our panellists and moderators for their precious contributions.
For those who would like to follow the registered event, here is the link: https://rb.gy/p9sdq6
Links to the Final Conference Materials: