Abstract

Promoting gender equality and inclusiveness is a priority of the European Commission’s framework for establishing a more effective and coordinated European research area (ERA). There are different reasons why the area of medical research filed and in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields does not offer a level playing field for researchers, with women in particular facing multiple barriers in the early stages of their careers and in their career advancement. Developing a Gender Equality Plan tailored to an Research Hospital’s specific context is the first step to promote a broader cultural changes in these organizations. The second step is to adapt and disseminate the SAGA Toolkit* in these reality. The SAGA Toolkit is multipurpose and sets out a conceptual and methodological framework to provide a series of tools to integrate, monitor and evaluate gender equality and to assist in the design of gender-sensitive and evidence-based policies to strengthen the gender policy agenda. We implemented, adapted, managed and coordinated the anonymous and voluntary SAGA survey in our Research Hospital for our researchers. The results of the internal survey will lay the basis for the definition of specific meetings and debates on any priority, critical issue and urgent need that have emerged and which will serve as training for future targeted training activities.

*”UNESCO, Measuring Gender Equality in Science and Engineering: the SAGA Toolkit, SAGA Working Paper 2, Paris, 2017” available in Open Access under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license.