Abstract

While the European Commission sets strict objectives and obligations in terms of gender equality for academic institutions (implementation of Gender Equality Plans, integration of gender into research and teaching, evaluation of gender composition of teams and setting of measures to fight against gender based violence), the situation at the national level may vary: from openly supportive to publicly hostile.
The RESET project involves seven partner universities from six different countries situated in the opposite corners of Europe: France, Portugal, Greece, Poland, Germany and Finland. At the local level, the execution of the measures and actions for gender equality is not always perceived as a part of “raising awareness” methodology. On the contrary, it is sometimes deemed to be an ideology that poses a threat to the academic freedom. Thus, while universities validate their inclusive Gender Equality Plans to be conformant to the funding requirements, the internal resistance persists. The particular cleavage and debates are going around the terms of “feminism”, “intersectionality”, “gender inclusive language”, “quotas” and relevance of gender within scientific disciplines, projects and teaching.
The poster prepared by the coordinator of the project has an objective to provide an insight to the implementation of the RESET - Horizon 2020 project, which functions under the framework of coordination and support actions, and does not only integrates the “research” pillar, but also puts forward strong challenges for the institutional and cultural change. The results are drawn from the discussions with the teams, as well as project’s outputs: deliverables, qualitative and quantitative data and actions. The poster will provide a synthetic presentation of existing difficulties to promote cultural change in favour of equality and key answers of the RESET project. Namely, it will set the framework of the European, national and local contexts and demonstrate the project’s tools and recommendations on how to integrate gender perspective to the research and institutional practices (checklist and protocol for Gender Impact Assessment, setting of Gender Equality Boards, toolbox for inclusive communication, joint statement on scientific excellence, equality and diversity). Altogether, the combination of these measures favour the progress of Responsible Research and Innovation, and contribute to the development of the European Research Area.