R&I PEERS

R&I PEERS Contract Title Pilot experiences for improving gender equality in research organisations Contract Number 788171 Funding Period 01/05/2018 - 30/04/2022 Funding Agency European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Total Cost €2,029,351.25 Lead Partner Universita Degli Studi di Salerno (UNISA) Partners Cyprus Neuroscience and Technology Institute (CNTI), Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche (CNR), Associazione Industriali Della Provincia di Salerno (AISAI), Asociacion - Centro de Investigacion Cooperativa en Nanociencias - CIC NANOGUNE (CIC nanoGUNE), MIGAL Galilee Research Institute LTD (MIGAL), Digital Leadership Institute (DLI), Znanstvenoraziskovalni Center Slovenske Akademije Znanosti in Umetnosti (ZRC SAZU), Agence Nationale de la Promotion de la Recherche Scientifique (ANPR), Hellenic Republic Ministry of Interior (GSGE) FWC coordinator(s) Andreas P. Andreou Elena Aristodemou Website http://ripeers.eu/

The R&I PEERS project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. The project is coordinated by the Universita Degli Studi di Salerno (UNISA) with the participation of nine additional partners from Cyprus, Greece, Tunisia, Israel, Slovenia, Belgium, Spain and Italy.

Background and Overview

The R&I Peers project will be based on the concept of gender equality, that can be expressed as “women and men enjoy the same status and have equal opportunity to realize their full human rights and potential to contribute to national, political, economic, social and cultural development, and to benefit from the results”.

Nonetheless, gender biasing currently permeates all life-domains, and claims for urgent need of interventions addressing strategic gender interests focus on fundamental issues related to women’s (or, less often, men’s) subordination and gender inequities. Strategic gender interests are long-term, usually not material, and are often related to structural changes in society regarding women’s status and equity. This is also the case of the Research Sector, in which women still systematically disappear from higher levels of academic hierarchy.

Despite existing signs of progress towards gender equality amongst top-level graduates in the EU, overall, positive changes since 2004 were not sufficient to produce gender balance across different fields by 2012 . The partners are aware that the obstacles experienced by individuals and groups striving for self-development are often indirect and difficult to discern. They are caused by structural phenomena, social representations and personal and professional cultures that are often difficult to grasp and are particularly resistant to change.

The problems faced by research institutions can be summarised as :

• Opaqueness in decision-making processes;
• Institutional practices inhibiting career opportunities:
• Unconscious bias in assessing excellence
• Wasted opportunities and cognitive errors in knowledge, technology and innovation;
• Employment policies and practices.

These problems are magnified in the Mediterranean Countries because of the cultural and welfare model, mainly based on the differentiation between the role of women (pivotal role as responsible of family caring) and men (“the breadwinner”). The SHE Figures 2015 statistics highlight the gap among the Mediterranean area and the other European areas.

These are systemic difficulties and the R&I Project partners had chosen an approach that considers that gender-neutral policy should go hand in hand with gender-sensitive measures, thus ensuring effective equality of opportunities between men and women in science and technology and, therefore, complying with the “equality between men and women”, one of the European Union’ founding principles. This perspective is aligned with the Rome declaration (produced during the RRI-SSH conference held in Rome on November 2014, and organised by partner CNR), which calls on all stakeholders to further promote the whole RRI pillars in an integrated way.

Objectives

The consortium of R&I PEERS has identified the following three objectives to facilitate the smooth implementation and success of the project:

• Implementation and improvement of 7 Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in R&I related organisations
• Smooth the gap of gender representation in decision-making and research-performing processes
• Maximise the impact and the efficacy of gender content into the research programmes

Geographical COverage

• Italy
• Cyprus
• Spain
• Israel
• Belgium
• Greece
• Slovenia

Gender Equality Plan (GEP)

As envisioned by the project, Cyprus Neuroscience and Technology Institute (CNTI) has designed a customised Gender Equality Plan (GEP) to foster gender equality and strengthen the participation of female employees within the departments of the organisation. The customised Gender Equality Plan developed lies on the following target areas: work-life balance, reducing the gender gap in decision-making bodies, reducing gender gap among researchers, improving the use of gender-neutral language in organization’s documents, mentoring and supporting the career and excellence of female researchers. Among others, the plan includes the establishment of equal participation of the two genders in Cyprus Neuroscience and Technology Institute (CNTI)'s Board of Directors for a period of at least 5 years and the introduction of the possibility of flexible working hours as well as remote work in order to improve the work-life balance of the employees.

Full access to the GEP is granted here.

National Legislation about Gender Equality

In order to sufficiently develop the internal Gender Equality Plan (GEP) at Cyprus Neuroscience and Technology Institute (CNTI), the following national legislative documents were taken into account and further used to raise awareness among the employees regarding gender equality:

• Ο Περί Ίσης Μεταχείρισης στην Απασχόληση και την Εργασία Νόμος του 2004 (Ν. 58(I)/2004) / The Equal Treatment in Employment and Labor Law of 2004 (Law 58 (I) / 2004) pdf
• Ο Περί Ίσης Μεταχείρισης Ανδρών και Γυναικών στην Απασχόληση και στην Επαγγελματική Εκπαίδευση Νόμος του 2002 (Ν. 205(I)/2002) / The Equal Treatment of Men and Women in Employment and Vocational Training Law of 2002 (Law 205 (I) / 2002) pdf
• Ο περί Ίσης Μεταχείρισης Ανδρών και Γυναικών (Πρόσβαση σε Αγαθά και Υπηρεσίες και στην Παροχή Αυτών ) Νόμος του 2008 (Ν. 18(I)/2008) / Equal Treatment of Men and Women (Access to and supply of goods and services) Law 2008 (Law 18 (I) / 2008) pdf
• Ο Περί Γονικής Άδειας και Άδειας για Λόγους Aνωτέρας Bίας Nόμος του 2012 (Ν. 47(I)/2012) / Parental Leave Law (2012) 47 (I) / 2012) pdf
• Ο περί Προστασίας της Μητρότητας Νόμος του 1997 (Ν. 100(I)/1997) / The Maternity Protection Law of 1997 (Law 100 (I) / 1997) pdf
• Ο Περί Ίσης Μεταχειρίσεως Ανδρών και Γυναικών στα Επαγγελματικά Σχέδια Κοινωνικής Ασφάλισης Νόμος του 2002 (133(I)/2002) / The Equal Treatment of Men and Women in Professional Social Security Schemes Law of 2002 (133 (I) / 2002) pdf
• Ο περί Προστασίας της Πατρότητας Νόμος του 2017 (117(Ι)2017) / The Paternity Protection Law of 2017 (117(Ι)2017) pdf
• Ο Περί Ίσης Αμοιβής μεταξύ Ανδρών και Γυναικών για την Ίδια Εργασία ή για Εργασία Ίσης Αξίας Νόμος του 2002 (Ν. 177(I)/2002) / The Equal Pay for Men and Women for Equal Employment or Equal Work Law of 2002 (177 (I) / 2002) pdf
• Ο περί Κοινωνικών Ασφαλίσεων (Τροποποιητικός) Νόμος του 2010 (59(I)/2010) pdf

R&I PEERS on CORDIS

The project data and reports can be found on: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/788171/results

Structured Democratic Dialogue workshops

Four Structured Democratic Dialogue workshops were implemented during the life-cycle of the project focusing on the cooperative knowledge sharing between R&I PEERS and other initiatives and projects dealing with gender equality plan. The scope of these workshops which will bring together stakeholders and experts is double:

• to strengthen the knowledge base
• to share experiences with the Gender Equality arena, thus ensuring long term adaptation of R&I PEERS GEPs and outlined strategies.

Below is a list of all Structured Democratic Dialogue workshops

Table Caption

#	SDD	Place	Dates
1	R-I-Peers Rome SDDP Identification of best practices in the Gender Equality Arena within an organisation	Rome	7 Nov 2018
2	R-I-Peers Ljubljana SDDP Identification of measures and actions for successful Gender Equality Plans implementation within Research Performing Organisations	Ljubljana	14 Oct 2019
3	R-I-Peers San Sebastian Virtual SDDP Best practices to overcome problems, barriers, issues when implementing your GEPs	San Sebastian	9 Dec 2020
4	R-I-Peers - Athens Virtual SDD Obstacles we face when designing and implementing GEPs	Athens	16 Dec 2021 - 27 Jan 2022

Newsletters

The project's Newsletters are available at: [[1]]

• Download the 1st Newsletter here
• Download the 2nd Newsletter here
• Download the 3rd Newsletter here
• Download the 4th Newsletter here
• Download the 5th Newsletter here
• Download the 6th Newsletter here

Press Releases

• R-I-Peers Press release, 1st May 2021
• R-I-Peers Press release, 15 December 2021
• R-I-Peers Press release, 1st February 2022
• R-I-Peers Press release, 21 June 2022
• R-I-Peers Press release, 11 July 2022

Deliverables

https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/788171/results

Communication campaign - first draft A yearly-based document reporting the dissemination and communication activities. It will include also information about the engagement of experts and cases mapping in T7.3

First RRI validation reporting A document reporting the compliance of the project activities, content and internal policies to RRI principles.

Final proceedings of Wave2 of training sessions Reporting about the second wave of training sessions to partners including the training material

Second RRI validation reporting A document reporting the compliance of the project activities content and internal policies to RRI principles

Report on first validation workshop Proceedings about the first validation and consultation workshop, including a report on the The Advisory Board observations

GE policies and best practices - second update Annual document reporting the status of existing GEPs and regulations, focused on our GEPs targets.

Report on second validation workshop Proceedings of the second validation and consultation workshop, including a report on the The Advisory Board observations

Report on first SDD workshops Proceedings about the first mutual learning workshops.

Calendar of events The Deliverable consists in an updatable list/calendar of the events that the project partners intend to attend. It also include all the events organised by the consortium, excluding the consortium meeting (workshops, trainings, and conferences)

Final report on GEPs impact progress Final report about the check of impact of GEPs

Communication campaign - final update A yearlybased document reporting the dissemination and communication activities It will include also information about the engagement of experts and cases mapping in T73

Mid-term Project Management Report The report is a summary of project activities and results, to be shared with the project stakeholders. Its aim is to keep the stakeholders informed on the project achievement. Contrarily to the Periodic Reports foreseen by the Commission, the reports will not contain any reference to the project financial resources and will be much less detail (a couple of pages)

Analysis of country guidelines REPORT about the compliance of GEPs against the local gender policies and the REA.

Mid-term GEPs definition improvement A document describing the GEPs improved and the activities behind their improvement.

GE policies and best practices - fourth update Annual document reporting the status of existing GEPs and regulations focused on our GEPs targets

First update of the list of actions for GEPs improvement A first update about the actions selected for improving the GEPs

Mid-term Report on GEPs impact progress A mid-term report about the check of impact of GEPs.

Communication campaign - third update A yearlybased document reporting the dissemination and communication activities It will include also information about the engagement of experts and cases mapping in T73

GE policies and best practices Annual document reporting the status of existing GEPs and regulations, focused on our GEPs targets.

List of actions for GEPs improvement A second update about the actions selected for improving the GEPs

Report on third validation workshop Proceedings on the third validation and consultation workshop including a report on the The Advisory Board observations

Communication campaing - second update A yearly-based document reporting the dissemination and communication activities. It will include also information about the engagement of experts and cases mapping in T7.3

Final GEPs definition improvement A document describing the GEPs improved and the activities behind their improvement

R&I PEERS recommendations A document reporting and listing the recommendations for RFOs and RPOs implementing GEPs in Mediterranean area

Second report on SDD workshops Proceedings about the last mutual learning workshops

GE policies and best practices - third update Annual document reporting the status of existing GEPs and regulations, focused on our GEPs targets.

Final project report The final report is a summary of project activities and results to be shared with the project stakeholders It will include the final report fo the Advisory Board on project results Its aim is to keep the stakeholders informed on the project achievement Contrarily to the Periodic Reports foreseen by the Commission the reports will not contain any reference to the project financial resources and will be much less detail a couple of pages

First proceedings of Wave2 of training sessions Reporting about the second wave of training sessions to partners, including the training material.