“ Besides helping us clarify our initial objectives and create a comprehensive stakeholder map, Horizon Results Booster provided us with materials for joint dissemination and supported us in building a social media campaign ”
Gender equality is still far from being a reality in Europe. With huge differences among member states, there still persist a number of gender stereotypes in lots of fields like care, education, the labour market or businesses. This is also true in the Academia and research institutions, where women hold less than 25% of the leadership positions and work more frequently under precarious working contracts compared to men.
The SPEAR project tackles these problems by designing sustainable and effective Gender Equality Plans (GEP) for research institutions. This is possible through the implementation of GEPs in Research Performing Organisations based on a distinct methodology committed to Creative, Open, Mitigating, Processual, Accountable, SMART and Sustainable (COMPASS) changes. The COMPASS tool offers an innovative approach that follows a methodology to help potential gender equality practitioners in their work.
“What the project aims to do is increase the number of gender equality plans which are implemented in institutions. This is something that we have managed to achieve in our project, to challenge the prevalent barriers in order to give everyone equal opportunities to proceed with their career prospects without discrimination, glass ceilings, stereotypical expectations”, explains Evdokia Bairampa at Europa Media, one of the implementation partners of SPEAR.
“The Booster helped us a lot to clarify and identify our stakeholders, which was actually one of our main objectives. We discussed ways to set up gender equality plans in different universities. Finally, we decided to create a kind of online tool, called GEP Starter, and promote it on the 8th of March, which is the International Women's Day. Thanks to this tool, those who are not familiar with gender equality plans can easily get started,” says Evdokia Bairampa.
“This is very important because we find out that with gender equality plans you can among many things, work systematically toward the kind of safe and supportive working environment for everyone to feel comfortable with their career development and their expectations. As women are still generally underrepresented in Academia, especially at the top ranks, this will benefit everyone, but will have the greatest impact for those who are most different to the existing norms of what a researcher is,” Evdokia Bairampa added.
“ Horizon Results Booster services were very helpful. It was useful to understand how exploitation could go beyond direct commercialisation. Through these seminars, I realised that in fact it could be applied to many fields. ”
“ Horizon Results Booster was very helpful for the support of the project exploitation in this particular phase of consolidation. DENiM received good feedback regarding the current development level, in particular for the Key Exploitable Result characterization and the first business model produced by R2M Solution. At the same time the booster service provides us a helpful tool to investigate missing points. ”
“ HRB's support has been valuable in providing strategic guidance and facilitating initial steps in our journey. While their assistance has primarily focused on strategic input, we appreciate their contributions in shaping our early direction ”
