Gender Equality in Higher Education for Central Macedonia
Like the other Transformative Experiments, the Greek partners in Central Macedonia – the Region of Central Macedonia (RCM) and the South-East European Research Centre (SEERC) – have completed their co-design and co-thinking phase. As part of this they worked with a wide array of regional stakeholders to discuss the key topic of their experiment: gender equality in higher education, especially within the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Through co-creation events, held both in-person and online as the situation dictated, they have collected data from stakeholders, both during the events and through feedback questionnaires filled out by the stakeholders after attending them. This data is now being processed and will feed into the next steps of the project. The first draft of a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) for R&I organisations – including universities, research centres, companies, and public bodies – has also been written and is waiting to be refined in the next stage of the experiment.
The next steps to be taken will be a series of consultation meetings with two Action Groups which have been established out of the co-creation activities. With each Action Group, two to three meetings are foreseen between January and June of 2021. The primary purpose of these is to gain more detailed insight into the areas and issues that the GEP currently targets. Gender inequality is a broad issue with numerous facets, so to allow for more in-depth discussion, each Action Group will deal with a different set of topics.
Action Group 1 will consider:
- Female career progression;
- Confronting Social and Cultural Stereotypes – Challenging horizontal segregation;
- Work-life balance;
- Projection of female role models – appropriate scientific communication.
Meanwhile, Action Group 2 will deal with:
- Gender-aware science;
- Gender-neutral language in institutional communication and dissemination;
- Sexual harassment and gendered violence;
- Raising awareness on gender issues.
In addition to this, various informative public events, workshops, and training sessions will be organised according to certain themes, taking place from January through July 2021. These will serve the purpose of informing the wider public in more detail about the progression of the experiment on the future actions, as well as the topics the GEP is intended to tackle. Experts in this field will be included in the organisation and running of the events, which will focus on one specific area of intervention at a time (see examples in the bullet points above). Another aim here is to bring in and engage new stakeholders who didn’t previously attended the co-creation events.
To watch a video explaining some of the activities of this Transformative Experiment in a nutshell, see the video player below:
