ERC enshrines gender equality in three aims

The European Research Council’s Scientific Council has announced the details of its Gender equality plan. The scheme outlines several overall objectives, which are “enshrined in the core documents establishing Horizon 2020”.

According to the report, the ERC says three gender-relevant goals should be implemented, namely: ‘Gender balance in research teams’; ‘Gender balance in decision making’; and ‘Integrating gender/sex analysis in research and innovation content’.

The European research funding organisation says that it believes both men and women are “equally able to perform excellent frontier research” and that it hopes to “confront structural gender differences”. The plan includes a total of six practical aims, including “raising awareness about the ERC gender policy among potential applicants”, “improve the gender balance among researchers”, “identifying and removing any potential gender bias” and “embed gender awareness within all levels of the ERC processes”.

The report also includes details on how to implement the plan, including ‘Awareness and submission rates’ and ‘Evaluation processes and granting’. There are also directions on encouraging gender balance in ERC peer reviews. It’s hoped that gender balance can be achieved in ERC evaluation panels as well as among the ERC panel chairs.

The gender strategy was developed by the Gender Balance Working Group which was created in July 2008. The working group is a permanent structure in the Scientific Council and monitors gender equality throughout the entire ERC process.