Programs aimed at promoting gender equality in research and innovation have been on the European Commission’s agenda for decades. What are the impacts and effectiveness of these initiatives?

 

GenTIC researcher Rachel Palmén has published an article on the scientific dissemination platform The conversation, in which she describes the findings of the research carried out within the Horizon 2020 project EFFORTI. The EFFORTI project team developed an evaluation framework aimed at analyzing and monitoring the influence of measures to promote gender equality on research and innovation results, as well as to establish more socially responsible research and innovation systems. This evaluation framework was applied to 19 case studies in six European countries (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Spain and Sweden).

 

Among the results, Rachel Palmén highlights the findings related to two German benchmark programs: the “Women Professorship Program” and the “Pact for Research and Innovation”. The researcher points out that, although it is difficult to establish linear associations due to the complexity of the process, research findings suggest that these German gender equality programs have contributed not only to increasing the proportion of female researchers but also to improving their publication and citation rates.

 

Read the full article, in Spanish, on The conversation.

 

Related links:

Bührer, Susanne, Kalpazidou Schmidt, Evanthia, Palmén, Rachel, & Reidl, Sybille (2020). Evaluating gender equality effects in research and innovation systems. Scientometrics. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-020-03596-1

 

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