EQUALITY GUIdE - KU Leuven

150 Equality Guide
disparities in access and representation. However, it can not uncover what the causes of
these inequalities are. Likewise, monitoring tools are useful to check whether progress has
been realized towards gender equality, but they can not sort out whether this progress has
been achieved by structural transformations of the mainstream. This is where the process
of gender proofing becomes effective. Gender proofing tools are designed to trace the
causes of existing gender biases, and provide guidelines for changing structures and procedures
aiming at promoting gender diversity.” 174
Good Practice Mainstreaming Promoters: research policy
The Research Coordination Office has a lot of experience in research on doctoral efficiency and
evaluation of the doctoral output. The focus on the decentralized action plan of the Mainstreaming
Promoters of the Research Coordination Office starts from the goal of their office, namely
coordinating research funding. Previous actions related to providing the Mainstreaming Promoters
of the faculties with data about the doctoral output of their male and female researchers, formulating
propositions and policy recommendations concerning elements of research and diversity
and the consultation of the Diversity Policy Office about the gender neutrality of the guideline
changes about some type of funding.
3.3.1. ABAP: exit survey
An analysis of the scissor diagram of the ABAP (see figure 6) showed that for the junior
personnel approximately 55% is male and 45% is female. This gap widens when looking
at the post-doctoral researchers: 2/3 is male, 1/3 is female. This is a logical consequence
of the fact that for every woman that obtains her PhD, two men do 175 .
The university in general is marked by a high drop-out rate of junior researchers: at the
K.U.Leuven approximately 40% of the junior researchers that start, leave the organization
within two years. What are their motives? And are these motives different for men and
women? In order to gain insight in those motives, the university founded a steering committee
to develop an exit survey that was launched in March 2005. In the scope of this
project, access to the database was given and the researcher of this module was included
in the steering committee. With this access granted, the results were multiple: (1) input for
the action plans of the Mainstreaming Promoters, (2) guidelines for developing HR-tools
related to career guidance, (3) testing the perception of male and female co-workers leaving
against the policy of the university, (4) formulating well-founded suggestions towards
equal opportunities and facilitating the implementation of the VLIR-EQUAL Project. It
was agreed that the researcher would perform additional analyses on the differences in
perception of the male and female researchers related to HR-policy.
The exit survey is based on the ‘Policy note on the assignment and tasks of the junior and
174 Stevens, I. & Van Lamoen, I. (2001), op. cit.
175 Verlinden, A.; Billiet, J.; Pyck, H.; e.a. (2005). Doctoreren in Vlaanderen (1991-2002), Syntesenota en
aanbevelingen, 63 p.