Guidelines for Gender Equality Programmes in Science - GeNet

The second strategy aims to include the gender dimension in the very process of research
and innovation designing. Two main objectives were identified in this regard:
– overcoming stereotypes of women and science;
– influencing scientific contents and methods.
The third strategy consists of promoting women in scientific leadership positions. In this case,
four objectives emerged from the analysis of the programmes:
– supporting women’s leadership in research practice;
– supporting women’s leadership in research management;
– supporting women’s role in science communication;
– increasing women’s presence and weight in managing innovation processes and in the
related science-society relationships.
On the whole, the Guidelines contain 31 recommendations for implementing the three strategies,
along with 61 lines of action. In turn, the lines of action are accompanied by 219 examples
drawn from the experience of gender equality programmes. For each example, at least
one web address is provided in order to allow direct access to relevant information sources.
The structure briefly described above is summarised in the summary charts 1-3 attached to
this Executive Summary.
A cross-cutting look at equality programmes in S&T
In addition to this substantive view, the Guidelines also attempt to provide a cross-cutting
analysis of the programmes in order to identify the practical solutions and orientations they
developed, regardless of the strategies adopted and the objectives pursued.
Three domains are considered.
The first includes the tools used by the programmes to achieve their objectives. Needless to
say, a tool can be applied to achieve different objectives and to implement different strategies,
and even several strategies at the same time. A total of 31 tools have been singled out and
are accompanied by 138 examples, each with a relevant web address.
The second domain concerns the action patterns, that is, the recurrent schemes of action
which programme promoters use to assure acceptable quality levels to their programmes. A
total of 30 action patterns have been identified and grouped into four main quality dimensions:
relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability.
The third domain concerns some conclusions emerging from the entire analysis. These are
presented in the form of 7 overall methodological suggestions.
The structure and contents of these three domains are summarised in the summary charts 4-
6, attached to this Executive Summary.
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