The Universitat Autònoma joined the EGERA project meeting at Vechta (Germany)

06/04/2017

The EGERA project (Effective Gender Equality in Research and in Academia) is composed of 8 European universities that strive for gender equality in the academia and aim at strengthening the gender dimension in research. It develops 5 five different work packages, and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, through the Observatory, leads the package “Strengthening a Gender Perspective in Research”.
The project’s meeting in Vechta (Germany) had several objectives, some of which include reviewing the implementation status of the project’s tasks, establishing the future deliverables for each university, and monitoring the implementation status of each university’s Equality Plans. On this matter, the partners exposed the obstacles and challenges encountered, their ability to institutionalise equality measures in the long-term, the resistances that have arisen during the process of implementation, and the new opportunities that this situation offers.
Joana Gallego, Director of the Observatory for Equality, and Maribel Ponferrada, one of the project’s researchers, attended the meeting on behalf of the EGERA-UAB team. They also participated in the seminar “Gender Sensitive Governance” that addressed the advances and obstacles of each university in mainstreaming structural changes for gender equality governance. The UAB will soon sign the EGERA Charter for Gender Sensitive Governance, which commits universities to ensure the gender equality in government and evaluation processes.
The Universitat Autònoma also contributed to the Vectha meeting by providing information on the causes and conditions that have allowed including subjects with gender perspective in several undergraduate and graduate courses. Some of the good practices on gender and teaching documented by the EGERA project include the “Minor in Gender” from the Faculty of Arts and the subject “Communication and Gender Studies” from the Faculty of Communication Studies.