EGERA Charter for Gender Sensitive Governance signed
18/04/2017
With the signing of the EGERA Charter, the UAB acquires the commitment to improve gender equality in university governance. As specified in the charter, university governance refers to the “legal frameworks, institutions, structures, processes, actors and practices through which research organizations and universities are governed and managed”, and which include “scientific, educational, financial and human resource management, as well as decision-making mechanisms”. All research evaluation processes are also include as inherent parts of the institution's governance.
The EGERA Charter for a Gender Sensitive Governance is one of the results of the European EGERA project Effective Gender Equality in Research and the Academia. The UAB is one of the partner institutions and participates through its Observatory for Equality. The text was proposed by the coordinating institution Science Po, and participating in its final draft were all partner universities, who also signed the charter.
This commitment will now be made visible through the promotion of measures to address the infra-representation of women in positions of power within the university, gender biases in selection and administration procedures and evaluation indicators of research units and centres, among others. Some of these agreements are guaranteed at the UAB as gender equality is envisaged in key internal regulation, such as the Statutes and the Third Action Plan for Equality Between Women and Men at the UAB (2013-2017).
It is worth noting that one of the very first measures approved by the current governing team was the model and prioritisation criteria for the positions of professor and associate professor. The criteria establishes that maternity and paternity leaves must be taken into account in prioritisation rosters and that positions should be reserved for women and for people with disabilities.