Action Plans

Gender and LGBTI+

Since June 2006, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has shown its commitment to gender equality. With the approval of the First Action Plan for Equality Between Women and Men, the UAB started a journey to make the goal of article 6 of its Statutes a reality.

Evolution of the Gender Equality Action Plans

After the First Plan, progress continued with the approval of the Second Plan in June of 2008, the Third plan in July of 2013, the Fourth Plan in July of 2019 and currently with the Fifth Gender Equality Action Plan, approved on the 25th of September of 2024.

What is the Gender Equality Action Plan (PAG) and how is it developed?

The V PAG is the tool that allows the development of the University’s gender and LGBTQ+ equality policies. It can be defined as a set of measures or actions aiming to improve the circumstances of those communities that may be disadvantaged due to sex, gender, gender identity or expression or sexual orientation.

The IV PAG is created from the context defined by the current framework and experience from the previous Plans, as well as expert knowledge generated in the past years.

What is the content and structure of the Gender Equality Action Plan?

The V PAG includes for the first time the 1st Plan for Gender Equality in Labour Matters at the UAB (I PIGML). The I PIGML is the resulting document from the negotiation process between the institution’s and the UAB workers’ representatives to accomplish the seventh additional order of the Royal Legislative Decree 5/2015 Whereby Approves The Revised Text Of The Law Of The Basic Statute Of The Public Employee, modified by the Law 31/2022 on the General State Budget for the year 2023. This order establishes that Public Administration will have to approve in each legislature a Plan for gender equality, negociated with the personnel’s representative within the terms of Article 37 of the EBEP, and that its fulfilment will be subject to evaluation on a yearly basis.

The V PAG anticipates a set of measures, structured by five lines of action. The anticipated measures are based on the results of the diagnostics designed and created by the Equality and Diversity Service and, regarding the labour aspects, on the negotiation process. This negotiation process was executed through a commission of 13 institution representatives and 13 personnel representatives, carrying out work and negotiation sessions throughout 18 months.

The Plan anticipates a total of 134 measures to accomplish 27 objectives. For each of those measures, they specified the responsible and executive entities, the instruments and the implementation schedule.

Lines of action

Promoting equality policies and culture
Equal conditions when accessing, promoting and organising work and learning
Promoting gender perspective in teaching and research
Equal participation and representation at the university community with gender perspective
Preventing sexual harassment or gender-based harassment

The Plan includes a total of 49 measures related to the work environment in the second line of action. These measures are grouped in different aspects: 1) Selecting and promoting; 2) Professional classification and retribution; 3) Working conditions; 4) Training; 5) Exercising care co-responsibility; 6) Female under-representation. Other measures were negotiated, which affect other policy areas, such as promoting equality policies and culture or the one regarding misogynistic and queerphobic violence. In order to identify the negotiated measures included in the 1st Plan for Gender Equality in Labour Matters, these are written in bold format in the document.

The measures that constitute the V PAG have a certain continuity with the ones from the IV PAG measures, though the measures related to sexism and gender-based discrimination and harassment have been reinforced. These new measures aim to boost the awareness and recognition of misogynistic and queerphobic violence, as well as to increase the resources and tools to deal with these situations. On the other hand, new measures have been defined in response to regulatory changes and the main needs of the UAB community.

Furthermore, the Action Plan presents the diagnostics’ results, which includes:

Assessment of the implementation level of the III PAG.
Review of European rules and projects on gender equality.
Description of the situation of women at the UAB.
Community appraisal of the PAG and gender policy implementation.

On 2020, the Royal Legislative Decree 901/2020 that regulates equality plans and their registration at a State level was approved. As a result, businesses with over 50 workers must now develop an equality plan, negotiating with representatives of the staff through a special negotiating body. Since there was already an equality plan in place (4th Gender Equality Action Plan, IV PAG), the University was forced to adapt it to follow the Royal Legislative Decree. They had until January of 2022 to adapt said plan.

When and how did the negotiation process start?

The social actors contacted UAB management in March 2021 to kickstart the process to meet the requirements of the RD 901/2020. That June, a special negotiating body of 26 members was formed (13 representing the staff and 13 representing the institution). The negotiations reached three agreements:

Carrying out gender equality training at the Commission
Developing an addendum for the IV PAG to adapt the plan
Incorporating a task force to develop the addendum to the plan. This group consisted of 12 people (7 representing the staff and 5 representing the institution).

How was the Action Plan adapted to include the RD 901/2020?

The task force to develop the addendum met in four sessions conducted by the Equality and Diversity Service and with the support of the UAB’s Labour Relations Unit. This taskforce defined which measures of the IV PAG were considered a priority in a work environment and were viable to apply by the end of the addendum’s period of validity (2022-2023). At last, they identified 48 measures, grouped in the following lines of action established by the RD 901/2020:

Lines of action	Objectives	Measures
Selection, Hiring and Promotion Process	1	10
Staff and Remunerations Classification	1	4
Working Conditions	2	9
Equality Training	1	2
Co-responsible Exercise	2	5
Female Under-Representation	1	4
Harassment Prevention	3	10
Promoting Gender Policies and Culture	3	4
TOTAL	14	48

What is the final result of the modified IV Plan?

Taking into account the objectives and lines of action included in the IV PAG, the tools that the UAB will use to ensure gender equality in the workplace are the following: regulations, teaching, learning, developing recommendations and guides, the creation of joint committees, sharing information, monitoring indicators, the approval of work/family balance plans, among others.

Documents

UAB's V Gender Equality Action Plan. 2024-2030 This link downloads a document

Gender and LGBTI+

How has the Royal Legislative Decree 901/2020 affected the UAB?

Documents

Additional information