Girls Do Science? EQUAL-IST project designs Gender Equality Plans for the ICT field

Girls actually don’t do science especially in the ICT research sector. According to European Commission and Eurostat (2016) only 18% of ICT workers in the EU are women. This imbalance and its effects are placed at the centre of a new innovative research project with the acronym “EQUAL-IST”. This is a project funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union that kicked off in June 2016.

© EQUAL-IST project, grant agreement No 710549
The full project’s title of “EQUAL-IST” is Gender Equality Plans for Information Sciences and Technology Research Institutions. It aims at introducing structural changes to enhance gender equality within Information Systems and Technology Research institutions (ICT). Specifically within the project:

• Seven (7) partner Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) across Europe and one from a CSI country are working towards the implementation and design of Gender Equality Plans aiming to restore the gender imbalance by creating a basis for increasing the share of gender on all levels in the ICT sector.
• A groundbreaking crowdsourcing platform will be developed to facilitate the exchange of best practices and used methodologies, applying the bottom-up and participatory approach and leveraging on the collaborative power of ICT networks.
• The Gender Equality Plans produced will be monitored and accessed in real working environment so as to ensure their effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability.
• The best practices of Gender Equality Plans will be spread to ensure their optimal use and institutionalisation, to speed up the potential of their wider use, and impact to the economy and society.

EQUAL-IST is coordinated by ViLabs, with seven partners from universities across Europe and one from a CSI country, specifically coming from Italy, Germany, Liechtenstein, Finland, Lithuania, Portugal and Ukraine. The consortium demonstrates a well-balanced integration of different types of organisations, with strong expertise in the respective fields, all of which are required to achieve the successful completion of the project aims.

Our mission is to provide a sustainable and long-term solution to gender inequality within ICT institutions and spread the word for a European-wide policy.

Related link: cordis.europa.eu