In line with the ambitions of the Athena Swan Charter and the move to make Research Organisations equal for men and women, many efforts are underway to help Higher Education Institutions to achieve these goals. The Athena SWAN Charter was established in 2005 to encourage and recognise the commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment in higher education and research. Since then, the Charter has expanded to include institutions, departments and research institutes that focus on the arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law (AHSSBL) disciplines. This remit includes staff in professional support roles, trans staff and students, and recognises work undertaken to address gender equality more broadly, and not just the barriers to progression that affect women.
In addition to achieving awards such as the Athena Swan award, many new requests are facing research organisations. Horizon 2020 saw a focus on the gender dimension of research, not only for the active participants with respect to researchers but also for the research focus, be it data or subjects, to ensure that an equal representation was achieved in the results of investigations undertaken.
The following podcast was produced by the ORBITAL project of which SETU Waterford is a partner. The podcast is a discussion with Expert Speaker Katrien Der Heyden from Yellow Window. Yellow Window developed the Gender In EU-funded Research Toolkit and have delivered training sessions all over Europe in order to give the research community practical tools to integrate gender aspects into research. Yellow Window also developed the GEAR tool (which stands for Gender Equality in Academia and Research) that can be found on the website of the European Institute for Gender Equality. Katrien has extensive expertise in academic and applied research, consulting, training and coaching. The central themes in her work are gender, multiculturalism and organisational change. This is an excellent resource, covering an important, universal topic in our collective research goals.