Advancing gender mainstreaming in Academia, Research and Innovation: A glance from Italy

Abstract

The role and influence of EU research and policies toward gender issues brought relevant impacts on universities and research organizations . Notable outcomes have been the commitment of many universities and some R&D structures on setting up or improving a gender balanced participation that was practically unknown twenty years ago, and the growing interest in engendering science, stemming from health and medicine to embrace technology and environment, coping with sex/gender analyses of data and processes. Progresses have been made, but there is still huge room for improvement, according to awareness and policies which are different in different countries. In this scenario, the Associazione Donne e Scienza ? DeS (Women in Science www.donnescienza.it) is a non-profit cultural organisation whose members are women scientists working mostly at Higher Education Institutions and Research Organisations in Italy. DeS has been one of the founding associations and is still member of the European Platform of Women Scientists ? EPWS (epws .org). DeS and its members have been and are active in the definition of Gender Equality Plans (GEP), as a direct result of their involvement in EU Projects to promote structural changes such as GENERA (https://genera-project.com/), GenderTIME (https://gendertime.org), PLOTINA (http://www.plotina.eu/) or R&I-PEERS (http://ripeers.eu/). Some of them are active in the GENERA Network, as well as in other EU Projects, such as GRECO (www.greco-project.eu), to implement open science and responsible rese arch and innovation (Rubbia, 2019). The role of DeS m embers vary form participation in advisory boards to active involvement as beneficiary. In these years, DeS initiatives included the organization of annual conferences and events, both at national and international level, on crucial themes that gathered issues from different perspectives and audiences, including education, sexual harassement (Avveduto et al. eds, 2019), environment and climate changes, shaping the scientific and societal debate with a gender perspective. The proposed poster is intended to present the results of the analysis of the relevant issues emerged, the needs and aspirations from women scientists in Italy (Avveduto, 2019) and on-going activities both on structural change and gender dimension in science and technology in a European perspective.