Transforming Organisational Culture
for Gender Equality in Research

Academic career is not suitable for women. This statement, although provocative, reflects the present situation: despite the general advancement of equality principles and policies in Europe, data on the career paths of academic researchers show a persistence of different outcomes for men and women.

Fig. 1: Proportions of men (blue for 2011 and cyan for 2002 data) and women (red for 2011 and orange for 2002 data) in a typical academic career in the Polytechnic and Basic Science School of the University of Naples Federico II (Data from GENOVATE UNINA).

The scissor diagram shown in figure reports data on a typical academic career in the Polytechnic and Basic Science School of the University of Naples Federico II, and illustrates the factthat the percentage of women and men is now almost equivalent during the education phase, till the Ph.D. degree, but starts to decrease in correspondence of the starting positions in the academic career (Italian data are very similar). Moreover, women are only 20% of the research top managers and less than 10% of the directors of the European Universities.

Attention to this issue in Europe has been given a new impetus since the Lisbon Agenda in 2000, because it is now recognised that:

1) research excellence requires accessibility, resources and advancement opportunities for the best researchers, irrespective of gender;

2) innovation demands the diversity of perspective and input that is possible from a truly diverse research pool.

In particular, in 2012 the European Commission identified gender equality in research and innovation as one of the five most important key priorities of a “Reinforced European Research Area Partnership for Excellence and Growth”. However, policies for gender equality in research and innovation have had limited success, and there is a need to address the policy-outcome gap through more contextualised approaches.

GENOVATE (Transforming Organisational Culture for Gender Equality in Research and Innovation) is one of the two projects for addressing this issue that the European Commission has selected for funding in the 2011. Starting from January 2013, this four years project, guided by Prof.Uduak Archibong of the University of Bradford (UK), seeks to ensure equal opportunities for women and men by encouraging a more gender-competent management in research, innovation and scientific decision-making bodies, with a particular focus on universities.

At this regard, some key factors to be considered are:

• Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines face different challenges with respect to social sciences/humanities or medicine/health.
• Institutions all across Europe are embedded in different systems and cultures.
• Institution-wide factors play an important role in determining the way in which gender equality issue are dealt with.

GENOVATE takes into account these factors with a particular strategy, whose “core” action is the implementation of a Gender Equality Action Plan (GEAP) in each of the six institutions (from United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Italy, Slovak Republic, and Turkey) that participate in the project. In this way, it adopts an institutional approach towards the realization of gender equality and, at the same time, takes advantage of the knowledge exchange possibility among partners with different disciplinary backgrounds and different national contexts. Another strength of the project is the on-going evaluation of the implementation of the project realized by a seventh partner from Spain.

The Change Academy Model (CAM) is at the centre of the methodological framework of GENOVATE: it recognises that high education institutions are highly complex social systems: so complex, adaptive and flexible ways of thinking are required in order to create changes. Actually, one of the outcomes expected from the GENOVATE project is a Gender CAM, which will be obtained studying and comparing the implementation of the GEAPs in the six partner institutions.

There are three main areas of intervention that each of the institution involved in the GENOVATE projectwants to address:

1. recruitment, progression and research support
2. working environment, work-life balance and institutional culture
3. gender and diversity dimensions of research excellence and innovation

Where to start? As physicists we deeply trust data, and believe that a quantitative and detailedunderstanding of the numerical proportion between women and men on a local scale in each sector of our academic community, is a prerequisitefor any action.

So, first of all,we started collecting data in our institutionto highlight gaps between policy and effective practice in gender equality in academic recruitment, promotion and progression. The plot in fig.1 is just an example of this kind of analysis.

The first problem we had to face with was where to find the data we were interested in! Indeed, in spite of the precious work done by UNINA Computer Services Centre (CSI), aninstitutional unified database is still missing: data are often widespread among differentoffices, sectorial databases and departments. Thus one of our goals is to promote the institution of a unified UNINA database publicly available and online accessible, which allows for a systematic, rational and general data storage and consultation. This would allowperforming a continuous monitoring of the gender distribution in our institution. Our final goal is indeed to draw up a formal Gender Budgeting annual documentthat will allow our institution to conceive, plan, execute, and audit the budget in a gender sensitive way.To this aim we also started to cooperate with a team of economists of UNINA, involved in the realization of a Social Budget: gender and social budgeting, in fact, share a lot of issues and objectives. The collaboration with other groups inside the institution will also increase the networks activities aimed to enhance the gender awareness in the Naples University.

Data about the perception of the gender gaps are also crucial in planning concrete actions. Thus, adopting tools borrowed from the social research methodology, as survey, focus groups and world café, we also explored the gender climate self-assessment, to evaluate working environments and culture for female academic researchers. What emerges is that the gendered nature of academic environments is revealed by limited networking activities for women and limited opportunities to focus on their own career development goals. One of the best solutionssuggested in literature for this circumstance is mentoring, since it can provide focused support and encouragement to achieve career-related goals and encourage reflection on female academics’ experiences in broader structural context. Mentoring is, however, a mutually beneficial learning exchange perspectives between mentors and mentee of informal knowledge gained through experience. This is the reason why we started a Mentoring Pilot Programme for the Federico II University. The design of it started in the early 2014, in collaboration with INFN (IstitutoNazionale di FisicaNucleare), the University College Cork, Irish partner of GENOVATE and author of the programme Through the glass ceiling. Career progression programme and strategy for female academics and researchers, and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spanish partner of GENOVATE and responsibleof the support in the on-going evaluation of the mentoring programme.At the beginning of the mentoring program, the first problem we had to face with was to find people willing to be involved in such a program! We contacted many professors and young researchers. Some of them were curious, other were slightly sceptics, others completely uninterested. This fan of reactions was somehow expected to us: asking people to spend time in relations instead of in productive activities is in sharp countertendency with respect to what people is expected to do in the academic context. So our first problem was to overcome the scepticism of people in approaching the mentoring program. The helpful guide of the University College Corkwas precious in riding out these early stumbling blocks. So with 21 mentors (associate and full professors) and 21 mentees(young researchers with a temporary employee at UNINA) the program started.Another interesting and delicate phase was thematching process between the mentors and the mentees in which we followed certain criteriato conciliate the skills of mentors with the expectations of the young researchers. For instance we decided to work at the moment only with women, that mentors and mentees should not necessarily belong to the same scientific area, and that both the mentor and mentee may refuse the match if they point out the presence of any kind of conflict. Now the couples are just starting to know each other and we are looking forward to have the first feedbacks from them!All the activity of the Unina Team[1]can be followed on the local GENOVATE website, which has been designed for ensuring an effective communication of the GEAP aims, activities and results. At the same time, it will contributeintransforming culture, perception and behaviours in the Naples academic organisation.

In conclusion, the Italian participation in GENOVATE represents for the Federico II University the opportunity to take part in a European network working in the gender mainstreaming but it is also the recognition of the long-standing activity carried out in this field, before their involvement in the GENOVATE project, by the researchers of the UNINA team. In fact, Dr. Antonella Liccardo, Dr.IleniaPicardi, and Dr. Ofelia Pisanti, participants in the 2012 proposal of the GENOVATE project,have been involved since 2007, as members of the Coordinamento Napoletano Donne nella Scienza, in events and activities concerning gender issues in science, particularly in comparative statistical studies of the scientific career of women in Italy.