Gender Action Plan

 

The ice2sea programme and its participating institutes fully support the European initiative to eliminate gender inequalities and promote gender equality throughout the European Community in accordance with Articles 2 and 3 of the EC Treaty (gender mainstreaming) as well as Article 141 (equality between women and men in matters of employment and occupation) and Article 13 (sex discrimination within and outside work place).

 

Despite the conclusion of the Commission report “Gender In Research” of the 5th Framework Programme (Environment and Sustainable Development sub-programme, Annex 1, Page 18), that “the natural science oriented climate research turns out to be more or less gender neutral”, within the scientific disciplines represented by the ice2sea consortium, women are generally under-represented. Ice2sea does have significant involvement from several women researchers but females and other minority groups are clearly under-represented. This is especially true for senior roles, and participation falls well below the Helsinki Group’s target of 40% for participation in FP science.

 

For this reason the “ice2sea gender action plan” will have a strong role to play in ensuring that fairness and equality of opportunity exist within, and are promoted by, the ice2sea programme. This plan will be designed around the advice to FP7 partners on gender issues and incorporate actions designed to: increase women’s participation at all levels, explore a better understanding of the gender dimension of ice2sea research, to raise gender-issues awareness, and highlight the responsibilities of the beneficiaries as to implementation of gender-mainstreaming policies. To ensure delivery, specific responsibility for oversight of gender issues, and implementation of the plan will be assigned to one member of the steering committee (SC) in the role of gender / equal opportunities coordinator.

 

The full gender action plan will be published here in due course.

 

Whilst operating within the letter and spirit of the sex-equality / equal-opportunity legislation within in each nation, ice2sea will address the current bias in several areas:

 

• From the outset the ice2sea project will strongly discourage the use of inappropriate language or discussion with an implied stereotyping or gender-bias.

 

• The selection of staff to be employed in ice2sea posts is an area where equality of opportunity must be delivered. Recruitment of staff will be undertaken by individual institutions under their normal national employment practices, but general advice on recruitment (e.g., wording of advertisements, composition of interview and selection panels, and the desirability of ensuring all staff involved in interview and selection processes receive equal opportunities training) will be provided by the ice2sea programme office.

 

• The ice2sea programme office will undertake to collate the statistics on gender distribution of applications, short-lists and final appointments.

 

• The gender / equal opportunities coordinator will be responsible for making contact with colleagues with similar roles in other FP7 programmes, for the purposes of sharing best practice. The coordinate will then be expected to disseminate such examples of best practice within the programme considered by explored by the steering committee.

 

• Where appropriate, and where it is compatible with delivery of science outputs within the time- constraints of the grant, the opportunity for flexible working hours, home-working, job-sharing will be offered to all staff.

 

• Gender-issues will be a standing item on the Agenda of the Steering Committee

 

• Nominating the two early-career scientists to be involved in the management of the ice2sea (Section 2.1) is one area in which the ice2sea Steering Committee has discretion to ensure an equitable gender ratio.