During the last years, Eurodoc has increased its commitment to the advancement of Gender Equality in academia, along with greater attention to diversity and inclusion.
Last year, we decided to give relevance to the many researchers who are active within the Eurodoc community and identify themselves as women, through a campaign named “Women in Research”. This year, we decided to open up this campaign to all the researchers who are active within the Eurodoc community and beyond, of all genders, because we believe that everyone has an important role to play to advance gender equality, and everyone, men included, should be encouraged to stand up to create greater gender equality in their research environment.
Symbolically, the campaign will run from the 8th of March, the International Women’s Day, and onwards.
Gender discrimination, as it is defined by the Istanbul Convention, has a double meaning: it refers to the discrimination women experience because of social roles arbitrarily attributed to them as women, and it refers to the discrimination that stems from any challenge to attributed social roles and behaviours, that impact also on those people who have a gender identity or sexual orientation that differs from the one expected on the basis of culturally established rules. It is important to point out that these two different dimensions stem from the same root, culturally designed social roles and expected behaviours, and they can intersect and create greater inequality in the life experience of individuals. Gender-based discriminations can intersect with other types of marginalisation roots. Thus, gender equality refers to the possibility of recognising everyone the same access to human rights, in all domains of life - private life, professional life, public life; however, the experience of (in)equality is unique for each person.
This is why we want to gather and share the stories to showcase how each one contributes in a significant way to research both as a profession and as a common human quest for knowledge. Each one of the people you’ll meet during the campaign has a different background, a different vocation, a different experience of research, and a different take on equal opportunity in academia.
The campaign is meant also to show a wide variety of role models, that are positive models not necessarily because of “merit & excellence” - a concept that is often misleading in academia. The role models we will showcase in the next weeks are common people who care about research, who have experienced the difficulties of being an early career researcher, who met abuses and injustices, and still keep committed to improving the research system to ensure a more inclusive academia.
For this reason, we believe that all the participants can be role models for everyone who would like to become researchers, and also for those who already are researchers but struggle in it. We welcome all the researchers who identify the need for a more inclusive academia to join this campaign through their social media accounts, tagging Eurodoc and using the following hashtags:
#WeAreEurodoc, #WomenInResearch, #Eurodoc, #doctoralcandidates, #early_career_researchers
In your post, please reply to the following questions:
- Who are you, and where are you from
- What is your research about
- Why did you go into research
And either
- Why is gender equality important to you?
- Give a good example for how to create an environment that fosters gender equality in research?
If you wish to participate in the campaign - please fill out this google form.
In you are interested in our advocacy activities, you can follow Eurodoc on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X (formally known as Twitter) .