Gender Action Plan
It is well recognised that women are well represented in the arts, languages and the more applied areas of health-related and bio- and medical sciences. However women are still generally under-represented in more traditionally “male” dominated areas such as mathematics, technology, physics and engineering.
This means that the recruitment of women to the TeraNova programme, from this latter “pool” of women will prove challenging. However, there should be ample scope for the recruitment of post-docs from the Biological Sciences to cross-over into the more physics orientated aspect of these activities: one bonus of this is the cross-fertilisation of ideas between fields.
TeraNova also recognises that women:
- need help to make their way in science, engineering and technology
- many employers are slow to meet their responsibilities as to childcare and flexible working
- many of our systems are unfriendly to women, developed by men for men (with wives who take care of the children)
One of the main tenets of the TeraNova gender action plan, therefore, is to encourage the recruitment and retention of women into this area of technology. This will involve all the members of the Consortium, and will entail:
- Active recruitment of women to the project, through:
- A gender balance, benchmark study of all Consortium members will be conducted at the outset of the programme.
- Encouragement of the Consortium membership to have flexible work environments to encourage women to join.
- he results of the benchmarking study will be presented at the first Partner Assembly. Each Consortium Member will present a short presentation on its own actions for promoting gender equality. This will be summarised and the gender action plan will be updated.
- Links will be made to associations actively involved in this issue e.g. Association for Women in Science and Engineering.
- Education
- This will be addressed within the programme. As part of the summer school there will be a half-day session on gender issues.
- A number of girl’s days will be organised by different members of the Consortium as part of the “out-reach” programme
- A specific part of the TeraNova website will be devoted to gender issues
- Monitoring and updating of the gender action plan by the TeraNova Board.
- Monitoring the career progression of the women recruited to TeraNova, within the programme.
- Understanding how the technologies developed by the TeraNova Consortium will impact on the lives of women.
- Active encouragement of the women involved in TeraNova through a networking and mentoring scheme, i.e. Women helping other Women in Science.