Best Practises and Recommendations

A careful analysis of the measures adopted by EGEE partners to promote the role of women in science allows highlighting some of them as best practices. A summary is provided in the list below.

The EGEE management strongly encourages gender equality and recommends EGEE partners to consider these aspects in their equal opportunity policy:

1. define and adopt an equal opportunity policy in respect to the local situation, needs and objectives;

2. periodically review the equal opportunity procedures and perform regular statistical monitoring exercises;
"statistics are important tools in the research area of gender studies, with the purpose of investigating and creating a better understanding of the complexities of direct, indirect and institutional discriminations" [INFN GAP]

3. implement transparency of information on structure and personnel according to gender as well as professional data;

4. increase general awareness (i.e. publish policy and statistics in form of leaflets, in the institution’s Web pages, inform the staff in charge of recruitment about their equal opportunity obligations, organise training courses on work-life balance subject, etc.);
"a key point of the programme aims at an increased awareness to be gradually achieved over the years thanks to the publication of INFN Equal Opportunity policy in the form of leaflets, articles in the INFN journal, and reports, organization of conferences and workshops on specific topics, sustained contacts with other Organizations and external bodies".
"Attention is also given to specific actions proposed to ensure an increased involvement of women in training courses." [INFN GAP],[ Univ. Edinburgh EOP].

5. improve recruitment and the selection process (i.e. include women in the selection boards, inform the staff in charge of recruitment about their equal opportunity obligations and statistics on male/female applicants, selected applicants and employees, etc.);

6. establish an equal opportunity complaints procedure against any kind of discrimination and harassment;
": Complaints of discrimination from employees shall be considered in accordance with the provisions of the appropriate grievance procedure. An Equal Opportunities Complaints Procedure will be developed to deal, in a similar way, with complaints of discrimination from candidates for employment." [Edinburgh GAP];

7. adopt measures to improve the work-life balance for employees such as:

a. consideration of alternative working arrangements (i.e: working from home, adoption of part-time work, working time flexibility) for a period of time, in agreement with the management;
b. support for both parents on maternity or paternity leave [FhG GAP];
c. investigation on possible lack of child-minding and nursery facilities [FZK GAP];
d. special economical support for child care and subsistence also in case of short term contracts [FhG GAP];
e. investigation of specific gender diseases to be possibly taken into account in the periodic medical checks;

8. periodically propose positive actions such as:

a. job advertisements and contact with groups considered as under-represented, as well as training opportunities;
b. encouragement for under-represented groups to apply for promotion, through provision of mentoring];
c. comparison of collected gender-related statistics with those of similar institute ;
'Positive Action measures are allowed by law to encourage people from groups which have previously been under-represented in a particular area of work or at a particular level to compete for jobs in these areas. Positive action means adopting programmes designed to remove barriers which can prevent equality of access to employment." [Univ. Edinburgh Staff Admin Manuel];

d. promote research projects devoted to women’s issues [FhG GAP];

• promotes women and men scientists who pursue alternative educational careers, such as an alternative way of studying, or whose careers were delayed due to child care obligations [Woman and Science, review situation in Austria: APART-Extra At the beginning of the year 2000, APART-Extra - a variation of the APART scholarship – was included into the APART program. APART-Extra promotes women and men scientists who pursue alternative educational careers, such as an alternative way of studying, or whose careers were delayed due to child care obligations. The three-year research scholarschip is granted to persons over 45 years of age with outstanding scientific achievements. There are four scholarships in this category (€ 45.100 per person/year). When granting the scholarships it is seen to it that the percentage of women recipients is in no way lower than the percentage of women applicants [Austrian National Report].