An online meeting of the GEinCEE CoP on 20.10.2020 was a good opportunity to reflect on our recent activities and draw plans for nearest future.
The majority of our member organisations decided to carry out a survey based on the GEAM tool to assess their status quo of gender equality. Therefore, since late spring we have been busy with last corrections in Polish and Lithuanian translations of the questionnaire, setting up and the launch of the survey as well as designing a template report from the results. We also decided to update the questionnaire by designing and adding a question referring to working conditions in academia during the pandemic. At the time of our Autumn meeting, the survey was completed in 6 member organisations and in 3 it was still under way.
With the technical support of partners from the ACT consortium we were also finalising the online map of gender equality bodies, legislation and measures in CEE universities and research centres which gathers information about the status quo of gender equality institutionalisation in our region. We already plan an update of the map in February 2021 to make it more representative and include as many organisations from CEE as possible. If you want your organisation to be included, please write to us at: actongender@uj.edu.pl.
In October 2020 the members of the GEinCEE CoP participated in the virtual ACT Matching Events-Month aimed at facilitating and boosting exchange and communication across CoPs. At one of the meetings Marta Warat and Ewa Krzaklewska presented the methodology we used as a CoP in our GEAM tool survey to examine the situation of researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the last meeting in Spring the GEinCEE CoP member organisations had made progress in implementing structural change in their organisations. University of Wrocław introduced anti-discrimination policy, appointed the Ombudsperson for Equality and Non-Discrimination and the Committee for Equal Treatment. Šiauliai University introduced a second GEP focusing on sexual harassment and draft versions of first GEPs for Cracow University of Technology and Vilnius University are under preparation. The Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague has been developing the code of ethics, which will include the values of gender equality and non-discrimination. University of Gdansk (UG) published a report on the situation of female and male researchers (Women in science). Jagiellonian University in Krakow (JU) has become the first in Poland to add a new tab within the university online system that allows transgender and nonbinary students to choose their preferred name. The MINDtheGEPs (Modifying Institutions by Developing the Gender Equality Plans) project consortium with the participation of UG and JU received funding under the Horizon 2020 programme and will start collaboration on February 2021.
The GEinCEE CoP members will dedicate the nearest future to the analysis and dissemination of the results of GEAM survey.