Gender Equality Indicators for Research and Innovation from a Responsible Perspective: The Case of Spain

Abstract

This article offers a Spanish national perspective that contributes to European Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) monitoring initiatives. National experts involved in gender and science and technology issues, such as policymakers, gender experts, research institutions, and equality associations, among others, have proposed indicators based on participatory decision-making techniques. The results include a complete set of 52 indicators and a reduced panel of 23 indicators—the highest-ranked ones—to monitor relevant aspects that should be measured in gender dimension from an RRI perspective: differential and asymmetric socialization and education, organizational culture, substantive representation, vertical segregation, work relations, visibility of women researchers, gender perspective in research contents, gender expertise enhancement, and resources. The results offer new indicators that differ from previous indicator panels at the European and Spanish levels in relation to those aspects that should be measured and the typology of indicators preferred. Differences suggest the need for a more nuanced debate on the purpose of indicators, and the need for national contributions to RRI and to the debate on gender perspective in EU policy. Finally, the article suggests some specific traits observed in Spain that might add to the debate on the content of an RRI gender perspective in an already developed gender policy.

Closing the gender gap at academic conferences: A tool for monitoring and assessing academic events

“…Some previous efforts have been carried out within the EU in order to define indicators on gender equality in the scientific realm, such as the monitoring Responsible Research an Innovation (RRI) policies [41,42]. These approaches suggest that the focus should be on processes of institutional change to see whether general ambitions are translated into concrete forms of action.…”

“…Prioritization of gender indicators according to their level of importance has to be considered from an expert point of view [42]. Gathering and considering the different opinions and judgments of different gender experts can be a difficult task.…”

“…For each of the classes a local limiting profile has to be fixed, indicating the minimum performance needed on each value measured for each indicator to belong to a class. Reference limiting profiles for the three categories are fixed according to the gender related literature and in equality studies published by the different European governments [2,42,70,71]. They indicate the minimum level for a value measured to achieve the amber and the green classes that we called equilibrium threshold (amber) in the first place and the parity threshold (green) in the second place.…”

“…The local limiting profiles or thresholds are obtained after a literature review and consultation of gender policy documents [2,41,42,[72][73][74][75].…”

Gender Parity within the Gender—Sustainability Paradigm: A Case Study on Management Structures of the Romanian Academia

“…From this perspective, we find that in real life, the options for social and material development are influenced by the existing cultural context, as well as by the direction in which the current social culture is evolving. A series of transnational social movements with global trends [32], which impose cultural characteristics that have a positive impact in relation to sustainable development, are identified and discussed [29,33,34] The associated concept is citizen-led transformation, which induces a multitude of interaction forms, within the private and the public sector, by which community-generated initiatives are promoted [35,36].…”