ITD news

Women within SEAFOODplus

When the SEAFOODplus project was initiated a Gender Action plan was adopted, in which great attention was given to gender integration. The Commission wants to implement a European policy of equal opportunities between women and men within research and science management. The Gender Action Plan of SEAFOODplus reflected this policy and action has been taken for its full implementation. A recent survey of the situation on gender aspects has shown that there is a good balance between men and women within the research and in the management at all levels.

Author: Laetitia Kolypczuk, IFREMER, France

: Laetitia Kolypczuk and Lucay Han-Ching are managers of the Gender Action plan

Within the SEAFOODplus organisation structure, a special team has been provided for attending the details of the Gender Action Plan and to manage it during the whole project period. The activities are coordinated within the ITD Pillar 1 ‘Communication to Industry, Consumer and Public Administration; Socio-economic, Gender and Ethical aspects’. The programme of ITD pillar 1 includes a significant part of activities in order to develop new forms of relationships between citizens and institutions in Europe, including organisations working for the promotion of gender equality and networks of women scientists.

The Gender Action Plan consists of a few measures which need to be fulfilled. Among these are:

- Carrying out statistics on the representation of women in projects and in the scientific management;

- Monitoring a scheme for new women Ph.D. students, or other junior scientists entering SEAFOODplus;

- Taking special action in order to bring more women into SEAFOODplus research projects;

- Aspiring women research scientists to attend management meetings, as well as for them to take courses in research leadership at all levels;

- Link with highschools and universities to trigger women’s interest in the projects;

- Link with networks of women scientists within the areas of discipline of SEAFOODplus

: Maria Leonor Nunes speaks at a Council meeting

When conducting a study of the gender aspects it was observed that women are directly involved in all stages of SEAFOODplus:

- It is noted that 5 out of 12 members of the Council are women.

- 11 out of the 20 project leaders within the RTD Pillars are women.

- 42 % of the researchers in the whole consortium are women scientists, including both experienced researchers and young researchers. There are 71 women scientists involved in SEAFOODplus out of 171 scientists.

- For the young researchers, women are even better represented with 17 out of 21 junior researchers being women, which represents 81 %.

- The counting participants at the different open conferences, it was observed that there were women in 36 to 49% of the cases.

- Among the speakers at the Open SEAFOODplus Conference in Tromsø 2006 women were in majority, counting 56% of all speakers.