ACT · Communities of PrACTice for Accelerating Gender Equality and Institutional Change in Research and Innovation across Europe

ACT will enable better access, sharing, and improvement of gender equality knowledge by advancing Communities of Practice (CoP) as agents for implementing gender equality actions among RPOs and RFOs in ERA, including integration of the gender dimension into research content and process. Considerable advances have been made in the EU in the last decade in these areas, but the resulting experiences and practices are scattered widely, which prevents systematic and systemic action. ACT will improve this situation by starting up a network of 7 Communities of Practice and developing a Practice Toolkit, as well as creating an EU-wide change monitoring and benchmarking system, and an on-line Hub for knowledge and experience sharing. The design of these outputs will take into consideration inter- and intra-institutional diversity, as well as differences in national contexts. The Consortium includes 19 organisations (experienced and novice), and includes 50 experts, to ensure that results are sustainable and produce the desired impact. The expected impacts include: 1) ensuring that researchers, their organisations, and the projects they are involved in are better equipped to stop gender bias affecting quality of science knowledge making; 2) improving understanding of gender issues in science, and how to address them, including in science curriculum, and researcher training; 3) enhancing standards for assessment of institutional excellence through incorporation of gender equality as a criterion of success; and 4) more systematic and systemic adoption of best tools and practices for GEP implementation.