PRAGES · Practising Gender Equality in Science

The project “Practising Gender Equality in Science (PRAGES)” consists of an action of coordination aimed at comparing the various strategies implemented for promoting the presence of women in decision-making bodies relating to scientific research in public institutions. It pursues the objective of collecting, classifying and evaluating good practices and positive actions (involving those where a positive contribution from men is recorded) that can be found in OECD countries, both at the national level and at the level of the individual institutions, and to make them available, in a usable form, to a number of selected targets, including both decision-makers and other relevant stakeholders. It will be characterized by four particular elements: the attempt to integrate the most important and relevant results deriving from the studies and good practices relating to the fight against vertical segregation in various professional, political and social areas; enhancing the understanding of the exclusion of women as being deeply linked to what may be called the lack of socialisation of gender in science, that is, the resistance of scientific community to recognise and manage social and gender dynamics that drive the production of scientific research and its assessment; the comparative approach, from a geographical point of view, with the inclusion of both European and non-European partners and countries (including, in particular, the United States, Canada and Australia); the orientation to benchmarking, above all in order to concretise the indications in terms of policy-making. These features are translated, at the operational level, into 7 work-packages: WP1- Operational networking; WP2- Monitoring of significant events; WP3- Good practice database; WP4- Benchmarking; WP5- Guidelines; WP6- Public communication and dissemination; WP7- Management. The project will last 18 months. Consortium includes researchers from 8 countries.