Building and sharing gender background

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Country: Italy
National Context: Download
Region: Apulia
Name of Organisation: CNR in Bari
Main implementing organisation: CNR in Bari
Line of Business: The National Research Council (CNR) is a public research organization; its duty is to carry out, promote, spread, transfer and improve research activities in the main sectors of knowledge growth and of its applications for the scientific, technological, economic and social development of the Country.
Start Date: 2008-04-22
End Date: 2008-04-22
 AllWomen
Number of Employees 341 39 %
Employees in R&D 314 36.62 %
Number of Employees in Top Positions 63 30.16 %
Students 30 66.67 %
Transferability of the initiativeProgramme is considered to be transferable to another context
Type of initiative referring to strategic objectivesawareness
Type of initiative, located on the stage of career progression of women scientistsPre-University

Objectives of the Initiative

The initiative was very brief and had short term objectives that are: to raise awareness for the potentials of girls in science and technology, to encourage girls to study science and technology. to address gender stereotypes presenting role models.

Which barriers in the career stages of females does the initiative address?

Girls and women often don’t get involved with technology and natural science. Diffused ignorance about gender equality and the problems that this causes.

Demonstrable success of the initiative

The initiative has reached the targets of raise awareness about gender disparities in science, and let pupils and professors know about problems that women have when they overtake a research career.

Motives for launching initiative

The initiative has been launched to discuss the issues related to gender and science with a great number of people. The idea was to spend one day with different kind of people (with a special focus on female pupils) to talk about a topic that barely is taken into account during everyday life, especially at school.

Equal opportunity measures in the organisation before the initiative

There was (and still there is) a favourable disposition to mainstreaming gender, but not concrete measures to tackles gender discrimination in the pre-university period of life.

Target group(s) of the initiative

Direct:

Indirect:

Implementation of the initiative

The Responsible of the initiative is Rosa Capozzi, CNR technologist. The initiative has been set up at the Auditorium of a high school building complex.

7 women and 1 man were involved in the organisation.

10 days of staff work, 2 persons from CNR and 4 from University of BARI) 4 hours for the lecture itself and 400 euros for brochures and posters.

Budget comes from the Committee for equal opportunities of the university of Bari.

The initiative was supervised by the headmaster of the school.

Factors of success

The arguments discussed during the day was of great interest. That was above all because of the way the topics have been presented.
During the event “Gender and research” has been “analyzed” through the lives of female Italian actor science that lead to a very interactive debate. In fact pupils participated actively to the discussion asking numerous questions and the speakers had the opportunity to be role model for one day, sharing their experiences.

Obstacles, barriers to implementation

The few obstacles that have been encountered were above all logistic ones.

Lessons Learned

To bring real case stories is a good way to involve young people to discuss topics they’re not familiar with.

Benefit for the organisation

The hope that the new people starting a research career organization in the CNR, but also in the university, are aware of gender disparities in scientific jobs, and will be willing to overcome gender barriers.
All that will of course have a good impact on the society in general as well.

Sustainability of the initiative

The initiative will be continued, renewed and institutionalised as regular event not only in cooperation with UNIBA but also with the Politecnico of Bari.

There are two persons responsible for the sustainability of the concept: Rosa Capozzi and Luisa Beggegato.

Transferability

Systematic Approach

The initiative is part of the overall gender approach in the dissemination of the scientific career of CNR. In fact CNR BARI is very active in this field above all at regional level and it works very often in cooperation with different local stakeholders. The most important objective is to minimize gender imbalance and its effects on R&D.

Innovation

The innovative feature of this event is that :
It is very short but with strong impact (considering the organizing entities, the wide involvement of participants and stakeholders, the target groups, the level of speakers).

Innovation emerges also if we consider the reality of Puglia region, where few gender and research actions are put in place especially with pupils in high schools.

Monitoring / Evaluation

Summary: This initiative is good practice because...

All 5 assessment criteria are respected. This initiative will have a strong impact in the near future and is thus considered a good practice.

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