22 September 2020
Brussels
During the EU Research & Innovation Days, celebrated between 22 and 24 September 2020, Jean-Eric Paquet, EC Director General for Research and Innovation, announced that any legal entity (public body, research centre or higher education institution) must have an Equality Plan in place to access funding from the next Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon Europe.
Equality plans will become an eligibility criterion (a transitional period will be established), and the requirements will include its formal publication on the institution's website, the existence of experts in equality policies to carry it out and the commitment of human resources, data disaggregated and the development of training on equality. The plans may address different areas of action, such as organisational culture and conciliation, gender balance in decision-making, gender dimension in research and teaching, gender violence and sexual harassment.
Supported by H2020 GEARING Roles project, DEUSTO equality plan makes the University eligible for Horizon Europe. The project has backed the work of DEUSTO Joint Commission who has designed the University Equality Plan 2020-2022 in 2020.
Parallel to the aforementioned session, on 22 September, the GEARING-ROLES (coordinated by the University of Deusto) and GENDERACTION have launched a joint Twitter campaign to raise awareness about the importance of Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) as an important tool for achieving gender equality in Research and Innovation. The #GEPs campaign follows previous joint campaigns centered on the hashtags #GEARINGLeaders (2020) and #GendeRRIng (2019).
For further information about this campaign, please consult the project webpage and twitter.
