Launch of New Project on Gender Equality

GENOVATE, a major new project on gender equality in research and innovation, launched on Friday 1 March at UCC.

Working together with European partners, led by the University of Bradford, the four-year project will focus on the development of strategies to promote the advancement of the best European researchers, regardless of gender. The research teams recently secured EU Framework 7 funding.

Launched by Professor Caroline Fennell, Head of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences at UCC, the project will provide a great opportunity for the University to contribute to on-going efforts at EU policy level which seek to address the persistence of gender inequalities in research and innovation.

Career progression for female academics and researchers have received increased attention at national and international levels recently, as it is widely recognised that women are under-represented at senior grades. For example, the League of European Research Universities published a report in July 2012, ‘Women, research and universities: excellence without gender bias’, in recognition of the continuing issues and loss of female research talent.

The project is being hosted by the Institute for Social Sciences in the 21^st Century (ISS21) in collaboration with the UCC Equality Committee and involves a multidisciplinary team from across the university, in collaboration with six other European universities.

It is intended that GENOVATE will promote the ways in which gender equality and diversity benefit excellence in research and innovation and one of its outcomes will be the development of a Social Model of Gender Equality Implementation for wider application to other organisations and stakeholders.