The ICM assimilates gender equality in the institution’s structure and strategy.
Just over a year ago, the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM) approved its first Gender Equality Plan (GEP 2021-2024), driven by its participation in two European Horizon 2020 projects, Leading Towards Sustainable Gender Equality Plans in research performing organisations (LeTSGEPs) and RESponsible research and innovation grounding practices in BIOSciencies (ResBIOS).
The GEP commits efforts in each of the areas of intervention recommended by Horizon Europe: work-life balance and organisational culture, gender balance in leadership and decision-making, gender equality in recruitment and career progression, integration of the gender dimension in research content, and measures against gender-based violence, including sexual harassment.
In addition to these five areas, the ICM has included three more areas of intervention: gender perspective in institutional culture; gender budgeting; and inclusive and non-sexist communication. For each of the 8 areas, specific objectives and results have been established underpinning a set of 14 measures that should allow us to achieve the overall objective of the GEP, which is to contribute to an institutional change that will lead to the adoption of gender equality as a cross-cutting principle of the ICM.
The GEP thus becomes the framework for action and ICM’s roadmap to generate an organisation cultural change that allows the effective mainstreaming of gender equality in all areas and actions of the Institute.
Since the approval of the Roadmap, the ICM has been taking very significant steps with the implementation of actions of a transversal nature that are anchored in institutional policies and practices, and positive action measures aimed at correcting situations of inequality or responding to the specific needs and priorities of women.
Gender equality in leadership and decision making
One of the key measures of ICM’s GEP is the inclusion of gender in institutional governance through the promotion of gender equality in decision-making structures. Effective cultural and organisational change towards gender equality requires well thought-out policies and the integration of gender equality in the organisation’s structures, including in the composition of decision-making bodies. This implies not only ensuring equal representation of women and men, but also promoting awareness, among their members, of the importance of gender equality in institutional governance and the need to gradually transform the organisation to enable structural inequalities to be overcome.
Within this framework, among the measures promoted by the new leadership of the ICM, there are three that clearly respond to the objective of achieving gender equality in leadership and decision-making positions. Firstly, the active commitment to parity in the renewal of institutional positions in the management team, which has resulted in one woman and one man occupying the two vice-directorships, and three women and two men in the recently created deputy directorships.
There has also been an important feminisation in the renewal of the chiefs of the 4 departments into which the ICM is organised, with 3 women and 1 man currently heading departments. This change in the aforementioned posts, together with the new director and the manager, make up a Governing Board (not considering the representatives of staff, which have not been renewed) which, in contrast to the previous masculinisation (with almost 70% of the posts occupied by men), now is composed in 70% by women.
Secondly, the creation of a Deputy Director for Equality, which places equality in the organisational structure of the ICM. This sub-directorate assumes, among other functions, those of monitoring and report on issues related to gender equality, providing advice to management, promoting compliance with the GEP, providing guidance on the completeness and coherence of actions on gender issues within the regulatory frameworks of reference, and liaising between the Gender Working Group (ETF) and the management team.
The third is the presence of gender experts in the two key committees of the center: the scientific strategy committee and the transfer committee, with the goal of advancing in the cross-cutting adoption of the gender perspective in the scoping and definition of their respective institutional strategies.
With these measures, the first steps have been taken to assimilate gender equality in the institution’s structure and strategy. They are intended to be not only a revulsive that activates and accelerates the changes pursued by the GEP, but also a catalyst for organisational resilience and competitiveness.