GENERA Roadmap - Step 3:

The design of your GEP should accommodate the specific context of your organisation. The following suggestions provide the basic structure, which can be expanded and tailored to the specific needs and requirements of your organisation.

The GEP design consists of five main components:

• integration of gender equality in the organisation
• quantitative and qualitative analysis
• definition of concrete objectives
• development of measures and implementation strategy
• and annex for background information

First, it is important to determine where gender equality is or should be anchored in the organisation. Therefore, a clear understanding of the structural embeddedness is necessary. You could include the laws, which refer to the structural integration of gender equality (if any are available). The promotion of gender equality is a cross-sectional task for the management board and should be directly embedded at top-level. Furthermore, there are additional units, e.g. the gender equality office or diversity management, which support and advise on equal treatment of all employees.

The second part of your GEP should be the quantitative as well as the qualitative analysis. This step (2. Analyse) is a prerequisite in order to start the implementation process of the GEP in the organisation. Graphics and tables should be included to illustrate key results.

The qualitative analysis includes gender equality measures, which are currently implemented in your organisation. A short description of each measure helps to get an overview about the necessary fields and needs for action. Of course it is not possible to tackle all fields of action at the same time. Therefore, you should set individual priorities for your organisation. Chose or develop appropriate measures to achieve your specific objectives and describe their expected impact.

On the basis of external and internal analysis, and as a third step, it is important to set up concrete objectives for increasing the proportion of women at different career levels and across the organisation. The external analysis could be executed with a benchmarking in order to compare the situation in your organisation with other organisations (national/international comparison). In addition to that, the internal analysis is based on the quantitative analysis mentioned above. After the identification of the status quo, you should define objectives to increase the proportion of women within specified period of time. The central point, which should be included by defining your objectives, is that you set them up realistically, explain them clearly and communicate them throughout the whole organisation. By doing so, it would be helpful to describe a clear period of time in which you aim to reach the objectives. One example could be: “(Name of the institute) aims to increase the number of female PhD candidates from x% to y% in z years.”

In general, the objectives (not only quantitative but also qualitative objectives) should be “SMART”: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-related.

In order to reach your objectives, you need to develop your individual implementation strategy. You could do that by connecting your objectives to the specific measures, with a clear explanation of the process (e.g. in a table). When needed, you could introduce quality management by identifying key performance indicators to strengthen the achievement of the objectives and the obligation for all departments.

The components mentioned above shape the main part of a GEP. The last one would be an annex where you can show in more detail the statistics and graphics from the quantitative analysis.

The aim of this step is to design a holistic Gender Equality Plan with specific objectives for your organisation and to develop the supporting measures to achieve them.

• Develop a customized Gender Equality Plan for your organisation
  Is the main content included?

• Write a short introduction explaining the intention of developing a GEP
  What is the intention of the GEP in your organisation?

• Write a chapter on the integration of gender equality in the organisation
  Where is the gender equality/the GEP embedded?

• Write a chapter of the quantitative analysis and the most important results
  What are the most important findings?
  Did you visualize them to capture essential features?

• Write a chapter on qualitative analysis and a short description of current implemented measures
  What are the most important measures related to gender equality?
  Did you have described them concisely?

• Add conclusions of the results and determination of consequent objectives
  Where are the needs for action?
  Which measures are missing (use as a reference the GENERA Fields of Action)?
  What kind of measures is needed (target group specific)?
  What are the most important objectives that should be achieved in this period of time?

• Formulate specific quantitative and qualitative objectives (fix quotas if possible)
  Which fields of action are the most important to change the status quo?
  How would you change them?
  Are the objectives relevant to the strategic aims of your organisation?
  Is the scope of the objectives appropriate?
  Are there too few or too many objectives?
  Are the objectives result-based and measurable?

• Add a chapter on the implementation strategy and a short description of appropriate measures:
  develop with the Implementation Team tailored measures based on all needs of action identified in the analysis according to the organisational conditions (use as reference the GENERA Toolbox which lists a selection of good practice measures from international research organizations and higher education institutes)
  Which measures should be implemented? (answer the basic questions what, why, how, who, when and where)
  Benchmark on measures: which measures are good practice in other research organisations? Can you adapt them to your organisation?

• And add an annex with more detailed statistics and graphics from the quantitative analysis
  Did you set out all information collected in the analysis in the annex?

• Write down your GEP in consultation with the Implementation Team and (if there is one) the office for gender equality, HR department, diversity management or other offices in your organisation included in the implementation process
  Which offices/persons may help you in designing of the GEP?

• Present and discuss the customized GEP to the management and leadership
  Did the customized GEP meet the expectations and the organisational objectives?

• Consider individual contexts of your organisation (e.g. history/tradition of GEPs or documents on gender equality, size of organisation/institute, culture of the organisation/institutes)
  Have you considered all individual aspects of your organisation?
  Is the GEP for the whole organisation or just for the institutes of physics?
  What do you need to know about institutes of physics and the researchers (any discipline-specific characteristics)?

• Define a time period for the realization of the plan
  What period of time is realistic?
  

• Formulate SMART objectives: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-related
• Consider the specific cultural context of your organisation or the institute
• Further resources:
  • Gender Strategy Toolkit – Workplace Gender Equality Agency
  • GenderTime Toolbox
  • Gender Diversity Toolbox - STAGES

• What is specific for your organisation regarding Step 3: Design?

Please record here (documentation of important steps, experiences, successes, challenges, solution approaches, etc.)

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