EQUAL :: Centre for Gender and Diversity

Participation of Women as Priority for Science!

The EQUALproject ‘participation as priority’, carried out by Akke Visser and Annelies van der Horst for the Centre of Gender and Diversity has formally reached its end the 1st of april. In the period of july 2005 till the end of 2007, 9 partners participated in a project focused on the position and the opportunities for highly educated women in Science. The results of the project are excellent, all pre-defined goals, set by each partner, have been reached (in most cases they even surpassed the expectations). The grand finale was the European Festival about women in the field of science (Europese Festival over Vrouwen in de Wetenschap WISER), organized in October 2007. After the conclusion of the project some minor activities have been concluded and the final task of putting al the financial bits and pieces together in cooperation with Dennis Ernes began. The main task of this operation was to finally get hold of valuable ESF grant worth six hundred thousand euros (including some other grants worth about one million euros).

After six years of hard work on the EQUALproject at the Centre of Gender and Diversity, all policy makers and board of guardians are thoroughly aware of the fact that the Netherlands has a long way to go when it comes to improving the situation of women in science, seen the fact that we are currently on one of lowest positions compared to other European countries.

But it gets better: the project provided an entire set of possible solutions. Within the boundaries of the programme a series of experiments have been performed combining new approaches like mentoring, coaching, ambassadornetworks, strategic sessions with managers and instrument development.
The results of the project, and much more information, can be found on the portalwebsite www.vrouwenwetenschap.nl constructed in commission of the Ministry of OCW and in cooperation with the IIAV. We are pleased with the final results of the EQual project and take a fond farewell of the Centre for Gender and Diversity and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.