WHAT IS GENDER INEQUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION, AND HOW IS IT MEASURED? THE SPANISH CASE

Despite progress made in gender equality in academia and research and innovation, women remain disadvantaged as they hold more precarious contracts and have higher attrition rates on the way to permanent and senior positions among other issues. 

In this context it is important to ask not only what kind of measures or policies can be implemented, but also whether we are making good diagnoses of the problem. To this end, this seminar explores the Spanish case. 

The approval in 2007 of a pioneering legislative framework in Europe on the responsibility of Universities in the promotion of the principle of equal opportunities, marked a turning point in the approach to this reality in Spain. One of the obligations it introduced was that universities (and any other company with more than 200 employees) should incorporate in their organisation equality plans and/or administrative structures to guarantee the principle of equality between women and men. 

This situation marked the beginning of the institutionalisation of gender policies in the Spanish university system in which the incorporation of administrative structures to carry out equality measures (Equality Units), equality plans and diagnoses on this reality became generalised in all universities.

In this seminar we will take a closer look at the Spanish case, analysing what the Equality Units and Equality Plans are and, paying special attention to the type of indicators that are being used to measure inequality in universities, showing some of the current advances and challenges.

Speaker: Prof. Dra. Esther Marquez Lepe (Associate Professor at Sociology Department, Universidad de Sevilla, Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Program of Ethnicity, Migrations and Right, Harvard University)

Sponsors: MICIU, Gobierno de España; Harvard University; US; RCCHU.