Gendering the Academy and Research: combating Career Instability and Asymmetries

Final Report Summary - GARCIA (Gendering the Academy and Research: combating Career Instability and Asymmetries)

Executive Summary:
The report “Structural change in research institutions: Enhancing excellence, gender equality and efficiency in research and innovation”, published in 2012 by the European Commission, identified five main problems faced by research institutions in terms of gender inequality: i) the gendered way in which work is organised, which negatively affects women’s careers; ii) the limited presence of a gender perspective in research content and in students’ curricula; iii) the opaqueness in decision-making; iv) the gender biases in institutional practices and v) in the evaluation of excellence.

The GARCIA project tackled all these five areas, by proposing an innovative approach. Firstly, it focused on the early stages of the research careers, and specifically on researchers with non-tenured positions, rarely included by universities and research centres in their Gender Action Plans (GAPs). Secondly, the GARCIA GAPs have been implemented in each beneficiary institution both in a SSH and in a STEM department: 1) University of Trento (IT): Dept. of Sociology and Social Research (DSRS); Dept. of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI); 2) Université Catholique de Louvain (BE): Inst. for the Analysis of Change in Contemporary and Historical Societies (IACCHOS); Earth and Life Inst. (ELI); 3) Radboud University (NL): Inst. for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics (IMAPP); Inst. for Management Research (IMR); 4) University of Iceland (IS): Fac. of Physical Science; Fac. of Political Science; 5) University of Lausanne (CH): Fac. of Biology and Medicine (FBM); Fac. of Social and Political Sciences (SSP); 6) Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SLO): Fran Ramovš Inst. of the Slovenian Language; Department of Agronomy of the Biotechnical Fac. of the Ljubljana Univ. (BF). 7) The Joanneum Research Forschungsgesel (AT) was in charge of the internal evaluation of the project.

The first step was a thorough analysis – developed in WP3 – of the influences of welfare and gender regimes on structuring the career opportunities for women in academic occupations, in order to elaborate self-tailored GAPs sensitive to local and national specificities.
The gendered structure and culture of organisations have been addresses in WP4, aimed at deconstruct the dominant ideology of the traditionally supposed female inferiority in STEM disciplines, but also the gender discriminating mechanisms operating in SSH disciplines, by using both quantitative and qualitative techniques. Moreover, several actions have been implemented in all beneficiaries’ institutions to integrate a gender perspective in research and teaching.
The aim of making decision-making processes transparent was mainly addressed in WP5, which highlighted the gendered consequences of the recent trends in management. In particular, a Toolkit was provided that could be used at all administrative levels and academic fields in European academic and research institutions for integrating gender into the financial processes and procedures.
The organisational gendered constraints that risk to push female researchers to leave research (lack in recognition, invisibility, difficulties in work-life balance or international mobility, etc.) were at the centre of WP6, aimed to prevent the ‘leaky pipeline’. Different mentoring activities have been implemented, and a Toolkit on how to design a gender-sensitive mentoring programme was provided.
Finally, in WP7, GARCIA approached gender biases in the evaluation of excellence. The beneficiaries implemented actions targeted to prospective candidates, on the one side, and to committee members and other key players, on the other side. Also in this case two Toolkits have been provided, the first on how to organise workshops for early career researchers, and the second on how to organise reflexive working groups for recruitment and selection committee members.

All the organisation diagnoses, the actions implemented and the toolkit elaborated during the project were collected in the editorial project “GARCIA working papers”, available on the project website.

The GARCIA project lasted 36 months (February 2014 – January 2017).
Project Context and Objectives:
The GARCIA project involved seven beneficiary institutions. In six institutions a self-tailored Gender Action Plan (GAP) has been implemented, with the aim to combat gender asymmetries among early career-stage researchers. One institution was in charge of the internal evaluation of the project and didn’t elaborate a GAP. Below, we briefly describe the context and the structural change strategies adopted by the GARCIA beneficiaries along with the objectives achieved in each institution.

UNIVERSITY OF TRENTO (ITALY)
The University of Trento (UNITN) is a public teaching and research university. With 13 Departments and Research Centers, and more than 16,000 students, it is an Italian medium-sized university, composed of around 600 academic and 600 administrative personnel. UNITN has a low presence of women in its research and teaching staff. In 2014, the proportion of women in the overall academic personnel was 27%, while the Italian average was 36%. Moreover, the research activities carried out by the GARCIA team at UNITN pointed out that more than 2/5 of the research staff is composed of people in temporary positions, all concentrated among early stages researchers, with an over-representation of women in the more vulnerable positions.
Gender equality as a value, as well as the importance of equal opportunity policies, are included in the Ethical Code of UNITN and actively promoted in the (first) Affirmative Action Plan for Equal Opportunities (AAP) 2014-2016 which has been implemented within the University community in concomitance of the GARCIA Gender Action Plan. The aims and actions of the GARCIA project allowed to include researchers with temporary employment contracts (mainly postdocs) as beneficiaries of equal opportunities actions and policies at UNITN. Indeed, such category was previously excluded by the main policies promoted at university level because it was not considered as part of the university community. The GARCIA Gender Action Plan at UNITN mainly focused on: a) to support the every-day working life of temporary researchers and their career prospects; b) to combat the loss of female researchers along the career path in academia; c) to raise awareness on gender issues connected to recruitment and selection processes; d) gender issues in the allocation of resources and funding. As all the GARCIA beneficiary institutions, the actions targeted one STEM and one SSH department – namely the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI) and the Department of Sociology and Social Research (DSRS) – but some activities involved the entire University and the local context.

UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN (BELGIUM)
The UCL is Belgium’s largest French-speaking university (more than 30,000 students in 2016). The GARCIA SSH case is the Institute for the Analysis of Change in Contemporary and Historical Societies (IACCHOS). It is a scientific confederation consisting of 12 research centres. There are approximately 200 junior and senior researchers and academics working in IACCHOS. The GARCIA STEM case is the Earth and Life Institute (ELI). It consists of five research poles. The institute assembles 430 members, of which 50 are professors, more than 260 researchers and PhDs and around 120 technicians and administrative personnel.
The objectives with respect to the depth and scope of the research undertaken during the project were successful for our UCL case, as we could develop a significant national and organisational case-study. We have been able to write several reports presenting all these results, which have been published as working papers on the GARCIA website. The creation of a mentoring program at UCL has been inspired by the GARCIA project. In collecting data, diffusing results, organising focus groups, workshops and conferences, the UCL GARCIA team had contributed to improve the general recognition of the gender issue in the two institutes (ELI and IACCHOS). Of course, the institutional changes are quite modest. Time is a crucial factor, both for the development of valid and thoroughly grounded analysed research on organisations and gender, and then more time is needed for the implementation of change and introduction of gender policies and politics in conjunction with the organisational bodies that are already appointed and active in gender policies.

RADBOUD UNIVERSITY (THE NETHERLANDS)
The Dutch GARCIA institution has a longstanding tradition in working on gender equality in academia. The GARCIA project thus fitted in a series of initiatives that target issues of gender, diversity and inclusion. The specific focus of the GARCIA project on early career academics has called specific attention to this group that hitherto has not been studied thoroughly. The research conducted in the first phase of the GARCIA project (months 1-18) made it very clear that special attention is needed for the early stages of academic careers in the current academic system. In the second phase (months 19-36) we developed various actions that yielded the following changes in the institution.
In a series of discussions with the deans, management teams and other senior staff members we started developing gender action plans to fit the situation of the institution (WP2). Regarding gender in curricula and research (WP4), two master specializations on gender equality were developed that will start in the 2017/18 curriculum. The analysis of gender budgeting and gender in decision-making (WP5) resulted in a linking up with the university’s strategic HR agenda. The importance of a gender balance in the composition of decision-making bodies gained renewed attention. The GARCIA project also resulted in a mentoring programme (WP6), and the development of reflexive working groups, aiming to intervene in recruitment and selection processes so that committee members and prospective candidates become more aware of the gendered construction of academic excellence (WP7). Both the mentoring programme and the reflexive working groups are becoming embedded in the HR department of the institute.

UNIVERSITY OF ICELAND (ICELAND)
The University of Iceland was founded in 1911, and is the oldest and largest higher education institution in Iceland. The University is a comprehensive research and educational institution that is organised into central administration and five academic schools, with 25 faculties and four interdisciplinary study lines. UI offers around 400 programmes for approximately 13,000 registered students, who enter free of charge with regard to tuition fees, but they do pay an annual student registration fee.
Equality, gender equality included, is one of the guiding principles of the University of Iceland according to its overall vision. The current equal rights policy (2013-2017) which is the third that has been promoted since 2005 covers equality and diversity in a broad sense. The GARCIA Gender Action Plan was aimed to corresponds to and fit with the University equal rights policy, and the two proved to strongly reinforce each other. The GARCIA Gender Action Plan focused on all work packages (WP) of the project, with a special attention on gender budgeting (WP5). The work required an extensive data gathering and frequent communication with faculties and administrative staff at all levels. As a result it has raised gender awareness throughout the institution which had been lacking. It has also allowed to initiate new actions and measures as well as building actively on and deepening already existing initiatives. The understanding of the importance of institutional changes has been incited, especially regarding hiring and promotion practices (WP7) and mentoring of young academics (WP6) . The gender budgeting (WP5) part of the GARCIA has led to enhanced political will of introducing institutional changes in financial and management procedures. Overall, the GARCIA project and the Gender Action Plan has been an opportunity to promote the gender equality work at the University of Iceland, and the aims and actions of the GARCIA project have revitalise the equal opportunities work at the University.

UNIVERSITY OF LAUSANNE (SWITZERLAND)
The University of Lausanne (UNIL) is a public teaching and research university, located in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. It is composed of seven faculties where approximately 12,400 students and 2,300 academics study and work. The GARCIA project started during the 2013-2016 Gender Equality Action Plan (Vision 50/50) that the UNIL had contractually agreed to implement, with funding from the Swiss Federal government. The GARCIA action plan had to target one STEM and one SSH department. We decided to work on the section of basic sciences (SBS) of the Faculty of biology and medicine (FBM) and the Faculty of social and political sciences (SSP).
As the Equal Opportunities Office (EOO) was created in 2000 and has received good support from the Rectorate (one of the Vice-Rectors oversees the work of the EOO), it is not easy to identify and disentangle the institutional changes due directly to the GARCIA project. Our strategy was to build on existing actions, which needed to be further developed or adapted in direct collaboration with the EOO (e.g. we collaborated on the creation of a video clip and a toolkit for hiring commissions); the gender equality commission in the STEM Faculty (“Commission Pro-Femmes”), where we provided expertise and advice. In August 2015, the SSH Faculty nominated a vice-dean for gender equality and early academic careers, a position to which the leader of the Swiss GARCIA team was appointed, for a period of three years.

RESEARCH CENTRE OF THE SLOVENIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND ARTS (SLOVENIA)
The Slovenian team examined the gendered organizational structure and implemented actions in two separate GARCIA organisations because the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) does not have a STEM department suitable to obtain accurate results and only carries out research. For this reason, the Department of Agronomy from Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana was chosen as STEM institution. The Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) began independent institution in 1981, even though the majority of the institutes under the aegis of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts had already been operating several decades earlier. More than 300 associates are organised into 18 independent but coordinated and interconnected institutes. The diverse research areas can be summed up in the study of cultural, social, and natural phenomena, processes, and practices. The Biotechnical Faculty is an integral part of University of Ljubljana from its foundation. More than 700 associates are organised into 9 departments. Its aim is to provide education at university, as well as to carry out scientific research and technical and consulting work concerning the sciences of living nature (biology, microbiology) as well as agriculture, forestry and fisheries (agronomy etc.) and the related production technologies (wood technology etc.).
For what concerns the institutional change in both STEM and SSH test institutions, none of them had gender action plans. Moreover, we detected not just a lack of equal opportunities bodies, but also the total lack of the relevance of gender-sensitive policies, particularly in the case of Biotechnical faculty, University of Ljubljana (STEM institution). Due to that context, the GARCIA project had a demanding task to ground organisational policy on gender equality in test institutions. Interviews with managerial and research stuff significantly increased awareness about the need of the gender-sensitive approach in decision making, managerial and financial bodies, gender equality in climate workplace, acted on organisational culture and perception of stereotypes in science. Focus on organizational change and work-life balance politics at the early career stages (WP4) has fostered the collection of gender- sensitive statistics and provided institutional support for day-care for children of employees and at SSH test institution. Regarding introducing gender in curricula and research (WP4), Slovenian translation of the Toolkit for introducing gender sensitive approach in research and teaching was successfully used in training workshops at both test institutions. The Toolkit was included in the online database GEAR (Gender Equality in Academia and Research (http://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/tools-methods/gear/action-toolbox) collected by the European Institute for Gender Equality.The analysis of gender budgeting and gender in decision-making (WP5) led to strategic implementation of the specific gender-sensitive programme that yearly support travels abroad of early career scholars with their families in HR agenda. By organising the reflexive working groups, aiming to intervene in recruitment and selection processes so that committee members and prospective candidates (WP7) resulted with the formal changes in the recruitment procedure for the position of Young Researcher at SSH test institution.

JOANNEUM RESEARCH FORSCHUNGSGESEL (AUSTRIA)
JOANNEUM RESEARCH was not an implementing partner in the GARCIA project but its task was the evaluation of the project. The original aim of the evaluation was to assess the institutional progress and structural changes initiated by the GARCIA project and to measure its impacts and effectiveness in each implementing organisation. Therefore the evaluation has been split into an ex-ante and ex-post assessment. The comparison of both assessments should facilitate the assessment of impacts and effectiveness. This approach has turned out not to be feasible and appropriate in the course of the project as for observing concrete outcomes and impacts in terms of increased numbers of women employed in the implementing organisations, more gender equal recruitment practices etc. the project runtime was too short. Even then the evaluation had to be conducted within the project runtime and could not be carried out 4 to 5 years after the end of the project.
Therefore the evaluation has focused more on observing the implementation process but also on its outputs and structural outcomes like new regulations, offices or responsibilities. This should enable a learning process directed at the all partners of the GARCIA project but also beyond to all stakeholders interested in promoting gender equality in the field of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI). Still the main setup of the evaluation was not altered: an ex-ante and an ex-post assessment were conducted. But the targets and indicators have been changed substantially. Observing and assessing the process of implementation makes a shift of perspectives necessary: away from impacts and effectiveness to topics like outputs, resistances, weaknesses, supportive factors and challenges encountered in the course of executing such a project. This allows describing an implementation process, its circumstances but also its short-term achievements in a thorough and detailed form. Based on this detailed description and analysis new knowledge and spill-over effects can be generated. But also the GARCIA project did only start or initiate a change process. Due to the limited runtime of the project and the non-linear implementation process some activities could not be finished or were still open ended. Furthermore also outcomes and impacts were not observe- or measurable at the point of the evaluation interviews due to the short timeframe for implementation. Therefore this evaluation endeavour is better characterised as an interim evaluation which takes stock of what has been done and achieved so far and how the process of implementation has been proceeding but does not make a final concluding assessment of impacts and achievements.
Project Results:
Hereafter we summarise the main S&T results/foreground. Firstly, the transversal activities carried out by all beneficiaries – related to management and dissemination – are described.

WP1 MANAGEMENT
The general management of the project, ensured by the University of Trento, included different types of activities, all of pivotal importance for the success of the GARCIA project as a whole.

A) Project administration. The UNITN ensured the administration of the project as a whole, including the organisation of the project meetings related to the Project Team board, the production and delivery of the periodic and final reports, the drafting of main documents related to the management of the project, and the development of all WP1 deliverables. Overall, 8 events have been organised, i.e.:
• Kick-off Meeting of the GARCIA project (Trento, the 7-8th of March 2014);
• 2nd project meeting (Reykjavik, the 29-30th of August 2014);
• 3rd project meeting (Ljubljana, the 6-7th of February 2015);
• 4th project meeting (Nijmegen, the 27-28th of August 2015);
• 5th project meeting (Vienna, the 18-19th of February 2016);
• 6th project meeting (Lausanne, the 25-26th of August 2016);
• 7th project meeting (Brussels, the 8th of November 2016);
• 8th extraordinary project meeting (Trento, the 23rd of January 2017).

B) Relation with the EC. UNITN was in charge for the relations with the European Commission and DG Research. This included formal and informal exchange of information (letters, e-mails) with the EC project officer and financial officer as well as the legal officer. The GARCIA project requested four amendments to the Grant Agreement:
• The amendment n. 1 requested in January 2014 and approved in April 2014;
• The amendment n. 2 requested in November 2015 and approved in December 2015;
• The amendment n. 3 requested in January 2017 and approved in February 2017;
• The amendment n. 4 requested in February 2017 and approved in February 2017.

C) Internal communication. The UNITN provided the beneficiaries with assistance during all the phases of the project. In this regard, the UNITN has maintained regular contacts with the team members, keeping them informed of the progress/problems/delays and clarifications related to the project. The UNITN was also in contact with the administrative and financial officers of all the beneficiaries of the Consortium in order to provide the necessary support in filling the financial statements. The internal communication has been performed mainly via e-mail messages and occasionally via the intranet system specifically created for the project.

WP2 COMMUNICATION AND DISSEMINATION
The main objectives of this set of activities, coordinated by the UNITN, were to communicate the results obtained through the project; to collect suggestions from the scientific community and from other relevant stakeholders; to facilitate knowledge brokerage through networking and, thus, trigger a knowledge spillover towards promoting a culture of gender equality in science, with a specific focus on early career researchers. The circulation of information and the promotion of the project’s results have been ensured by using the communication tools prepared and updated by the UNITN and Formicablu Ltd (webpage, social media, e-newsletter, brochures, etc.), in collaboration with the beneficiaries, in particular the ZRC SAZU. The following results can be particularly stressed:
• Creation and updating of the project website;
• Creation of a project’s logotype and brochure;
• Creation and continuous updating of the project’s social media pages (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin);
• Drafting of and sending to stakeholders 9 issues of the e-newsletter provided by Mailchimp;
• Supporting the presence in the media and networking activities with institutional, local and national stakeholders;
• Participation to local, national and European conferences in order to present the project;
• Organisation of a final European conference and of 6 national conferences for presenting the project results.

A) Project website. The project website has been designed and developed in the first months of the project. The website contained the following sections: information on GARCIA activities, beneficiaries and contacts; information on the eight work packages and on the related public deliverables; access to the project intranet system; the press section, for downloading the project brochure and flyer; an “Events” page where to find the main dissemination events (seminars, conference, workshops, etc.) where the GARCIA project was presented; the “Publications” page where to download the scientific publications related to the project, such as the GARCIA working papers (an editorial project created with the aim to make all the public deliverables available on the project website); the form for subscribing to the project mailing list; the hyper-links to the project’s social media pages; the hyper-links to GARCIA related projects. The maintenance and updating of the website have been assured all along the project execution.

B) Logotype and brochure. During the initial months of the project, the Coordinator – with the support of Formicablu Ltd. – developed, with a participative approach that involved all the beneficiaries, the visual identity of the project. The main results were the creation of a logotype and of a brochure that contained the presentation of the project’s activities and objectives. Each partner distributed the printed version of the brochure while participating to dissemination events.

C) Social media. The Coordinator, with the support of Formicablu Ltd., opened and developed the project’s accounts on three worldwide used social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin). The social media served as a platform for disseminating the project results, especially the GARCIA working papers. Furthermore, in order to enhance their attractiveness, they were used as hub for sharing popular and scholarly articles about gender equality and precariousness in academia and research. The Coordinator, with the support of the ZRC SAZU, did the continuous updating and posting on the social media. At the end of the project’s period, the Facebook account reached 519 “likes”, the Twitter account 343 “followers” and the Linkedin account 65 “members”.

D) Mailing list. In order to reach the project’s stakeholders, the Coordinator and the ZRC SAZU developed in the first months of the project a mailing list (i.e. e-newsletter) by using the Mailchimp provider. The mailing list contains more than 1200 contacts, mainly academics and scholars involved on gender and science policies as well as representatives of local and national public administrations. Nine issues of the e-newsletter have been issued in English language, respectively in: October 2014; May 2015; October 2015; December 2015; March 2016; September 2016; November 2016; December 2016; January 2017.

E) Presence in the media and networking. The implementing beneficiaries have developed contacts with local and national media, including TV reports and interviews, articles on newspapers and magazines, press-releases. Furthermore, the beneficiaries participated to relevant European and national conferences on gender and science for presenting the GARCIA project. All the beneficiaries were involved in an intensive networking activity with relevant stakeholders for discussing and disseminating actions aimed at ameliorating gender equality and at tackling precariousness in academia and research.

F) Conference presentations. All the beneficiaries, during the project implementation period, participated in total to 113 local, national and European events for presenting and disseminating the project results. These are mostly conferences, as well as seminars and workshops. The eight European conferences for which the beneficiaries requested the reimbursement of their travel & accommodation costs are the following:
1. 9th European Feminist Research Conference Sex & Capital, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, 3-6 June 2015;
2. SASE meeting 2015, The London School of Economics & Political Science, London, 2-4 July 2015;
3. 9th Biennial Gender, Work and Organisation Conference, Keele, 28 June - 1 July 2016;
4. Congrès AREF (Actualité de la Recherche en Éducation et en Formation), Mons, 4-7 July 2016;
5. Third ISA Forum of Sociology, Vienna, 10-14 July 2016;
6. Anthropological legacies and human futures (EASA), Milan, 20-23 July 2016;
7. 9th European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education, Paris, 12-14 September 2016;
8. GenderTime International Conference, Paris, 29-30 September 2016.

G) Organisation of a final conference and of 6 national conferences. For the purpose of disseminating the project results, the beneficiaries organised in the final months of the project 6 national GARCIA conferences and a final European conference in Brussels. The latter was jointly organised with the FP7 project FESTA – Female Empowerment in Science and Technology Academia – and it took place in Brussels on the 7-8th of November 2016 at the UCL campus. The beneficiary in charge of organising the final conference was the UCL. The other beneficiaries organised a national conference each:
1. The Italian national conference was held on the 20-21st of January 2017 at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento;
2. The Dutch national conference was held on the 19th of January 2017 at the Radboud University, Nijmegen;
3. The Icelandic national conference was held on the 18th of October 2016 at the Nordic House, Reykjavik;
4. The Swiss national conference was held on the 24-25th of November 2016, University of Lausanne, Lausanne;
5. The Slovenian national conference was held on the 18th of January 2017 at the ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana;
6. The Joanneum Research national conference was held on the 17th of January 2017 in Vienna.

H) Handbook. The Coordinator, on behalf of the Consortium, has stipulated an Open Access publishing agreement with the editing house Routledge (Taylor & Francis group) for publishing a scientific book entitled “Gender and Precarious Research Careers: A Comparative Analysis”. The aim of this forthcoming publication is to collect the main results of the GARCIA project, and to disseminate them addressing several targets: students (both graduates and undergraduates), researchers, and also experts and policy makers, interested in gender asymmetries in academic and research organisations. Before being accepted, the volume was subject to rigorous peer review to ensure academic quality and integrity. The Open Access publication of the Handbook is envisaged in early 2018.
In the following sections a summary of the activities realised by each GARCIA beneficiary, organised by work packages, is provided.

UNIVERSITY OF TRENTO (ITALY)
WP3 Mapping national and local contexts
The overall objective for WP3 was to understand the role of the societal, local and institutional context in structuring the career opportunities for women in academic occupations in the early stages of academic careers. Based on a secondary analysis of statistic material and additional studies on the Italian context, we mapped the gendered structure of labour markets and employment and family policies at national and local level. We analysed the Italian practices and policies in five key domains: education; employment; family orientation; care policies; and equal opportunities. Whenever necessary, we distinguished national policies and practices from those in the academic sector producing additional data focused on the Italian academic system.
From the analyses emerged that notwithstanding the advances of recent decades, in Italy the economic participation rate of women is still considerably lower than that of men. In 2014, the country continued to be among the worst performers in the Global Gender Gap Index (ranking 69th out of 142 overall), penalised above all by the economic participation and opportunity category (114th), while the gap in educational attainment was narrower (62th). Italy lags behind in women’s access to the labour market, remuneration, career advancement, promotion to positions of leadership and new business initiatives. The family-employment system continued to be based on rather traditional gender roles and the male-breadwinner model of the family remains dominant.
Data on academic careers at national level shows a relative stability in the feminization process of the academic positions and a significant increase in the number of temporary posts, that are all concentrated in the early stages of careers. Temporary positions in academia are mainly represented by postdoctoral research fellowships (assegni di ricerca) which are not formally considered as employment contracts by the Italian law. Therefore, they are not entitled to receive any unemployment benefit and have a limited access to other social security provisions. Give such situation, the GARCIA team collaborated with the UNITN rector, the committee of PhD students and grant holders, the Autonomous Province of Trento (PAT), the Employment Agency of the PAT and the local trade unions to design and implement an unemployment benefit for postdoctoral research fellows resident in the province of Trento (600 euros for a maximum of 6 months).

WP4 Organisational culture and actions to integrate gender perspective in research and teaching
We carried out a quantitative and qualitative analysis focused on gender differences in the academic careers at the University of Trento. Adopting a gender-sensitive approach, a) we collected statistical indicators on working conditions, career development and recruitment of men and women at university and department level; b) we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with early career researchers at the DISI and DSRS focused on their everyday working life, work-life balance and future prospects; and 3) we carried out a desk analysis and a data collection on teaching activities and funded research projects at the DISI and DSRS.
On the basis of the analyses of the data collected in the diagnostic phase, we identified ad-hoc structural change actions aimed at promoting gender equality and combating gender stereotypes in research and teaching.
In the case of the DISI department we focused on the promotion of gender-sensitive approaches in research organizing the training workshop “Integrating a gender perspective in research”, conducted by Yellow Window. The specific aim of the training was to provide to the participants with concrete tools for including a gender perspective in designing a research project proposal.
In the case of the DSRS department, we focused mainly on teaching activities by organising the research laboratory “Gender differences in students’ experiences” within the undergraduate course “Gender in the contemporary society”. The laboratory aimed at providing students with methodological tools for adopting a gender perspective in designing a survey and an interview guide.
Finally, we collaborated with internal and external stakeholders organising actions targeted to the University and local level. More precisely: a) we collaborated with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies of the University of Trento to organise the cycle of seminars “Gender Studies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives”; b) we organised the film festival on gender and science “Research and Revolution”; and 3) we participated at the “Researchers’ Night 2015”, with the event “The women researchers’ night! Stories of women scientists of the past, present and... future!”, in collaboration with the FESTA project.

WP5 Management and decision-making processes
We carried out an organisational analysis at the university level focused on management practices and financing procedures using a gender lens. Moreover, an analysis of the gender composition of the committees concerned with decision-making in the two targeted departments has been realised. In 2014, women were only 20% of the total number of UNITN governance board members, and within each board or committee there was often only one woman. The collected data had contributed to the work of the GARCIA Icelandic team which has developed a Toolkit focused on how to integrate gender budgeting in the research sector. This toolkit and the analysis conducted has been disseminated at the university level by involving central bodies managing the governance of UNITN, and the administrative offices at university and departmental level.

WP6 Tackling the phenomenon of the leaky pipeline
We carried out an organisational diagnosis through the analysis of the working conditions of PhD holders who left the DISI and DSRS departments, after having worked there as postdoctoral research fellows from 2010 to 2014. To this aim: a) we collected statistical data on the gender composition of the academic staff at national and organisational level; b) we conducted a web-survey targeted to the early career researchers of the GARCIA beneficiary institutions; and c) we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with postdocs who worked in in the GARCIA beneficiary departments between 2010 and 2014 and who are now working in other academic or non-academic contexts.
On the basis of the organisational diagnosis we identified two actions, the first implemented at the university level and the second specifically targeted to the DSRS department.
At the University level a participatory design process was developed for the creation of a new web portal within the official UNITN website, dedicated to PhD students and postdoctoral research fellows. The portal provides information about the available organisational policies and about rights and duties. It also includes an online mentoring area, with video pills realised ad hoc by the GARCIA team with STEM and SSH senior researchers, addressing relevant topics for early career researchers such as: publishing, networking, career planning, fund raising, gender and equal opportunities.
At the DSRS department, in order to tackle the limited connection of the department of sociology with the private sector, we organised the workshop “Bridging academia and the private sector”, aimed at informing and empowering especially female master and PhD students as well as early career researchers about the working opportunities outside academia.

WP7 Raising awareness of committee members and prospective candidates
The main objective of WP7 was to discuss gender biases in hiring and selections procedures of early career researchers with potential members of recruitment and selection committees as well as to sustain the career development of prospective candidates. In order to develop ad-hoc actions we carried out a diagnostic analysis of the formal selection criteria for early career researchers and of the vacancies for postdocs and fixed-term assistant professor positions opened at the DISI and DSRS from 2010 to 2014. Moreover, we carried out semi-structural interviews with all members of committees involved in these recruitment procedures. On the basis of these results, we developed different training modules in order to increase awareness about the risk to enact and reproduce gender biases in the construction of “excellence”.
In the case of the DISI department we organized the workshop “Making academic careers together. Recruitment, precariousness and gender” within the XII International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems (COOP). The workshop was divided in three sessions. In the morning session, associate and full professors were involved in a discussion about the potential gender (conscious and unconscious) biases in the recruitment and evaluation criteria. The main results have been organised in a “Vademecum for committee members” recruiting assistant professors, aimed to avoid discriminations and to acknowledge gender differences in the applications. In the afternoon session, PhD students, postdocs and research fellows discussed the vademecum developed in the morning session, focusing on the gap between formal and actual practices. Finally, in the plenary session, all the conference attendees were involved in a collective discussion focused on the two previous GARCIA training modules, with the aim to question the criteria used to recruit early career researchers. At the end of the discussion the Manifesto “Making Visible” aimed at promoting more transparency in selection processes in academia has been written and shared within the DISI community and in all the dissemination initiatives developed by the GARCIA Italian team.
In the case of the DSRS department, we organised the workshop “How can we promote talents in research?”, conducted by colleagues working in the STAGES project. Associate and full professors were invited to reflect on gender biases and stereotypes in selection and evaluation procedures. The aim was to increase the awareness on the fact that “excellence” is not gender neutral, and to show the gap between ideal representations and actual practices. Moreover, we carried out two training activities targeted to early career researchers and conducted by prof. Barbara Risman, former President of “Sociologists for Women and Society”: 1) “Professional Development Workshop: Career Planning for Early Career Researchers”, aimed to raise awareness about gender practices in recruitment and selection processes, and to provide competences useful to build an academic career in a global research environment (cv-writing, job application, interview strategies, career planning, etc.); 2) Individual colloquia where PhD candidates and postdocs had the chances to receive a personalised counselling on their professional development.
Finally, at the University level, the GARCIA team collaborated with the Scientific Research and Technological Transfer Division of the University to the organisation of the training course “How to write a successful ERC project proposal”, with specific attention to gender issues. The training was conducted by an expert of the Italian Agency for the Promotion of European Research (APRE). Moreover, individual meetings were organised – using a gender balance criterion – with early career researchers who participated to the training, in order to offer tailored advices on each project proposal.

UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN (BELGIUM)
WP3 Mapping national and local contexts
The main objective of the WP3 was to map and analyse national welfare, gender, employment and care ‘regimes’ and to show how these structure women’s career opportunities in general. In Belgium, girls have made the school system their own, especially in terms of levels of studies. They are now in the majority in higher and university education, with higher graduation rates than the boys. Yet two important reservations should be formulated: firstly, access to the highest level of qualification, the doctorate, still remains male in the majority; secondly, a horizontal segmentation between ‘male’ tracks of studies (sciences and technology) and ‘female’ (human and social sciences) is still reproduced. The labour market has been strongly feminized, but here too classical phenomena of horizontal segmentation (between sectors and trades) and vertical (employment and responsibility levels) are present, although they are decreasing. For that matter, an unexplained 10% gender pay gap is still present. One of the important aspects of female employment in Belgium is its part time character. The scale of female part time work should be, at least partially in any case, interpreted as the fruit of work/family conciliation difficulties, expressing the persistence of a sexual and gendered division of work in which an essential part of ‘care’ is still attributed to women.
Scientific and academic careers are anchored in this societal configuration. Many women pursue graduate and postgraduate studies but enter a leaky pipeline wherein their downfall may be observed from their doctorate to the highest positions of the statutory hierarchy of university space. The problem of articulating work and family within a gender regime maintaining a sexual division of productive and reproductive work is one of the apparent causes of this downfall. In addition, a horizontal segmentation is present too, certain scientific disciplines such as the sciences and technology remain male bastions.

WP4 Organisational culture and everyday working life
In this WP, we collected and analysed the data relative to the organisational context. The situation in ELI and IACCHOS is very different in terms of gender balance in all the categories of staff members and PhD students. While, in IACCHOS, women are overrepresented in all the career stages excepting for tenured professorship (only 40%), in ELI, women are underrepresented in all categories. Regarding gender equality in career development, the situation of IACCHOS (and in the SSH sector) could be better evaluated that the situation in the STEM institute (and in the STEM sector) in UCL.
Interviews with on-going postdocs and newly tenured researchers/academics in both departments has been successfully carried out. There is on the whole a major difference between the way males speak about future perspectives and advice to young researchers and female interviewees in both Institutes. Male researchers/academics are more career oriented in general. Women speak more about stress, anxiety due to precariousness and due to personal sacrifices. However, a majority of interviewees (male and female) are critical about criteria of “excellence” in academic/scientific world. The ELI newly tenured females are much more critical towards the institution and the field; harassment issues are broached, and a tough time establishing themselves in a masculine dominated field and institute.
Maternity remains a major issue broached by women in both institutes and in all groups (postdocs and newly tenured); the criteria of recruitment and progression not being in favour for mothers, such as mobility and productivity. The precariousness and job uncertainty contributing to stalling building a family and settling down. The rhythm of scientific work and career makes difficult to reconcile. The need of the right support configurations, both on the level of the partner, with a stable career in case a permanent position has not been gained, or where there is, a support from the family and from the professional environment. An ambitious gender policy in the university, with measures that favour parent researchers, could contribute in combating asymmetries in the scientific career between men and women.

WP5 Management and decision-making processes
The managerial framework points to a circular or multi-governing system or organisation within the UCL. The different governing organs have a cross-referencing and cross-intervening power in terms of decision-making in general management; such as defining tasks and functions, setting research or teaching programs, however it is noteworthy that the members of the authorities are omnipresent in all governing organs. Negotiation, debating, deliberation are recurrent notions or concepts that appear in nearly all descriptions, codes and regulations of university governance at all levels, especially in the governing organs and councils. The percentage of women in the governing bodies does not exceed 20% for the general decision-making and 10% for the Institute level of governance.
What becomes clear is that there must exist a vast difference in the governing of budgets according to the sectors, given that the student pro-rata differs vastly between the disciplines. There is also a great reliance on funding acquired by the personnel themselves, which makes up an important amount of UCL financial resources for sustaining the localities, infrastructure etc. In terms of European large scale funded and nationally funded projects, there is an upper hand of male academics (professors and associate professors), who obtain these types of projects.
It can be clearly said that there is an important glass ceiling existing at UCL. A professional bureaucracy of this kind of constellation can point to an ever increasing workload transferred to individuals, which necessitates high demands of institutional engagement, not only in terms of political or governing involvement of individuals alongside their main work of research and teaching, but also an important increase in logistic, governance and administrative tasks, and of finding own funds, which research centres and faculties are not able to supply in sufficient amounts. There is a form of entrepreneurship required on unit-and individual level, without adhering to managerialism. Moreover women (and men) not only have to meet high demands in research/teaching, but in addition also adhere to an important institutional investment and presence in terms of integrating into a hyper-complex system of bureaucracy and institutional culture. This type of organisation requires a significant actual physical presence of individuals, because decisions are made in meetings, deliberations and through a heady process of negotiation. There seems to be an increasing requirement of ‘omnipresence’ in all three pillars (research, teaching and services), of which each pillar has increased in levels, demands and complexity of required personal engagement. It can be argued that this can represent important issues to work/life conciliation or balance or having a family life, and that wanting to climb the career ladder also means important choices and pressures in terms of personal life.

WP6 Tackling the phenomenon of the leaky pipeline
We realised a comparison of the different case-studies of GARCIA beneficiaries and of recurring configurations that assemble certain features and characteristics, such as specific gender and welfare regimes, specific quantitative statistical features of careers, key narrative results relating to visible gendered and work dynamics, certain recruitment criteria that are discursive resources and organisational modalities. From this comparative analysis, a typology has been elaborated comprising three Types of Gendered Pipelines:
• Type (1) “Persisting in precariousness” career path and “Mandarin” organisation with High cumulative costs;
• Type (2) “Persisting in uncertainty and ambivalence” career path and “University institution” organisational model with Moderate level costs;
• Type (3) “Winning in competition” career path and “market-driven” organisation with Specific Costs.
The UCL case study situates us in the Type (2).
The first primary statement can be made in terms of the massive entry of female students into the majority of fields. However, the doctorate is a point of inversion in terms of an existing leaky pipeline phenomenon. In terms of sectors of study/science there is a gender effect of the distribution of students among sectors (SSH more feminine and STEM more masculine). There is a feminization in the scientific/teaching corps, which concerns mainly the lowest levels of the academic ladder: the assistants and other non-defined or permanent status of the scientific corps (notably postdocs, or PhD holders without permanent posts).
The doctoral and more mainly the postdoctoral period, for all male and female interviewees – current postdocs, newly tenured and leavers/movers (those who ‘left’ and those who ‘moved’ but staying in academia) – Is something that crystalizes itself as what can be called a ‘passport’ period. This passport form is something problematic, because it presents an ambivalent rapport to work and the profession due to precariousness, pressures and tensions for early career researchers in multiple professional and personal ways. Moreover, there is a constant bid for funding that is lacking, a constant justification of research, which shifts the focus away from actual research and academic work. The ‘passport’ frame of the postdoctoral period also has significant gendered implications.
On the whole, a picture emerges of a period of professional struggle, tensions with family building and stabilizing or settling into life. What emerges as a striking result is the way that parenthood will impact upon the rapport; while female and male childless postdocs are engaged and optimistic about their work level and intensity, male and female postdocs with children are more ambivalent about work and family. However, female researchers have more ambivalence in the question about compatibility of children with career, more feelings of guilt for time away from children, and also speak about health reasons, overwork and infringement upon or sacrifice of family, mobility and leaving the country due to career choices.
The importance to build an ad hoc mentoring program has been highlighted, based partly on the mentoring toolkit produced by GARCIA. There is a willingness to invest some university funds in the setting up of this program.

WP7 Raising awareness of committee members and prospective candidates
‘Excellence’ is a key work in UCL, in conjunction with the idea that UCL is a ‘research university’. The joint vision upon the contents of the job descriptions, the HR documents provided by the rector’s office in UCL, the different groups of interviews and the focus group provide a very rich picture of different dimensions of organisational logics and extra-organisational logics at play before, during and beyond recruitment processes. What emerges for the case of UCL and the two institutes in question, IACCHOS and ELI, is that there is a kind of overarching tension that confronts criteria and demands of young candidates in recruitment processes of D- and C-level posts that are more general and what can be called de-localized, international or competition-based criteria, and more local, institutional and nomination-based requirements.
There seem to be multiple ambiguities or tensions that can be named with respect to this opposition between the competition-based criteria and logic of recruitment and the nomination-based logic. In particular the difference between the focus of requirements of the scientific career in its early stages, as of the PhD, which is clearly connected with demands and requirements of scientific or research orientation; developing ones’ research, consolidating it and validating this in visible publications. The postdoctoral criteria affirm this research profile, by the project type work and its particularities (time frame, work load, leadership, coordination, independence, innovation etc.) and the criteria named by that group of interviewees. The final selection criteria are however much more academic, simply because finally the recruitment of C-level posts are ‘academic’ posts and not research posts. Ensuring teaching and institutional engagement become key criteria for an academic appointment. The scientific factor or excellence shifts therefore into the background, and in fact is sometimes penalized as a too ‘individualist’ or egocentric ‘star’ logic, which cannot function as sole criteria.

RADBOUD UNIVERSITY (THE NETHERLANDS)
WP3 Mapping national and local contexts
The overall objective for WP3 was to understand the role of the societal, local and institutional context in structuring the career opportunities for women in academic occupations in the early stages of academic careers. Based on a secondary analysis of statistic material and additional studies on the Dutch context, we mapped the gendered structure of labour markets and employment and parental policies at national and local level. We analysed the Dutch practices and policies in five key domains: education policies and practices; employment and labour market policies and practices; family orientation; care policies; and equal opportunities. Whenever necessary, we distinguished Dutch national policies and practices from those in the academic sector. We also presented additional information about the local context of the Radboud University.
The results showed that despite the high number of women students and growing number of female PhD-candidates and their good performance, women in academia are especially underrepresented at the level of assistant, associate and full professors. While part-time work is a key characteristic for the Dutch labour market, women working in the academic sector tend to work much more often in full-time jobs. The recent and sharp increase in temporary contracts in the academic sector in general particularly affects the job security of women as they more often than men work in temporary contracts.
The material needed for this analysis was abundantly available and the task has been performed according to plan. The end result was the Dutch country report that has been sent to the Swiss work package coordinators (20 December 2014).

WP4 Organisational culture and actions to integrate gender perspective in research and teaching
The objective for WP4 was to integrate a gender perspective in research and in teaching. First, we mapped the existing researches and curricula both in the STEM and SSH departments. We were able to divide the research projects and Master courses into four categories: 1) gender is a core theme; 2) gender is being mentioned; 3) there is potential for gender to be integrated; 4) no gender. This task resulted in a report on the mapping of existing researches and curricula using a gender perspective (April 30, 2015).
We have proposed work-life balance as a cultural issue for leadership (training) and staff meetings to discuss work pressure, performance appraisal, and role modelling. We suggested a set of measures and meetings to discuss the balance between good academic performance, sustainable employability, and the wellbeing of people in different career and life stages.
In addition, the GARCIA team members used several opportunities to integrate gender studies in educational programs in the SSH department. First, we were able to include gender topics in courses on career orientation in STEM. Second, we developed a minor Gender studies (Ba/Ma). Third, we developed a Master specialization Gender Studies. Fourth, we continued with the interdisciplinary research group (hotspot) on gender and power in politics and management. And finally, we strengthened the cooperation with Radboud Gender & Diversity studies to support gender studies and initiatives university-wide.
With regard to the STEM department, we had to conclude that the priorities of the STEM department, its gender committee and the GARCIA team did not lie with the integration of gender in research and teaching. We decided to focus on the training of members of appointment committees and prospective candidates about gender practices in academic recruitment and selection, to start the conversation about the relevance of gender in the STEM field and building some expertise among staff members on gender issues at work.

WP5 Management and decision-making processes
The objective of this WP was to make management and decision-making processes gender sensitive by advocating a gender balance in faculty decision making bodies at the SSH and STEM departments.
We started by crafting an action plan for both institutes. We thereby planned to link up with the university’s strategic HR agenda. In doing so, we sponsored the need for gender balance in decision making bodies at the STEM and SSH departments. Furthermore, we were involved in the integration of the gender dimension in academic leadership training on the university level. As such, we made the training of leadership a central element in the challenging of gender budgeting and gendered decision making processes. Moreover, we aimed to institutionalize a gender balance in the composition of decision-making bodies. Lastly, the GARCIA team supported the call for research on the gender pay gap at the Radboud University after a study showing gender differences between academics on a national level (www.lnvh.nl).

WP6 Tackling the phenomenon of the leaky pipeline
The aim of this WP was to map the leaky pipeline at an organisational level quantitatively and qualitatively and comparing it with the national and (if relevant) local background data. Following this research, we developed a mentoring program for early career researchers in both the STEM and the SSH department.
Our quantitative and qualitative analysis showed how factors on the individual, institutional and cultural and national level intersect and shape the leaky pipeline. From our quantitative analysis, we see that in internationally comparison (OECD, EU), the Netherlands has one of the lowest numbers of women full professors. In both the STEM and the SSH fields, on both the national and the organisational level, the leaky pipeline is present. However, from our qualitative analysis we learn that although the numbers are straightforwardly showing a leaky pipeline in the national and local context of the GARCIA institutes, the factors and processes leading to the leakiness of the pipeline are multiple and interrelated. We distinguished several mechanisms and factors related to the leaky pipeline, both on organisational and systemic level as well as on individual level. For example, the increasing need for grants and funding, the influence of ‘old boys networks’ and the need for networks and sponsors, or support within institute in getting position or grant, or the willingness to juggle work-life balance and tolerate stress, including mother/parenthood to name but a few. The increasing demands on early career scholars were much present in their accounts, received with both acceptance and resistance. Looking at individual stories, the norms and standards in academia are – sometimes explicitly, often implicitly – clearly impacting the trajectories and the sense making of the different movers, leavers, and current early career scholars and in turn the perpetuation of the leaky pipeline.
In order to assist with the need for support in their career development (e.g. getting position or grant, or advise with regard to work life balance), we developed and implemented a mentoring program for early career researchers in both the STEM and the SSH department. We first monitored the need for a specific mentoring program for early career academics on temporary contracts. Together with the HR department in both departments, and the gender committee of STEM department, the mentoring program was set up. In the SSH department, the target group of the mentoring program was postdocs and assistant professor; in the STEM department, the target group was PhD candidates. In both departments, mentors and mentees were successfully matched: six matches in the SSH department and nine matches in the STEM department. Despite the enthusiasm of the current mentees, we have to remark that the number of mentees that participated in both mentoring programs was quite low. We expect that when this first mentoring programme within both the SSH and the STEM department proves to be successful, the mentoring programme gets more attention within the faculty, the people who would like to participate will increase. Another possibility for the SSH department is to include PhD candidates, and for the STEM department to include postdocs, tenure trackers and assistant professors in future mentoring programs.

WP7 Raising awareness of committee members and prospective candidates
The main objective of WP7 – the GARCIA reflexive working groups – was to discuss hiring and selection of early career scholars with selection committee members as well as with prospective candidates (or early career researchers) themselves. We therefore first mapped the formal criteria and the actual practices in recruitment procedures. Next, we analysed the gender biases in the construction of excellence. We noticed several gaps between formal criteria and actual practices in recruitment for early career scholars. Subsequently, we distinguished three gender practices: persistent gender stereotypes in the construction of the ideal academic, recruitment via informal networks and preferring for internal candidates, and international mobility constructed as a problem for women early career researchers.
Based on this knowledge, we designed two interventions, one aimed at selection committee members, and one aimed at prospective candidates. In both the SSH and the STEM department, we organised reflexive working groups for selection committee members and workshops for prospective candidates. This type of training allows for productive interaction in which participants are invited to reflect on their own actions and behaviour as well as to share experiences. The aim of these working groups and workshops is to raise awareness among key players on how gender practices influence the selection process and the selection criteria, including conceptions of excellence. In addition, the workshops for early career researchers were organised to provide prospective candidates information about recruitment and selection criteria applied in the selection processes and the construction of academic excellence. The workshops also helped to raise awareness on how gender practices can play a role in these recruitment and selection criteria and processes and, moreover, to emphasize and explicate the role of visibility and informal networks in the building of an academic career.
The reflexive working groups for selection committee members and the workshops for prospective candidates were organised in close cooperation with the dean’s office and secretaries of both departments. Especially support from the dean for this intervention resulted in participation of the target participants (i.e. selection committee members and prospective candidates).
Overall, the reflexive working groups and workshop proved a feasible instrument to increase gender awareness and awareness for (implicit) bias in recruitment and selection processes. The reflexive working groups and workshops were developed to be a learning environment and an interactive space with enough time for participants to raise questions, discuss pressing matters, and learn from each other. We succeeded in making this working group an interactive endeavour. The participants needed little encouragement to ask their questions or make comments. This made it possible for the working group leaders to address the possible resistances and issues that prevent change. Participants felt comfortable enough to raise even contentious issues and questions.

UNIVERSITY OF ICELAND (ICELAND)
WP3 Mapping national and local contexts
The compilation of secondary data on the Icelandic national context provided a very useful backdrop for the other WPs in the project. According to the World Economic Forum (2016) Iceland passes as a leading example of gender equality. The rich participation of women on the labour market is often interpreted as de facto equality. Despite high gender equality ranking, gender equality laws and machinery, large gender disparities remain. Women are underrepresented in politics and largely underrepresented in decision-making positions and finance. Overall, a gendered pay gap is a persistent problem. Gender equality in the field of science and research in Iceland is structured by law, resolutions and equality work. Overall, both law and policies broadly cover the structural presupposition of gender equality within science and research. The implementation of gender quotas stimulated the increased number of women within the Icelandic academia. At the same time professors employed on permanent basis are mostly men. Women and men tend to end up in gender stereotypical training, study and occupation. The gender-difference in patterns of education and occupation has been explained with the social-cultural framework, opportunities and hindrances within the system that favour culturally defined male qualities and dominance. The structural hindrances have, among others, been identified as glass ceilings, leaky pipelines and cultural restraints. The legal framework and increased involvement of women within society at large is not enough to balance the gendered power-relations within the system. Further development and reinforcement of methods to implement gender equality in the field of science and research is much needed. There is still a long way to go before gender equality is gained.

WP4 Organisational culture and actions to integrate gender perspective in research and teaching
The Equal Rights Policy of the University of Iceland clearly calls for the integration of a gender dimension into research and teaching. Even so, of the very few research projects funded in SSH (most funding go to STEM research), only a very small handful of projects take the topic of gender equality and social justice into consideration. Moreover, a content analysis of the curricula and syllabi in one SSH department showed that gender is also far from being adequately implemented in teaching.
After the development of a standardized toolkit by our Slovenian colleagues, we decided that the most effective implementation and dissemination of research results could be achieved by merging with projects already in existence.
According to the University of Iceland Equal Rights Policy 2013-2017, guidelines/practical examples for integrating gender in teaching and research shall be developed by the Equal Rights Committee. These guidelines have recently been completed in collaboration between the Equal Opportunities Committee and the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at the University. The University has however not yet developed guidelines regarding how to integrate gender into research. With this as a point of departure the GARCIA team decided to invite the Equal Rights Committee and the CTL to join forces in a workshop in which the newly adopted teaching guidelines and the GARCIA toolbox on research would be presented and a first step of gender sensitizing training would be taken. As the CTL has workshops and courses on a regular basis it was decided that the workshop would be organised as one of these events and advertised by the CTL. The workshop was open to all interested and not only academics in STEM and SSH.
The course material consisted of two presentations: One by two representatives from the CTL and one by a member of the GARCIA team.
CTL presented the previously mentioned guidelines, which was developed by the centre in collaboration with the Equal Rights Committee as per demand in the University of Iceland’s Equal Rights Policy. The representative from the CTL emphasised that gender issues can be seen as a natural continuation of the pedagogical perspectives inherent in all their work. Hence, although their daily work did not include gender issues they were easily integrated.
A member of our team presented the GARCIA toolbox in two parts. Firstly, it was presented the part concerning the research team. It was argued to the adherents that a growing body of literature has clearly shown the scientific long-term advantages of integrating a gender perspective into the process of forming research teams and maintaining an atmosphere in which gender quality is not just taken for granted, but is valued as a continuous process of self-reflection among researchers. Finally, the toolbox for integrating gender in research was presented, and examples from the specific departments were used. Research results and the toolkit on gender in research and teaching have also been disseminated at open-invitation department seminars, at conferences and at the annual Equality Days at the University of Iceland.

WP5 Management and decision-making processes
Financial and managerial frameworks within the institution have hitherto considered objective and gender neutral, an assessment of the institution revealed the contrary. Male dominated fields and men benefit from the current managerial processes, financial framework and practices.
At the University of Iceland, adopting gender budgeting is one of the working objectives of the Equal Rights Policy 2013-2017. Furthermore, the School of Social Sciences has incorporated gender budgeting into their Equal Rights Policy for 2015-2018. Formal equality work is important and increases the probability of a successful gender budgeting project. By incorporating gender budgeting into the policy, there is a top down mandate and the institution has committed itself to the project. In accordance with the Equal Rights Plan the management personnel in central administration, school deans and management directors were offered training from a gender budgeting expert from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs. A task force that is responsible for creating an action plan for gender budgeting was appointed in spring 2015. Two representatives from the five academic schools and the central administration were appointed. Head of the task force is the head of Finance Division of the School of Social sciences. The University’s Equal Opportunities Officer and two GARCIA members work alongside the task force, as experts to support the group and to follow the implementation process for the GARCIA project. A gender budgeting toolkit created within the GARCIA project will be utilised by the University of Iceland’s gender budgeting task force and the School of Social Sciences.
On several occasions the GARCIA team has presented findings on gender biases within the institution and introducing gender budgeting as a tool to work towards equality. Moreover, the team has been giving training on gender budgeting which key players from the central administration and the academic schools have attended. Firstly, a full day seminar in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs and the City of Reykjavík was carried out. The GARCIA team has been working closely with the gender budgeting experts at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs and the City of Reykjavík, which has been influential and given GARCIA and the gender budgeting project credibility within the University. Secondly, a 10 ECTS graduate course on Practical Gender Studies is offered on a regular basis, where students have the opportunity to take on real gender budgeting projects from the City of Reykjavík and the University of Iceland. Because of these students projects the School of Social Sciences, the School of Education and the Division of Marketing and Public Relations have findings and suggestions on how to reformulate their policies and processes on certain financial activities.

WP6 Tackling the phenomenon of the leaky pipeline
When analysing data related to the leaky pipeline at the national level, it is immediately obvious that women, in terms of numbers, dominate higher education. But on closer inspection it is evident that even though women are in the majority, they are so predominantly in SSH fields, which enjoy less funding, the highest teacher-to-student ratio, less stature, and the fewer options for a future career in academia. Oppositely, STEM fields, which are dominated by men, receive considerably more funding and enjoy a higher stature even though they attract a much lower number of students. If we move up the academic ladder we also find that men overwhelmingly occupy the higher academic positions with the most stature.
The qualitative analysis showed that for post-docs, co-optation and ‘following’ a mentor was somewhat easier for men than for women because of fewer female ‘role models’ and work-life imbalance. While this was also the case among current SSH academics, this group had a tendency to downplay these problems, yet across many SSH interviews, workloads and resulting work-life balance issues were emphasized. While there were of course exceptions in all cases, there was still a clear sense among former SSH academics that workloads were a big problem with real consequences for academics and their families. Only a few participants among our STEM movers/leavers counted workloads and work-life balance issues among reasons to leave academia.
Implementation wise, the short-term objective in the SSH department was to start a women-only peer-mentoring group made up of assistant professors, adjuncts and PhD students. The initial group of willing participants was formed and continues to meet together on Fridays between 10.00-15.00 to work on and discuss the direction of their research. This is in an effort to counter those instances of academic housework and tedious work-life balance issues that for women often come in the way of developing their research. This initial short-term peer-mentoring program will continue until the end of the GARCIA project, at which point the possibilities for extending the initiative long-term in other SSH departments will be discussed. It has already been extended to include a peer-mentoring program for PhD students at the school of Social Sciences.
Our mentoring objectives in STEM take a slightly different direction. In this case we formed the Samtök Kvenna í Vísindum (SKVÍS) (Association of Women in Science). The association is for all women in all fields of science and, apart from bringing together women scientists, it has also set goals relating to empowerment, the power of cooperation, networking, monitoring and supervision, visibility, interdisciplinary cooperation, diversity in science, and representation. This is not to be viewed as a short-term objective, but a continuous one that will develop in accordance with input from members of the association.

WP7 Raising awareness of committee members and prospective candidates
The findings reveal that there are very few job openings within the University of Iceland after completing a PhD degree and there was a need to open up the discussion on opportunities outside of academia. Furthermore, the findings on the selection process of assistant professors in the School of Engineering and Natural Sciences and the School of Social Sciences reveal that there is an inconsistency between the formal criteria and the actual selection practices.
A reflexive working group was organised with all the standing members of the evaluation and selection committees in the School of Engineering and Natural Sciences (STEM) and the School of Social Sciences (SSH). The main objective of this action was to raise awareness among evaluation and selection committee members, the administrative staff that work with the committees in the process and the Equal Rights body at University of Iceland about the construction of excellence and gender practices in the evaluation and selection processes and practices. In order to make gender equality procedures in the evaluation and selection process sustainable at the University of Iceland it is important that this is a top down process and applicable to all the five academic schools. The Icelandic GARCIA team saw an opportunity to collaborate with the University of Iceland’s Equal Rights Committee in organising the reflexive working group. The University of Iceland’s Equal Rights Committee is committed to make use of the outcomes of the GARCIA working groups. According to the chair, the Equal Rights Committee will build on these outcomes and recommendations, the guidelines on the integration of equality dimensions in hiring and promotion, as required by the University of Iceland Equal Rights Policy 2013-2017.
Finally, a workshop on career opportunities for PhD students in SSH and STEM was held in collaboration with The Students Counselling and Career Centre and the School of Social Sciences. The main objective of the workshop was to create awareness among PhD students on how to prepare for a career after completing a PhD degree and to learn about the different career paths open for PhD graduates. Building on the findings and the workshop the School of Social Sciences has put more emphasis on how to prepare for a career after completing a PhD degree into their monthly seminar for PhD students. Moreover, a seminar on how to prepare an application for job opening outside of academia for students in their final stages of their PhD will be part of the services offered by the Student Counselling and Career Centre in the future.

UNIVERSITY OF LAUSANNE (SWITZERLAND)
WP3 Mapping national and local contexts
At an international comparative level, our aim was to identify the structural characteristics of the sexual division of – paid and unpaid – labour in each national (local) GARCIA context and to suggest how this may affect women’s access to and experiences of academic professions. By providing contextualised knowledge about the social mechanisms behind women’s positions within the academic labour market in each GARCIA country, we were able to elaborate the most appropriate self-tailored gender equality action plans in each GARCIA institution.
Regarding comparisons, our analysis showed that descriptive statistical data on women’s academic positions (e.g. SHE Figures) are useful for measuring advances and barriers to gender equality in science, but that they often fail to provide the basis for understanding the complex mechanisms at play in different national (and local) contexts. This is notably the case because average figures for women’s access to different levels of the academic occupational hierarchy in a given national context tend to mask what are sometimes quite large intra-national variations, by discipline, type of institution, region, etc.
Somewhat paradoxically, the fact that women are universally under-represented in practically the same proportions at the top of the academic professional hierarchy in every national context has tended to foster the belief that the reasons behind this vertical segregation must be relatively similar across national boundaries. Thus, although studies of women’s academic careers usually mention the institutional and societal contexts under consideration, our analyses highlighted the lack of conceptually comparative research perspectives on this topic. It is quite frequent for data from one – situated – case study to be used to justify the adoption of a particular equality measure in a totally different geographical or institutional setting, without any consideration for the possible influence of contextual factors on the results observed in the first instance. As a result of this tendency to over-generalisation, academic equal opportunity offices and policy makers are often confronted with a piecemeal array of studies from a variety of sources, making it difficult to establish the precise mechanisms behind gender segregation in a given country, region, institution or discipline. Although women undoubtedly share similar experiences in academia in different national (or local) contexts, our comparative policy background report (Deliverable 3.3) reflects our convictions that research on the ‘gender and science’ topic would benefit from a more sophisticated conceptually cross-national comparative perspective.
For example, in the Swiss case, women have relatively high economic activity rates, but they tend to work part-time and/or to take extended breaks from the labour market. These particular female activity patterns are explained by a combination of fiscal policies that are unfavourable to dual-earner households, the lack of affordable childcare, long working hours for full-timers and a low male unemployment rate. Regarding academic careers, the normative Swiss female employment pattern does not conform to the figure of the “totally devoted” academic, and therefore women are often seen as less committed to their careers than men are presumed to be.

WP4 Organisational culture and actions to integrate gender perspective in research and teaching
Before elaborating measures and actions to ensure gender equality in the structural and cultural conditions of work in our two target faculties, we had to perform an organisational diagnosis. This analysis was made through statistical data collection on the gendered situation of the academic staff between 2010 and 2013, content analysis of University rules and regulations, but also secondary analysis of internal and public reports on junior researchers, produced by different committees and decision-making bodies in our university. We also carried out 40 semi-structured interviews focused on gender differences in early academic careers. Statistical data collection showed the need to distinguish between full-time and part-time positions (official data are always based on full-time equivalents - FTE) and between permanent and non-permanent positions. Luckily, when the GARCIA project began, the EOO had decided to carry out a data monitoring process - taking these problems into account. The GARCIA team collaborated closely with the person in charge of this process, exchanging information collected in the course of our Faculty case studies. The results from this process were published at the beginning of 2017 and will be used for the future elaboration of equal opportunity measures.
To address work-life balance issues, we collected data on all the actions and measures undertaken at the level of the university (mainly through the EOO office) and in our two target faculties. We identified a wide range of actions regarding (paid and unpaid) parental leave, childcare services, flexible working and support measures for the parents of young children (these last two actions being only available in the STEM faculty).
Regarding the integration of a gender perspective in teaching, we could rely on the annual census carried out by the Interfaculty Gender Studies Platform (PlaGe), which carries out and publishes a web survey of all Bachelor and Master courses at the UNIL that include a gender dimension. Identifying the presence of gender issues in research activities was much more complicated, because of the lack of centralised information on research projects and activities at the UNIL. Nevertheless, after some time-consuming research, we were able to identify the most salient projects integrating a gender perspective. Due to the extensive gender teaching and research resources already available at the UNIL, we decided not to foster collaboration with identified ‘gender specialists’, but rather to identify target groups who could be encouraged to develop a gender perspective in their research and/or teaching activities. Therefore, we organised two workshops in the SSH faculty aimed at PhDs and post-docs: (1) “Integrating gender into qualitative and quantitative research methods” organised on November 2nd 2015, and (2) “Quantitative methods under a gender lens” organised on April 25th 2016. In our STEM faculty, we disseminated the “Integrating gender-sensitive approach into research and teaching” GARCIA toolkit, which was presented to the organisers of an international one-day conference on introducing a gender lens into undergraduate medical courses.
At the institutional level, we collaborated with a number of bodies involved in promoting gender in research and teaching: the Commission Pro-Femmes in the STEM department (monthly meetings); the Gender Studies Research Centre in the SHS department (monthly seminars) and the regular meetings of the Interfaculty Gender Studies Platform (PlaGe).

WP5 Management and decision-making processes
The lack of publically available data on the faculty budgets proved vital insights into the decision-making system within the institution. It reflects the fact that, despite the adoption of general rules and principles at the University central level – the UNIL’s seven faculties are nevertheless very autonomous. One of the consequences of this autonomy is that it is really difficult to get a clear and systematic overview of all the persons employed within each department of the UNIL. Every faculty has its own human resources policies and practices, although employment contracts are partly structured by the rules of the university. Here, we also have to highlight that even though there is an individualized evaluation system in place, academic productivity does not have any impact on the wages of the academic staff, which are fixed and standardised through a cantonal public-sector pay scale. Because of this scale, there is no difference in earnings between men and women when they are hired for the same position. Hopefully, the gendered data monitoring realised by the EOO office should enable us to have more detailed data on employment conditions (part-time/full-time; non-permanent/permanent positions; sex disaggregated data; etc.) inside the UNIL. Only then will we have access to gender-sensitive data on research funding and salaries.
Due to this situation, we will encourage the faculties and the central services to adopt a gender-sensitive approach to financial and staff management. In this context, the GARCIA gender budgeting toolkit should be a very valuable. We also largely disseminated information to academic decision-makers to local and national stakeholders during the National Conference by organising a dedicated workshop on gender budgeting, which included a detailed presentation of the GARCIA toolkit.

WP6 Tackling the phenomenon of the leaky pipeline
In order to document the leaky pipeline phenomenon at the UNIL, we carried out an empirical study of PhD holders who had left the two target departments after having worked there as postdoctoral research fellows between 2010 and 2014. We adopted a mixed methods approach, including: (1) secondary analysis of statistical data; (2) an original web-survey of post-docs; (3) a series of semi-structured interviews in STEM and in SHS. Our aim was to map profiles of the ‘movers’, who had left the UNIL to take up positions in other academic institutions, and ‘leavers’, who were working in non-academic employment sectors, paying special attention to gendered differences.
One of the main findings from our research was to identify the lack of reliable data on postdocs at the local level (where a large variety of job descriptions, each with their specific employment regulations, are used to describe postdoc positions), but also at the national level, where their number is estimated to be somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000.
For this work package, we worked in close collaboration with the early-career stage Committee and the Equal Opportunity Office at the UNIL. On the basis of our results, we transferred knowledge to stakeholders and decisions-makers, notably by taking part in a number of mentoring programs, at the UNIL and at the federal level.

WP7 Raising awareness of committee members and prospective candidates
In order to gauge the degree of ‘gender awareness’ among young researchers and decision-makers at the UNIL, we carried out a study of the formal criteria and actual practices for hiring postdocs. To perform this task, we did content analysis of job descriptions and HR documents, along with 11 semi-structured interviews with male and female committee members who had recently been involved in the recruitment of postdocs. This enabled us to establish that hiring criteria and procedures are not well defined at the postdoc level, whereas there are a number of formal rules and recommendations for recruitment to professorships.
On the basis of these results, we developed different training modules in order to increase awareness about the potential for gender bias in the construction of excellence:
1) Awareness training aimed at recruitment committee members. We organised a workshop entitled “Gender and management: The case of academic organisations” (led by Prof. Anna Wahl, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) specially designed for senior academics and team leaders. In collaboration with the UNIL EOO and the communication services, we produced a ‘gender bias awareness’ video clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQG7zySAyaE&feature=youtu.be) which will shortly be translated into English.
2) Gender bias training aimed at candidates. We participated in a round table debate on job descriptions and recruitment procedures for PhDs and postdocs, in collaboration with student representative organisations. In collaboration with the UNIL EOO, we developed an on-line toolkit to raise awareness of gendered biases in hiring procedures.

RESEARCH CENTRE OF THE SLOVENIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND ARTS (SLOVENIA)
WP3 Mapping national and local contexts
To make a brief overview of the general approach to implementation and of the main scientific results achieved in WP3 we can point out that we firstly prepared the National and Local Policy Report of Slovenian national welfare regimes, different aspects of gender, employment, and care policies and their impacts on women’s career opportunities in general and specifically in science. The next step was to analyse available statistical data, previous national/regional surveys and gender related studies (carried out by the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia; Jožef Štefan Institute and the Commission for Women in Science at the Ministry for Education, Science and Sport) and available literature. Based on this, at the end we got detailed picture on situation in the Slovenian employment, institutional, societal and scientific environment. We also performed interviews with key informants on gender regimes. All these data were published in a national report, which summarises examples of policies/best practices that aims to encourage the participation of women in academia within their local or national contexts and highlights significant regional/local deviations that do not appear in the national data or statistics. The results of the analysis were transmitted to several stakeholders (national and local policy makers, decision-makers in academia and research, etc.), such as representatives of Ministry of Education, Science and Sport and Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs, Slovenian Research Agency, University Office for Doctoral Study, Young Academia, CMEPIUS and the Equal Opportunities Department at the Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs.

WP4 Organisational culture and actions to integrate gender perspective in research and teaching
To make a short overview of the general approach to implementation in WP4 we can point out that by the end of February 2015, we collected the quantitative data for WP4 and WP6 from all beneficiaries, which enabled us to work together with the Italian team for further development of quantitative indicators at the organisational level. In this framework, at our SSH test institution (ZRC SAZU) with the IT office and the HR responsible person, we made a computer program for collective gender-sensitive statistic which will be further used by the HR office in order to integrate gender perspective in institutional policies (research strategy, budgeting procedure, mentoring programme and formal/actual criteria for new candidates).
To point out the main scientific results achieved during the project we designed a map of existing researchers and curricula using gender. Firstly, we prepared Guidelines for mapping a Gender Dimension in Existing Research and Curricula and Report Structure. These Guidelines included the list of useful questions and examples of how to detect both presence and absence of gender perspective in research and curricula content, focusing not only on inclusion, but also on the exclusion of particular content (as a ‘hidden curricula’) in the year 2013 in the case of project or in academic year 2013/2014 in the case of curricula. On the basis of six national reports from GARCIA beneficiaries, we created a “Toolkit for Integrating Gender-sensitive Approach into Research and Teaching”. The Toolkit was also translated into Slovenian and disseminated to all institutions of higher education and research in Slovenia, libraries, and the abovementioned stakeholders. In addition, the Toolkit was included in the online database GEAR (Gender Equality in Academia and Research (http://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/tools-methods/gear/action-toolbox) collected by the European Institute for Gender Equality. On the basis of the Toolkit we organised one pilot workshop and two training courses for introducing gender-sensitive approach in research and teaching: “The Role of Gender in Research” at the Fran Ramovš Institute for Slovenian Language (Ljubljana, June 20, 2016) and at the Biological Faculty, Department of Agronomy (Ljubljana, June 21, 2016), as well as “The Inclusion of the Gender Perspective in Research and Teaching” led by Dr. Sandra Lee Russo and held with the STEM and SSH Test Institutions at ZRC SAZU (Ljubljana, March 1, 2016). Reports from the training courses are published in the D4.5 edited by Slovenian beneficiaries.
We have also detected that Gender Action Plans at two target institutions are urgently needed in order to combat gender asymmetry, especially at the very first stage of the academic career. Regarding self-tailored Gender Action Plans, we prepared drafts for our both institutions (since we are the only beneficiary with two test departments at two different institutions). For this purpose, we organised three workshops in June and invited the leaders of institutions and employees from selected departments. In ZRC SAZU, the workshops with the administrative staff of the institutions (including Director, a Head of HR and committee members for selection of Young Researchers at the institutional level) and the workshop with the research staff from SSH test department were conducted. In the Biotechnical Faculty, the workshop involved the dean and the pro-dean of the Department of Agronomy, administrative and research staff.
To focus on organisational culture and everyday working life, as WP leader we made interview guidelines that were used among the beneficiaries. On the basis on the guidelines, we performed 20 interviews all together - 10 interviews at STEM and 10 interviews at SSH department. We transcribed and analysed interviews on which basis we prepared the Report on quantitative and qualitative data. In collaboration with WP1 we prepared the Guidelines for mapping the work-life balance policies at organisational level with the detailed report structure. The main emphases were on overview of work-life balance legislative framework and of policies within Universities/research institutions at national level; work-life policies available in the GARCIA institutions and experiences and needs of temporary researchers related to work-life balance, which was gathered by interviews. We recognised that in our examined departments work-life balance policies mirror national policy provisions and laws. Employees at both institutions generally make use of work-life policy provisions (like maternity leave, paternity leave, flexible forms of work) and their organisation’s support (sick leave or leave to care for a child).
Members of the team held a meeting with Vanda Baloh, Assistant Director for HR and Finance at ZRC SAZU and Mimi Urbanc, Assistant Director for International Cooperation ZRC SAZU, in order to discuss issues related to organised childcare programs at ZRC SAZU and to map existing work/life balance policies in each beneficiary – individual practices of work/life balance will be explored during the qualitative interviews (ZRC SAZU Ljubljana, November 2, 2015). The thematic meeting entitled “Women in Science” was co-organised with EURAXESS – Researchers in Motion and provided a discussion platform about the challenges women and young academics face in science, by highlighting their status in research from various perspectives that affect their work and life (ZRC, Ljubljana, April 5, 2016). In October 2016, we were invited by the Office of Equal Opportunities of the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities to joint the delegation at the Conference EIGE (European Institute for Gender Equality): SHIFT GEAR- Mainstreaming gender into academic and research organisations (Brussels, 20 October 2016).

WP5 Management and decision-making processes
To provide a brief overview of the general approach to implementation in WP5 we can point out that we analysed the part of questions about budgeting in the interviews done the WP4 and WP6. We gathered information from the ZRC SAZU website, annual reports, and other statistical data (including financial and employee data). We analysed interviews with the key institutional decision-makers in order to generate a wide-ranging and explicit review of management and financial systems and understand how gender mainstreaming is reflected in organisational structures. For the STEM department, we interviewed the Deputy Dean of the Agronomy Department, the Assistant Secretary of the Faculty (also the Head of Finance), and the Dean of the Biotechnical Faculty. For the SSH department, we interviewed the head of Institute for Slovenian Language, the Assistant Director for Economics and Finance (also the Assistant Director of ZRC SAZU), and the Assistant Director for International Cooperation (also the Assistant Director of ZRC SAZU). We concluded from this research that women are less present in higher decision-making and managerial positions in both organisations, the main leadership positions being held by men.

WP6 Tackling the phenomenon of the leaky pipeline
In WP6 the issue of leaky pipeline was detected, since GARCIA is opening new dimensions of problems the researchers are facing with at the beginning of their carrier, especially young female scientists. In order to give voice to target people we performed interviews with early career research stuff from STEM (10 interviews) and SSH (9 interviews) target institutions who had left the university or research centre. We wanted to understand the context of early career researchers and the leaky pipeline, taking into account the experiences of researchers who had left the department under study or academia in general. This data was compared to the interviews of the still employed early career research staff. In the framework of task dedicated to mentoring programme, we firstly analysed the answers dedicated to mentoring aspect contained in WP6/WP4 interviews. In order to achieve task focused on the mentoring program, we held a meeting with Urška Slapšak, the President of the Association of Young Researchers of Slovenia. We also held a meeting with a coordinator and two career advisors at the Career Centre of the University of Ljubljana with the aim of raising awareness on the phenomenon of the leaky pipeline. We held meetings with the president of Young Academia: the Association of Young Researchers and High Education and Science (ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, February 22, 2016) and with the President of the Association of Young Researchers of Slovenia (ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, February 24, 2016) in order to work on the mentoring program. We held a seminar for mentors and mentees entitled “What is a Good Mentorship?” in an effort to launch the mentoring program in the local context (ZRC SAZU, April 21, 2016 and the Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, April 22, 2016). At the SSH test institution, we cooperate with the Association of PhD students and postdoctoral research fellows. We presented main project outcomes at the Scientific conference organized by the Association “The Situation of Researchers at the Beginning of their Academic Career in the Context of Scientific Neoliberalism” (Maribor, December 1-2, 2016).
In January 2017 we published a peer-reviewed collection of scientific papers titled “Znanost (brez) mladih: Zgodnje stopnje znanstvene kariere v Sloveniji skozi perspektivo spola (Science Without Young People: Early Stages of Scientific Careers in Slovenia Through the Perspective of Gender)”, which is freely accessed and disseminated to all higher education and research institutions in Slovenia.

WP7 Raising awareness of committee members and prospective candidates
To provide a brief overview of the general approach to implementation in WP7 we first obtained interviews with the recruitment committee members (head of the institutes at the SSH target organisation and the Head of the faculty and programme of STEM organisation) as well as two focus groups. On the basis on the analyses of the interviews and focus groups, and analysis of formal documents in 16th of June we prepared workshops for bodies responsible for recruitment and evaluation of candidates at an early stage of their academic career. The aim of discussion was to find solution to change internal regulations to overcome the lack of transparency in the recruitment and selection process. We also implemented changes in the formal process of candidate recruitment by amending the ZRC SAZU Regulation for Recruitment, specifically related to the following procedures: (1) Appointment Report as a necessary document in any selection process (short and long lists of candidates, committee members minutes), and (2) improvement of the existing Guidelines for the Selection Procedure of Young Researchers. We held a meeting with a coordinator and two career advisors of the Career Centre at the University of Ljubljana and gave a detailed presentation of the work of the GARCIA Project. Other goals of the meeting were the co-organisation of mentoring event in March in Ljubljana, potential collaboration in the design of reflexive workshops (ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, December 24, 2015), and actions that would take place after the conclusion of the project in 2017.

JOANNEUM RESEARCH FORSCHUNGSGESEL (AUSTRIA)
The evaluation has focused on the following aspects of implementation processes:

Challenges: these are related to circumstances of implementing measures and actions which can pose threats to the implementation process and its objectives.
• What kinds of challenges have been encountered?
• Why did these challenges arise and how was it possible to address or overcome these challenges?

Weaknesses: these are related to the setup of implementation processes and inhibit its goal attainment.
• What kinds of weaknesses are evident in the implementation process?
• How did these weaknesses develop or occur?
• Were these weaknesses addressed?

Supportive factors: these are elements of the implementation process that facilitate a smooth implementation and are therefore enabling goal attainment.
• What factors were considered as facilitating a smooth and successful implementation process?
• How were these supporting factors established?

Resistances: resistances can be uttered explicitly or implicitly but aim at preventing or delaying implementation and goal attainment.
• What kinds of resistances were encountered?
• What was the rationale behind these resistances?
• What ways of dealing with resistances have been applied?
• What were effects of the resistances or of dealing with resistances?

Sustainability: this describes whether an implemented measure will be continued after the project has ended or if it at least planned to maintain it and whether provisions have been considered or already taken.
• Was the implementation taking sustainability into account?
• Is there an evidence or at least provisions visible indicating sustainability?

Outputs: these are technical results, implemented actions and activities. This category describes the concrete doing of implementation projects.
• What kinds of measures were implemented?
• What were the objectives and the target group?
• How were measures attended and/or received?

Outcomes: these are direct effects related to the implemented actions and their outputs. In the case of this evaluation only short term effects or outcomes could be observed.
• What kinds of results could be identified in a short-term perspective?
• Are there varying perceptions of outcomes mentioned?

The evaluation relied on two major data sources: on the one hand it built on the reports published by the GARCIA team in the course of the project. On the other hand semi-structured interviews were conducted during the ex-ante and ex-post site visits with GARCIA team members and relevant stakeholders in each implementing organisation. Based on these data ex-ante and ex-post reports for each implementing organisation have been produced. The ex-ante reports were not published but made available to the consortium partners.
One of the main results of the evaluation is that from an ex-post perspective the short runtime of the project was a limiting factor. The project was structured in 18 months mainly focused on organisational diagnosis and 18 months dedicated on the implementation, which would have needed more time. Furthermore a lot of negotiations, convincing and discussions not at least due to changes in management positions during the project runtime were necessary to engage and involve key stakeholders inside each organisation. In some cases several attempts had to be made to establish and maintain an involvement of key stakeholders. The interwoven processes of analysis, negotiations and implementation activities which were connected by feedback loops put a lot of demands on the GARCIA teams to handle this complexity but at the same time not to get lost or diverted in these processes. The management of these complex processes of implementation, analysis, negotiations but also the requirements for the project management in H2020 like milestone, deliverables and periodic management/progress reports demanded a lot of time and have produced the feeling among GARCIA team members to have rushed through the project. This did not provide a lot of room for reflexivity and creativity to develop new measures, strategies and actions to promote gender equality for early career researchers but contributed to the implementation of a set of already known measures (whose effectiveness was doubted by some interview partners). It also did not allow developing and testing alternative strategies or approaches to engage stakeholders and members of the target group.
Although researchers were committed to the aims of the GARCIA project a conflict of interest between the necessities of a successful research career and those of a successful implementation project is immanent in such projects. Researchers have to navigate between conflicting priorities of publishing and advancing a research career and the objectives of such structural change projects. The output of these projects is hardly recognised in the academic sphere and perceived as not contributing to the advancement of science and research. To alleviate such conflicting interests and priorities it is necessary that projects with a strong focus on engagement with society and social responsibility are recognised as a main pillar of excellence in science and research.
The coordination between the GARCIA project which has funded mostly researchers (some of which only had a temporary employment contract) and the established structures and administrative personnel responsible for HR management or gender equality has proved to be substantial for the implementation processes, their outcomes and sustainability. Consequently structural change projects should make use of participatory approaches to develop an agenda, implementation priorities and concrete measures through a close stakeholder involvement. This participatory approach should be established already in the start-up or proposal writing phase and continued throughout the project runtime and beyond. Furthermore the participation of stakeholders should be formalised through a task force, steering or advisory group with clearly defined responsibilities and competencies. The benefits of such a participatory approach to planning and implementing a change project are enhanced commitment, ownership and legitimacy.
In some cases the commitment of the management level has proved to be only formal but without any substantial or concrete support. This complicated and in some cases impeded the implementation processes. It therefore seems to be important for facilitating implementation processes and for successful outcomes to support the implementation teams of such project in securing and sustaining the support of the management level. The EC as funding body should hold the management of involved organisations responsible for supporting the implementation process and teams. Measures to enhance accountability and ownership of the top level management of funded organisations should be introduced in these Horizon 2020 calls.
The major challenge and uncertainty that remains at the end of the implementation processes carried out in each organisation is its sustainability. As most of the GARCIA team members were researchers who did not have a portfolio to develop and implement policies but who will also continue with their research work after the GARCIA project has ended, there was a need to integrate the implemented measures into the organisational structures and to facilitate their uptake by organisational stakeholders. But in some cases it is not clear how the different topics and the different forms of expertise that have been developed by the GARCIA teams will be continued as for instance trainings or workshops even if conducted regularly might not be able to fix the problem of gender practices in recruitment and selection processes or might not enable researchers to integrate a gender perspective into their research and teaching activities. Therefore these topics that GARCIA has brought onto the organisational agendas need to be developed further and somebody in the organisation will have to take ownership and responsibility for this. Otherwise GARCIA cannot be considered as successful in the terms of initiating a change process towards more gender equal structures and practices in research organisations. Even though researchers are committed to carry on with activities to promote the objectives of the GARCIA project they might not be able to do this in a structured and systematised way. As in most cases they do not have a portfolio or the resources to do this. A further problem that is evident in a few cases is that GARCIA team members with a non-permanent contract who have acquired a lot of expertise in the course of the project were planning to leave the organisations as no further employment was foreseen or other employment opportunities have occurred.
Based on our experiences, observations and reflexions as evaluators in the GARCIA project we have summarised some challenges and outcomes, which we will briefly discuss here. As required in the call description we have focused our evaluation already in the proposal on achieved institutional progress, effectiveness and anticipated impacts as well as impacts on the situation of women scientists and on the integration of gender in research content. But beyond this we also have considered the evaluation of the implementation process as relevant which allowed us to focus on challenges, strengths, weaknesses and resistances encountered during the implementation process. But the relevance and usefulness of this process oriented approach to evaluating a project like GARCIA from inside has become more evident only in the course of observing and accompanying its implementation. A strong focus on (expected) impacts or outcomes would have not generated any concrete results due to reasons already mentioned above like the short period for implementing measures, the relatively limited scope and scale of the implementation combined with a short runtime of the project. Furthermore the evaluation was also funded through the GARCIA project, which meant that the evaluation had to be conducted during the runtime of the project – it was therefore an evaluation from inside as the evaluation team was also project partner of the GARCIA project. A real ex-post assessment in the sense of an outcome and impact analysis was therefore not possible. But in the course of observing the implementation process and of the ex-ante assessment it became evident that the evaluation could also help steering the project and facilitate a space for reflexivity of implementation partners, which allowed them to share and discuss experiences and to give feedback on the results of the ex-ante evaluation. To facilitate such a reflexive learning process a stronger focus on the evaluation of the implementation process and its’ practices was necessary. Consequently less attention was paid to outcomes and impacts which measuring turned out to be not feasible at all. This meant a change in the role of the evaluator from a more observing position to a more accompanying role of advising and intervening into the implementation process. Still the evaluators did not fully engage into an accompanying evaluation but stayed within the framework of the DOW and limited interventions to a reflexive workshop. Maybe more interventions to facilitate reflexivity and discussions among implementing project partners and a closer exchange between evaluator and implementing partners would have been beneficial for the project.
From our own experiences as evaluators we would summarise our experiences for future internal evaluations in the following ways:
• Evaluations should provide up-to-date data and information about current challenges, resistances, weaknesses and facilitators of implementation processes.
• Evaluations should continuously provide a space enabling reflexivity, knowledge transfer and sharing of experiences among implementing partners. This should not be planned as a single intervention but a constant process of reflection and discussion with the purpose to facilitate the implementation process.
• Evaluations should provide knowledge and advice to facilitate the implementation processes; this knowledge can be based on the expertise of the evaluators but could also be gained through external support and consultants.
• Evaluations should combine process-oriented indicators and data with outcome-oriented indicators and data. These have to be handled and selected with great care in order to avoid distorted results and assessments.
• The role of the evaluator in the project has to be defined and agreed on among all partners at the beginning of the project. A clear delineation between the tasks of an internal evaluation and other activities concerning the assessment of the project by the European Commission has to be established to avoid confusions and ambiguity, which may lead to mistrust towards the evaluator. This can impede the required openness among implementing partners to engage in a reflexive learning process as it fails to define to whom the evaluator is obligated – to the project consortium or the European Commission.
Potential Impact:
Hereafter we summarise the potential impacts, the main dissemination activities and the wider social implication reached by the project in each GARCIA beneficiary institution.

UNIVERSITY OF TRENTO (ITALY)
The potential scientific and societal impacts of the GARCIA project concern the attention that the project gave on the early stages of the academic careers, characterised by growing levels of precarious working conditions. Job conditions in the academic system are more and more characterised by project-based positions and recruitment and selection processes are exposed to systematic evaluations based on quantitative criteria and standards. The situation in the Italian context is particularly serious since postdocs (assegnisti di ricerca) – the most common non-tenured research position in academia – are not recognised as employment positions by the Italian law and are excluded by most part of welfare provisions. Gender biases in career prospects are in place since the very first phases of the career paths increasing the phenomenon of the leaky pipeline and the loss of female talents in scientific/academic environments both in STEM and SSH fields of study.
The Italian team widely worked to the dissemination of the GARCIA project results by participating to several conferences, workshops, roundtables at national and international level. The main targets were mainly experts on gender equality and higher educations, the UNITN community and the local stakeholders and citizens. During these events both the results of the diagnostic part of the project and the GARCIA implemented actions by the Italian team were presented and discussed. Moreover, the Italian GARCIA team actively participated to several workshops organised by other European structural change projects with a case study in an Italian University (mainly FESTA, STAGES, TRIGGER, GENDERTIME and GENOVATE) with the aim to share experiences in the implementation of structural change actions targeted to gender equality within the Italian research system and to create a fruitful network able to promote further structural change actions.
Policy makers and decision makers at university, department and local level have been informed about the main results emerged from the diagnostic analyses carried out by the project and have been involved in the implementation process of several actions included in the GARCIA Gender Action Plan at UNITN. The main results obtained during the project have been collected in a brochure distributed to the academic, research and administrative staffs of the STEM and SSH departments involved in the project and to the participants of the national GARCIA final conference “Gender knowledges. Academia, Social Movements, Rights and Policies, Education” [IT: Saperi di genere. Accademia, Movimenti Sociali, Diritti e Politiche, Educazione e Formazione]. The UNITN final conference brought together more than 150 academics, gender equality experts and stakeholders at the local and national level.
The implementation of the project allowed to raise awareness on the precarious working conditions of non-tenured researchers within the UNITN and local community. The official UNITN website currently contains a portal dedicated to PhD students and postdoctoral research fellows with information to support their everyday working life and their career development. The web portal also includes an online mentoring area, with video pills realised ad hoc by the GARCIA team with STEM and SSH senior researchers, addressing relevant topics for early career researchers such as: gender and equal opportunities, career planning, publishing, networking, fundraising. Moreover, for the first time, postdocs have been officially included within the target groups of the new UNITN Affirmative Action Plan 2017-2019. Finally, at the local level, is now available an unemployment benefit for postdoctoral research fellows resident in the province of Trento (600 euros for a maximum of 6 months) which is the result of the virtuous collaboration between the GARCIA team with the UNITN rector, the committee of PhD students and grant holders, the Autonomous Province of Trento (PAT), the Employment Agency of the PAT and the local trade unions.

UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN (BELGIUM)
With respect to the overall impact of the project, we can speak about important friendships and networks created within and among the GARCIA teams. The collaboration aspect of the project has been important for the Belgian team, both in terms of developing early researchers’ professional development and mentoring through senior researchers and academics, but also on the level of actual research development in the field of gender and organisation. We have created significant comparative analytical data sets and frameworks, as well as provided thorough European case-studies that have a multi-level and mixed-methods approach. There has been some development of fundamental research on the ‘leaky pipeline and interrelated phenomena’ through the project, and new analytical frameworks have been created. There are several journal articles been written and planned from GARCIA results involving GARCIA team members, as well as a chapter in the planned GARCIA book. We have compiled two special issues in the journals EERJ (European Education Research Journal), focused on gender and work-life interferences, as well as in Emulations, a special issue focused on early researchers’ contributions on the topic of gender inequality and science. We have taken part in several European and international research conferences and presented GARCIA results.
On the gender policy level at UCL, we have made some modest collaboration with the gender policy management and officers, although GARCIA results are seen partially as threatening, and partially as useful tools for future gender programs. We have had some institutional resistance from authorities, which has been challenging in terms of access to data in some cases, the possibility of joint thought processes and of sharing knowledge. These challenges have sometimes provided the opportunity of changing methods of approaching people, of planning actions and change implementation.
Dissemination activities have been conducted at the beginning of the project, through the focus groups and seminars, through the Final Conference at Brussels and key results will be presented in a final internal UCL dissemination event with multiple invitees, both research press, and policy based.
The working papers of GARCIA have been circulated to UCL members in both institutes as well as heads and authorities, and to the ministry.
More recently, GARCIA members have been invited to internal seminars (ELI, Biodiversity) and external seminars and workshops in other Belgian universities (Liege, Brussels), and also to other organisations interested in gender issues and leaky pipeline phenomena. At the institutional level, the UCL GARCIA team leader, Pr Bernard Fusulier, has been elected in May 2016 President of the Women and Sciences Committee for the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (see http://www.ares-ac.be/fr/a-propos/instances/commissions-permanentes/femmes-et-sciences). This function has allowed him to build a program of actions concerning all universities in this Federation, based on several GARCIA results. There is a consensus of the committee members on this program. It will be launched in 2017.

RADBOUD UNIVERSITY (THE NETHERLANDS)
The potential scientific and societal impact of the project concern the attention that the project calls to gender practices in the early stages of the academic careers, that can be characterised as precarious positions in academia. Most attention and policies hitherto have addressed the highest positions in the academic hierarchy, but this project has provided substantial evidence to the occurrence of gender practices in a much earlier phase. These practices contribute to a leaky pipeline, so that we lose female talent with every step up the academic ladder. The project has shown that postdocs, researchers on a tenure track, and assistant professors face specific challenges in the current academic landscape of precarious, temporary, project-based positions, that standards for performance and selection criteria are raised, and that these standards and criteria are gendered, containing particular meanings of masculinity and femininity that disadvantage women academics differently from men academics.
The main dissemination activities have targeted both the scientific community working on issues of gender in academia and policy makers and decision makers within academia. For the first group, we hope that our results inspire further research questions that take into account the interplay between macro societal processes, meso university and department level developments and micro individual actions to explain the persistence of gender practices in academia today for all stages of the academic career. Policy makers and decision makers have been informed about the various gender practices at work and have been provided with tools to counter these practices. We hope that these tools will be used and further developed, so that more effective policies are designed to deal with the specific challenges faced by early career researchers. The final dissemination conference in January 2017 brought the two groups together, to engage in dialogue with each other and the audience and discuss the newest insights from research in relation with the newest policies and practices. This conference has contributed to an active community of those interested in improving the policies and practices for early career researchers and those working towards more gender equality, diversity and inclusion in academia.
The wider societal impact of the project may be that extra impetus is given to the critique of the current labour market trend towards increasing flexibilization of the workforce. These findings from academia clearly show how gender and age intersect in creating inequalities, with early career women and men facing insecurity, project-based work and temporary contracts. The findings also show how individual early career researchers carry the burden of this precarity and flexibilization as they are made responsible for their own employability and portfolios. As this coincides with the rush hour of life and career, there are serious risks of mental and physical health problems for this group. This has implications for the perceived attractiveness of the academic career and may cause talented people to seek better prospects elsewhere. The phenomenon of gendered precarity in academia does not stand alone, and many lessons from this project can be transferred to other sectors.

UNIVERSITY OF ICELAND (ICELAND)
It is clear that the research results of the GARCIA project have shed light on problems and power dynamics at the University of Iceland that many might have suspected, but few have dared to speak of, much less do anything about since empirical evidence was missing. Many academic employees might not have spent a lot of time thinking about matters of equality in their day-to-day lives, but the dissemination activities in the GARCIA seems to have put a lot of problems on the agenda that both academics and administration recognise. Especially when disseminating results to a general academic population relating to gender budgeting, work-life balance issues, leaky pipeline or gender in research and teaching, the response has generally been positive and one that recognises the fact of putting these issues on the agenda as a matter of course. The more challenging part of disseminating results in a way that generates impact has been to convince managing staff and administration about the urgency of these problems. Even so this has also been successful as is evident by the formation of task forces, committees and mentoring programs. Vigorous dissemination will hopefully continue to have a sustainable impact on the University of Iceland in the future, resulting in a better organisational culture, better integration of gender issues at all levels of the organisation and a more transparent and gender-focused financial system.
In a wider socio-economic context, the University of Iceland has the potential to become a university that fully lives up to its reputation as a gender aware institution. However, the fear of future austerity measures and cuts in public funding to the university continues to haunt the world of academia, as cut backs in funding traditionally means less time and space for equality issues. In this way, gender equality in Icelandic higher education and in society at large is often viewed as a luxury item into which we invest when we have adequate resources. It seems that equality for its own sake is never put front and centre. Therefore, the continued positive impact of the GARCIA project in a wider societal context depends heavily on the political climate.

UNIVERSITY OF LAUSANNE (SWITZERLAND)
Postdocs have been a focus of different political institutions during the last five years and numerous reports have identified a so-called ‘postdoc bubble’ in the Swiss context. The quantitative and qualitative studies we carried out on the career path of young researchers enabled us to identify the different career opportunities that are available to these young highly skilled workers, both within and outside academia. We investigated the career differences faced by researchers from SSH and STEM disciplines and by women and men. The micro-policies affecting or supporting their careers showed the entanglement of multi-level (macro, meso and micro) processes, which render the academic career more difficult for women.
As several actions in favour of women (mentoring programmes, workshops for young female researchers, work-life balance measures for parents, etc.) already exist in Swiss universities, we designed part of our actions in collaboration with the Equal Opportunities Office (EOO) of the University of Lausanne. Therefore, the actions and results of the GARCIA project contributed to consolidating a broader equal opportunity culture, which we contributed to disseminating in our university. We could offer additional support to the EOO on a number of on-going projects, including those aimed at raising awareness of gender bias in recruitment and promotion processes. The 4-minute video clip we helped to design will be presented to all hiring commission meetings in all of the UNIL faculties, as of January 2017. To give more scientific information and provide advice, tips and tricks to ensure more gender equality, a toolbox drafted in collaboration between the GARCIA team and the EOO is already available on-line: https://www.unil.ch/egalite/home/menuinst/activites-et-soutien/recrutement-egalitaire/boite-a-outils.html
The GARCIA project enabled us to develop further expertise among the researchers of our team. Several of us were invited to speak at conferences and workshops in other institutions or networks in Switzerland (NCCR Planets, Gender in Physics Day 2017, Humanities Faculty at the University of Geneva, etc.). Information on the different deliverables produced by all the teams of the consortium has been widely disseminated inside and outside the University of Lausanne, notably during the Swiss national conference on November 24th and 25th 2016. This event brought together a large audience of more than 120 participants from different equal opportunities offices and programmes (Swiss National Science Foundation – SNSF; the National Network of University Rectors – Swiss universities, etc.). During the National Conference workshop sessions, we presented a large range of gender equality measures, including the different GARCIA toolkits, and we received very positive feedback from the participants, institutional representatives and policy-makers.

RESEARCH CENTRE OF THE SLOVENIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND ARTS (SLOVENIA)
To describe the potential impact, including the socio-economic impact and the wider social implications of the project we can point out that we performed several policy aimed events and workshops. We also influenced on the structural changes by rebuilding the network of early career researchers at SSH target organisation (ZRC SAZU), which aims at connecting early career researchers. During the duration of the project we performed several dissemination and attended events – approximately 30 with workshops included. In this way we directly influenced a large number of research and administrative staff, management, decision-makers from organisational and national levels. For, example, the workshop for prospective candidates, entitled “How to Begin a Career in Science and Research: Tools for Survival” (ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, June 29, 2016) was attended by 17 participants (young academics) from different ZRC SAZU institutes and postdoctoral researches at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU, SSH). In this way we had a direct impact on participants at the workshop. Out of 21 participants (Director of ZRC SAZU, who was actively involved in the discussion, and three members of the GARCIA team included), there were 11 women and 10 men. Regarding wider potential impact, including the socio-economic impact and the wider social implications we can point out that the “Toolkit for Gender-Sensitive Approach in Research and Teaching” was included in the online database GEAR (Gender Equality in Academia and Research (http://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/tools-methods/gear/action-toolbox) collected by the European Institute for Gender Equality. The authors of the Toolkit (Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc and Ana Hofman) were invited to hold a workshop “Introducing gender into research” at the Goldsmiths University, London at 28th of February 2017, after the formal conclusion of the project.
In February 2015, we prepared a workshop for Young Researchers who currently work in academia or who left the academia of how to write a successful application on Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship for Young Researchers. We also held two awareness-raising workshops for committee members and candidates. In order to raise awareness of the importance of gender equality among early career researchers we held a workshop entitled “How to Begin a Career in Science and Research: Tools for Survival” (ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, June 29, 2016). We also organised a workshop entitled Development of a Career in Research and Science: Chances and Challenges (ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, June 30, 2016) both led by Dr. Muriel E Swijghuisen from Goldsmiths University, London. We held a seminar for mentors and mentees entitled “What is a Good Mentorship?” in an effort to launch the mentoring program in the local context (ZRC SAZU, April 21, 2016 and the Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, April 22, 2016).
The 11th-12th January 2015, we organised a seminar about “Maternity in Neoliberalism” and a workshop on “Linking Maternity and Work” where the mothers at the early stage of scientific career had opportunities to talk about their problems in the field of balancing professional and private life. The 17th and 18th June 2014, we presented the GARCIA project in the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport at GEPARD meeting, organised in order to establish the network of the projects addressing the issue of gender-equality in academia. Our activities included events that raised awareness about gendered inequalities in organisational structures that took place during a meeting with members of the National Research Agency (ARRS) (Ljubljana, April 25, 2016). During the whole project duration we have a close cooperation with the Committee for Women in Science, an independent body at the Ministry of Science, Higher Education and Sport. We also presented our results at their annual meeting held on 7th of March 2016. The team also engaged in raising awareness on gender practices in organisations by presenting the GARCIA project and discussing possibilities for joint collaborations with the Executive Director of the CEE Network for Gender Issues, the leader of the EQPOWEREC project (Gender Equality in the Distribution of Economic Power), and the first president of the Committee for Women in Science (ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, February 16, 2016 and March 10, 2016).
As for scientific dissemination, in order to problematize gender practices in the construction of excellence, we attended the 14th EASA Biennial Conference and delivered a lecture entitled “How Neoliberalism and Western Norms of Meritocracy have Triggered Gender Inequality in the Construction of Academic Excellence in Slovenia” (Milan, July 20 – 23, 2016). We also delivered a lecture entitled “The Situation of Researchers at the Beginning of their Academic Career in the Context of Scientific Neoliberalism” at the scientific symposium for researchers at the beginning of their scientific career aims at connecting early career researchers at ZRC SAZU and problematizing the prevailing system of scientific neoliberalism in Slovenia (Maribor, December 1–2, 2016). In January 2017 we published a peer-reviewed collection of scientific papers titled Znanost (brez) mladih: Zgodnje stopnje znanstvene kariere v Sloveniji skozi perspektivo spola (Science With(out) Young People: Early Stages of Scientific Careers in Slovenia Through the Perspective of Gender)”.

JOANNEUM RESEARCH FORSCHUNGSGESEL (AUSTRIA)
The results of the evaluation will be published after the project officer has approved the deliverable and the other GARCIA partners have given their consent to publish the results. The results will be of interest for national and international stakeholders engaged in promoting gender equality in research funding and research performing organisations. The evaluation team will therefore disseminate the results at different conferences and workshops. It will also address national as well as transnational policy makers to make them more aware for the challenges and pitfalls of projects implementing structural changes to promote gender equality in research funding and performing organisations. Therefore, clear recommendations for policy makers to better support such projects will be developed.
Another way of exploiting the results of the GARCIA evaluation results is to disseminate them to other sister EU-funded structural change projects. Therefore we will seek opportunities to share and discuss these results with other projects. One very concrete opportunity is the participation of JOANNEUM RESEARCH in the GENERA project (www.genera-project.eu) in which JOANNEUM RESEARCH is also in charge of evaluating the implementation process and its achievements. We will introduce the GARCIA evaluation results into the learning environment and reflection process of the GENERA project. So, the knowledge acquired from conducting an internal evaluation in the GARCIA project will also inform the evaluation of the GENERA project. In the GENERA project – based on the experiences of the evaluation of the GARCIA project – the evaluation team is now trying take up the role of a “critical friend” and to provide more feedback and guidance for the implementation process.
But the GARCIA evaluation results will exert influence also on the organisational level of JOANNEUM RESEARCH, which is also committed to improve gender equality. Therefore a gender equality plan has been designed and will be implemented in the next years. The results of the GARCIA evaluation will be considered for this implementation process and will facilitate the achievement of the defined goals and objectives.

List of Websites:
GARCIA website: www.garciaproject.eu

Contact names:

UNITN team
Main contacts: Annalisa Murgia (annalisa.murgia@gmail.com) and Barbara Poggio (barbara.poggio@unitn.it)
Other team members: Rossella Bozzon, Francesca Fiore, Antonella De Angeli, Paola Villa, Attila Bruni, Alessia Donà, Francesca Sartori, Carlo Buzzi, Caterina Peroni, Elisa Rapetti, Yishagerew Lulie Yitaih, Daniela Ferri, Stefano Crabu, Serena Piovesan.
Administrative officer: Stefano Kegljevic

UCL team
Main contact: Bernard Fusulier (bernard.fusulier@uclouvain.be)
Other team members: Caroline Vincke, Farah Dubois-Shaik, Nathan Gurnet, Edithe Antoine, Hanna Pawelec, Hélène Adam, Hoda Chiniforoushan.

SKU team
Main contacts: Yvonne Benschop (y.benschop@fm.ru.nl) and Marieke van den Brink (M.vandenBrink@nisco.ru.nl)
Other team members: Laura Berger, Marleen van der Haar, Channah Herschberg, Marjolein Dennissen.

UI team
Main contact: Thorgerdur Einarsdóttir (the@hi.is) and Gyda Margrét Pétursdóttir (gydap@hi.is)
Other team members: Valgerdur Edda Benediktsdóttir, Finnborg Salome Steinthórsdóttir, Gudný Gústafsdóttir, Thamar Melanie Heijstra, Thomas Brorsen Smidt.

UNIL team
Main contact: Nicky Le Feuvre (nicky.lefeuvre@unil.ch)
Other team members: Pierre Bataille, Farinaz Fassa, Gaële Goastellec, Sabine Kradolfer, Michael Posse, Mélody Pralong, Maria del Rio Carral, Marie Sautier, Isabel Valarino.
Administrative officers: Fabiana Carrer-Joliat, Renzo Restori

ZRC SAZU team
Main contact: Ana Hofman (hofman.ana@gmail.com)
Other team members: Majda Černič Istenič, Duška Knežević Hočevar, Oto Luthar, Tanja Petrović, Sanja Cukut Krilić, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc, Jasna Fakin Bajec, Polona Sitar.

JOANNEUM team
Main contact: Florian Holzinger (florian.holzinger@joanneum.at)
Other team members: Helene Schiffbänker, Jürgen Streicher, Sybille Reidl

Final Report Summary - GARCIA (Gendering the Academy and Research: combating Career Instability and Asymmetries)

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