Conferentie over het bevorderen van gendergelijkheid in onderzoeksorganisaties (en)

The High level conference “Structural Change Promoting Gender Equality in Research Organizations” will be held in Vilnius on 21 and 22 November. The conference aims to enable and enhance the dialogue and knowledge sharing between all stakeholders playing a role in assuring gender equality in research: politicians, executives of research funding agencies, research institutions, professional scientific societies, and representatives of academic community.

Fast development of knowledge economies requires a revision of role and place of science in society and consequently of the science policy. Gender equality in science is a major challenge when implementing ambitious strategies towards creation of competitive economics based on scientific achievements. In this respect, enlarging the pool of talents in sciences through the inclusion of more women researchers is of high significance. However, in spite of gender equality strategies, European research still suffers from a considerable loss failing to include highly skilled women. Structural changes promoting gender equality in research organisations are seen as one of the key success factors for the Europe 2020 strategy.

The conference “Structural Change Promoting Gender Equality in Research Organizations” is one of the events of the Lithuanian Presidency i of the EU Council.

A patron of the conference and the President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaitė i, the European Commissioner for Research Máire Geoghegan Quinn i, the Vice-Minister of Education and Science of Lithuania Rimantas Vaitkus, the State Secretary of Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research Bjørn Haugstad, and the Director of the Division for Gender Equality of UNESCO Saniye Gülser Corat will welcome participants of the conference.

Conference speakers include high level policy makers from the European Commission, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, EU member states, representatives from professional scientific societies and prestigious scientific award committees, governmental and private research funding agencies, executives of research institutions and universities, and distinguished scientists from all over Europe.

The participants of the conference will adopt recommendations for the Council, contributing to the development of roadmap for reforms to induce structural change in research institutions and for future activities in relation with Horizon 2020 and the European Research Area.

The conference is co-organized by Vilnius University and the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and co-financed by the European Commission i, EEA i and Norway financial mechanisms bilateral relations development programme.

For further information please visit the official conference website.