Raising the Gender Equality awareness of the academic community of AUEB and beyond: the ‘Project Equality’ column on AUEB’s newspaper

Eleni Apospori, TARGETED-MPI Principal Investigator and Project Coordinator

The safeguarding of Gender Equality (GE) and the elimination of gender-based discrimination in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Research Centres constitutes one of the European Union’s central political choices. The emphasis that the EU places on GE is reflected in the criteria that HEIs and Research Centres must fulfil in order to be eligible to participate in European funded research programmes such as Horizon Europe; HEIs and Research Centres must have a formal Gender Equality Plan (GEP) available, signed by the top management and published on the institution’s website as a prerequisite for their participation in such programmes.

The Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) recognises the importance of ensuring GE for the entire university community. To this end, it has developed an integrated Programme of Actions for Gender Equality (PAGE) through its Gender Equality Committee (GEC), with the scientific support of TARGETED-MPI and the active participation of all stakeholders of the AUEB community. The AUEB PAGE is based on five pillars of vertical actions and three horizontal support actions. The five pillars of vertical actions of the AUEB PAGE focus on: work-life balance, gender-balanced decision-making, recruitment and career progression, integration of the gender dimension in research and teaching, and measures against gender-based harassment. The three horizontal support actions involve the awareness raising, training and education of the AUEB community on GE issues, the establishment of a Gender Equality Observatory (GEO), and the collection and monitoring of gender-disaggregated data.

Raising the awareness and informing the AUEB community on issues related to GE is of critical importance for the successful implementation of the AUEB PAGE. The AUEB team has planned and has already started implementing GE awareness raising activities that are diverse in their nature and scope. Such activities include the establishment and celebration of an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Week at AUEB, events and workshops on GE, articles on GE in the external press and the AUEB newspaper, theatrical plays, photo exhibitions, interactive activities, podcasts, as well as their promotion through social media and other communication channels.

Within this set of awareness-raising activities, we have established a permanent column in the AUEB newspaper ‘OPA News’, titled ‘Project Equality’. In this column, we will present the experiences and opinions of female members of the AUEB academic community who have significant professional and scientific presence in research and teaching fields in which women are, traditionally, significantly underrepresented.

The experiences of our colleagues that will be presented in this column will aim at informing the AUEB community and the broader student, academic and research community in Greece on the factors that have inhibited or accelerated their professional and scientific development, as well as practical suggestions that can be applied by those interested, for setting and fulfilling their professional and scientific goals.