How can DATA make the case for gender equality?

Good morning! I am Alexandrina / EuroGender Administrator. As you can see, the online discussion takes place in the form of writing. Please refresh the page to see the latest comments and do not hesitate to ask for help, if needed, at: eurogender@eige.europa.eu or directly in the thread.

Good morning all!

Good morning! I am Alexandrina Satnoianu (EuroGender Administrator) and I will be typing the answers on behalf of Ms Mahlamäki that is facing technical difficulties. So, please bear with us as some delays in answering might occur.

Irina, I think that most part of the Europarlamentars in this moment need a lot of pedagogy about Gender Equality.

WDE has also started to work in another fied: Women and Tourism. As the WTO said that is the best industry that can help to obtain gender equality in the world.

I mean with quotas!

Thank you @Irina Ulcica! Yes, it is a pleasure to be here with you. The 50 / 50 campaign is fully presented on the website and you can acces it here. Also, I am uploading a presentation that explains in more detalis why EWL started this campaign. On the last slide there is a link to the EU Move campaign to make Europe a more feminist one! Join our efforts for more gender equality in Europe #Women4Europe.

Maybe it's a good time to look at the actual data?

https://eige.europa.eu/gender-statistics/dgs/indicator/wmidm_pol_parl__wmid_eurparl/line

Here you can see the trend for the proportion of women in the European Parliament. You can see a significant jump after the 2009 elections, but little improvement in 2014 and since that time the proportion of women has actually declined as some MEPs have been replaced. The elections in May ought to be a big opportunity to improve the gender balance further but maybe it's already too late - i.e. maybe many of the candidates are already selected?

Thank you Ms Pirkko. Very interesting! I think we have to joint our forces. I would like to invite you to Spain to our Congress as representing EWL. Othe years Mrs. Laura Albu, Françoise Morvan, etc. came to Spain representing EWL.  Would you? Thank you

Good morning, I am Esther Escolano, profesor and researcher from the University of Valencia.

Hi everybody.
In relation to the topic of discussion, quotas as a way to increase the political participation of women, in Spain have been definitive and very effective to promote equality in the political area, in governments and legislative chambers. Although the truth is that the mechanisms of power are usually still mostly in the hands of men

It is worth to mention, that since EIGE’s took over the collection of data on women and men in decision-making in 2017, there have been implemented a number of developments to expand the content in terms of the areas of key decision-making covered and data have been collected for parliamentary bureaus, and parliamentary committees. EIGE’s data on parliamentary bureaus and committees cover the positions of presidents (speaker) and members of the national parliaments. At EU level women accounted for 26.2% of presidents and 31.5% of members of committees in 2017. Similarly, less than one third of women were members of parliamentary bureaus (29.4%) and the numbers of women presidents of bureaus were 24.4% in 2017 across the EU.   

Yes, the statistics of EIGE in all these sectors play an essential role, because we must always start from the exact knowledge of the data to be able to implement strategies in order to achieve greater degrees of equality. In my opinion, a huge effort has been made and many statistics have been completed. The challenges are still, from my point of view, the continuous updating and the incorporation of new items, as reality changes. It is also very important to publicize the new statistics and data

Special thanks go to the guest speaker Ms Prikko Mahlamaki and all participants. Thank you for your inputs and shared expirience from your work! 

Thanks and good lunch, Ligia

Very interesting question. Data on administration staff would be very useful, for those who work on management analizing gender equality. I do.

@Ligia Nobrega is right. The message about the difference between action and no action is striking. See the attached chart

During the first session, Carla shared a document in which EIGE's data on the proportion of women and men in the largest listed companies were useful to her work. In this way, data help for addressing the current inequalities and persistent male domination in the largest listed companies across the EU.

Also, the data for IPA countries show that the numbers of women members of the largest listed comapines is around 20% in 2018. That is quite close to the proportion of women in the EU Member States.   

Good afternoon, I am delighted to joing the discussion on such important matters. WPL has actually produced in cooperation with Kantar, the Reykjiavik Index for Leadership which measures the extent to which men and women are viewed equally in terms of suitability of individuals por positions of power. One of the sectors studied is Banking and Finance, for this sector the Index only reaches 83 where 100 means that there is complete agreement that men and women are equally suited to leadership in the sector.

It was a research study constructed and implemented by Kantar in the G7 countries exploring the following question: "For each of the following sectors or industries, do you think men or women are better suited to leadership positions? The question allowed responses of "women", "men" and both equal for 20 different sectors. 

Katerina thank you very much for the introduction! I am delighted to be part of this discussion! Women Political Leaders is the network of female politicians. The mission of WPL is to increase both the number and the influence of women in political leadership positions. WPL members are women in political office – Ministers, Members of Parliaments, Mayors.

We use data on women and men in political decision- making of European countries and other countries in all of our activities to raise awareness and inform our network. The Disaggregated data between women and men is a powerful tool to evidence the reality of women beyond an opinion or a perception. Disaggregated information is key to measure and bring to light discrimination against women. As importantly, is key to remember that no data on a specific matter is evidence of a social reality as well.

Dear participants, apologies for stepping in and breaking the discussion thread.

 I have been told that there are technical issues with the posts and that many could not actually make their posts as the typing field was dissapearing.

If you have encountered such problems, please let me know or send a brief note at: eurogender@eige.europa.eu 

The data produced by EIGE is extremely useful and important! And one of the factors directly influencing this figures is the phenomenon of closed networks. Political advancement in a party depends mainly on networks and the ability to organize majorities. Women are most of the time not part of these majority networks. So they have fewer chances to advance or stay. In politics, decisions for advancement are not based on objective criteria in politics like assessment panels, exams etc, but based on networks. 

Yes the data is on point!  In traditional party politics environments, women have a harder time to be accepted and successful in party hierarchies. However, if we see the case of Iceland or Norway where it becomes more accepted for women in a political career key political and administrative positions in political parties start to be held by women which later may lead them to be in office.

Hello, I agree with Anna Rita, but I also think that we have to strengthen our engagement with the media..

Data provide sound evidences to influence policies, to explain and monitor measures... but to visibilize better all this effort media is needed

Good afternoon everyone. I'm delighted to join the online discussion.

Indeed this year we are celebrating our 20th anniversary! as you might know we have three main policy objectives , one being gender equality in decision -making in Research and Innovation

We have just released on the 8th of March the 6th edition of the She Figures with an exstensive view on Gender Equality in Research and Innovation (RI).... If you have missed it just have a look at it

In reply to Anna , it is indeed very important to have a time series of data long enough, but also with comparable data . That the reason why while producing the study we paid attention also to ensure dissemination of methodological notes, through the Handbook, to allow researchers to better grasp the meaning of statistics.

For its current Funding Programme , Horizon 2020, the EC has committed itself to achieve gender balance in decision making and set as a target for Advisory Group 50% and for evaluation experts 40% of the under represented sex. 

This is an excerpt from our infographics.

As I have to live now, I'll contact Ligia and inform her about our plans in order to invite you all next June 13th. Regards from Madrid.

Thank you all! 

The Gender Equality in Academia and Research (GEAR) tool provides universities and research organisations with practical advice and tools through all stages of institutional change, from setting up a gender equality plan to evaluating its real impact. So it can really help research organisation in adressing at organisational level gender equality in decision -making

The second one does not relate to decision making , but rather to other aspects of GE in RI: namely the  low participation of women to innovation and limited integration of the gender dimension in research content.

Just a few figures to highlight :

Scientific literature during the period 2013-2017 that integrate a sex or gender dimension in its research content (SGDRC) accounts for pproximately 1.8 % of all research studies in the EU-28.

In reply to Irina: having sound monitoring through indicators is a powerful  leverage to keep on focusing on the target.

In reply to Irina: Situation is different among countries, furthermore we have to keep in mind that ther might be also an effect of horizontal segregation as women and men are not equally balanced across scientific fields of research and development.

Hi,
I think that one absolutely crucial observation is the very high level of segregation of new PhDs by field. While there might be (near) balance in the overall numbers of women and men getting doctoral degrees, women are still a small minority in engineering, information technology, and the 'hard' sciences. Given that funding tends to be concentrated in these fields (mostly for objective reasons, such as expensive equipment), it is unlikely that power balance will be achieved without addressing this segregation.

Good afternoon everyone!

I am very pleased to take part in this online discussion “Data in focus - Decision-making in Sports”. And I would like to warmly thank EIGE for the invitation.

We closely co-operate with EIGE on this data collection campaign, as EIGE has collected data on decision-making positions in the field of sport in the 27 EU member States. In order not to reinvent the wheel, we use these data and a large part of their indicators apply to our project. Indeed, within the framework of the ALL IN project, data are also collected in non-EU member States.

Why do we collect data on gender equality in sport?

• Collecting data is a key step for supporting the development of evidence-based sport policies and programmes, and for adopting a gender mainstreaming approach. This project is fully in line with the recommendation adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on gender mainstreaming in sport (2015).

With this data collection, our objective is to support public authorities and sports organisations to develop (more) gender sensitive sport policies.

• Collecting data on a regularly basis is also an important process to monitor the progress in the field of gender equality in sport and to map persisting challenges
• It allows comparisons between countries and sport
• Data can also be used to increase awareness on gender inequality in sport

To be a little bit more specific,

two types of data are collected in the 6 strategic fields I have already mentioned:

• Quantitative data on the participation of girls/women and boys/men to the sports world (sex-disagreggated data)
• Qualitative data on policies and programmes addressing gender inequality in sport

That’s it for my short presentation of the ALL IN project. Of course, I remain at your disposal should you have any question or need further information!

What would be interesting is to compare these figures with qualitative data on policies/programmes/measures implemented in these countries to tackle gender inequality in sport

Hello everybody,

I am afraid it is too late to contribute on Gender Equality in decision making and politics. I just wanted to let you know that I am strongly convinced that data are of great relevance in promoting gender  equality in decision making. I am a journalist and I work at Formez PA http://www.formez.it  the in-house agency of the Department for Public Administration at the Italian Prime Minister's Office, for
know-how sharing and exchange of Italian experiences in the Public Administration key activities. I am especially involded in capacity building and training activities for public administrations.

I am also a member of CORECOM (Regional Communications Committee) - SARDEGNA a regional body of the Italian Communications Regulatory Authority (Agcom), an independent authority whose activity covers traditional and innovative media markets. In particular, CORECOMS monitor local broadcasting programmes and content, as well as commercials and political messages during electoral campaigns.

In this capacity I am responsible for the 2018-2019 Program on media pluralism and equal representation of women in the media. The 2018-2019 Program includes the organisation - in collaboration with the Italian association of Giornaliste Unite Libere Autonome (GiULiA) - of a theatre show
based on The “Manifesto of Venice”, a manifesto for gender equality and correct information, launched on the World Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls, on 25 November. The 2018-2019 Program also includes a Journalism Prize on gender discrimination and appropriate media languages that was awarded the 8th of March 2019.

Last but not least I am also a member of Coordinamento3 and association of women in politics from the main political parties in Sardegna. The association was the one that asked and obtained the use of quotas in regional elections and proposed a Manifesto that was signed by all political partiesa before the last regional elections.

Yesterday I was one of the speakersat a conference organised by the local University on the current situation of women in regional decision making and politics. I have made great use of EIGE DATA on decision making and I have also proposed the use of an integrated approach to enhance women's representation in politics (Just the one suggested by EIGE in its best practices on women and political decision making)

I am currently struggling to demonstrate that we can use ESF funds to finance such a programme by programming a part of the thematic objective 11 (CAPACITY BUILDING FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION). 

PLEASE can someone help me in demonstrating that this is possible?

I can share my presentation on the subject, but rigt now it is available in Italian only. I can translate it into English if someone is interested in receiving it.

The presentation use a lot of EIGE Data and refers to the EWL Women for Europe - Europe for Women campaign and to the recent Study of the EU Parliament on "Women in political decision-making in view of the next European elections".

Thanks for this opportunity to share our experiences and poit of view