The SWAFS (science with and for society) programme of the European Commission has recently published its SWAFS achievements and recommendations report 2020 and the SWAFS report 2020 Gender equality, were a paragraph is devoted to PLOTINA project. The objective of this report is to convey the Horizon 2020 achievements of SWAFS to serve as input for DG Research and Innovation to integrate science, society and citizens in Horizon Europe, both across the future framework programme and in the first Work Programmes falling under ‘Strengthening the European Research Area’.

The SWAFS report highlights the importance of projects aimed to promote Gender Equality Plans in research organizations, stating that “the GEP projects have been instrumental in embracing new challenges such as the need to address sexual harassment and gender-based violence in academia, and to develop an inclusive approach. Furthermore, GEP projects have been models and catalysers for action at the national level in many countries and are prime examples of institutional changes that live well beyond the life of the project”.

Regarding PLOTINA, EC points out that “the project produced a curated repository listing potential actions RPOs can consider to enhance gender equality, analyses of case studies as well as a glossary of gender equality-related terms. PLOTINA’s main achievements are its toolkits: step-by-step guides on how to carry out a Gender Audit, how to design a GEP, how to implement it, how to monitor the GEP’s progress and ensure its upkeep. The project was also flagged by the Commission as a success story with remarkable dissemination outputs including a video to provide guidance on how to counteract unconscious gender biases in the evaluation and recruitment of professors and researchers”.