PLOTINA team’s visits to individual departments showed that the staff need to have copies of the GEP for informative and reference purposes. That was the case with students and administrative staff as well.
Providing online and/or hard copies of gender equality and diversity policies to internal and external staff
Problem (evidence)
Aims/objectives
To introduce GEP fully to all members of the OzU community
Resources
The expertise of the Corporate Communications Office (CCO) was needed in the designing and editing processes. Printing of the booklet was funded by the Rectorate.
Brief outcomes
All OzU members are now aware of the GEP and OzU’s official gender equality policy and mechanisms. Gender equality was thus introduced as a permanent subject on the institutional agenda.
Key area
The governance bodies, key actors and decision-makers
Type of action
Availability of supports/resources
Organization
Özyeğin Üniversitesi
Higher education institution
Action level of implementation
Departments, staff, students
Implementation
The GEP was visualized and designed as a PDF booklet to be uploaded to the OzU website and emailed to all members via the university’s intranet application and mail lists.
Challenges
Sometimes, due to the work schedule of the CCO, the progress on the creation of materials slowed down. Assuming that this might be the case in other institutions as well, it is advised that visualization and editing of the GEP should start early on in the implementation phase.
Coping strategies
Maintaining constant communication with the CCO staff proved useful.
Tips/strategies – Lessons learnt
Making the GEP accessible online (and downloadable as a pdf file) is important to achieve ease of familiarization with the organization’s gender equality policies.
More detailed Outcomes/Impact
Gender equality is now a permanent institutional agenda item. This is key to achieving a cultural change in the institution.
Evaluation
The gender equality awareness seminars held with all the staff and academic managers, together with the evaluation forms and one-on-one feedback collected from them, proved to be the most effective means of getting comments and evaluations on the GEP.