Many of the staff, managers, teachers, and researchers of the university had a lack of awareness/training on gender equality issues and many of them admitted to be willing to learn about it.
Developing initiatives to raise gender awareness and capacity at all levels of the organization with provision of training to staff, teaching and research staff
Problem (evidence)
Aims/objectives
To raise awareness among university staff (administration workers, teachers, and researchers) on Gender Equality issues and to provide them with a basic understanding that will help them deal with them. To ensure that the gender equality training is repeated every year and everyone has the chance to attend it.
Resources
Budget allocated in the management plan for this training every year.
Brief outcomes
Governing bodies members and people involved in recruitment processes are aware of gender issues and stereotypes.
68 members of Governing bodies and the staff attended the training courses related to Gender Equality in general and in recruitment processes in particular organized during this period.
Key area
The governance bodies, key actors and decision-makers
Type of action
Training/awareness-raising
Organization
Mondragon Unibertsitatea
Higher education institution
Action level of implementation
Researchers/professors and technical and administrative staff, students
Implementation
The MU PLOTINA team organised a training session on gender perspectives (why it is important) and gender equality (GEP for the university and the policy??).The first training course about Gender Equality was delivered and the Gender Equality Plan was presented to the Governing Bodies first and to the Coordinators of the knowledge areas. Then the same training course was given to 40 new staff members involved in the Welcome Plan and to the entire university staff and to the students during their Orientation Plan.
The session lasts for 4 hours: the first three hours are delivered by an academic expert on gender equality from the Humanities Faculty (covering issues around feminism and why a feminist approach is important, gender equality service, sexual harassment protocol), while in the last hour a member of the gender equality team presents the GEP and the protocol. The training is going to be repeated every year, until everybody has attended.
Challenges
There are some training sessions at the beginning of the year that are compulsory, the rest are not. There is low participation in the courses that are not compulsory.
Coping strategies
Integrate training in other planned activities where there is high staff attendance
Create short summaries of the training that would be available on the website.
Tips/strategies – Lessons learnt
Integrate training in other planned activities where there is high staff attendance.
Create short summaries of the training that would be available on the website.
Request a budget from the Spanish government to invite experts on different topics to deliver training on gender equality via a conference day, open it up to public and other stakeholders (secondary school; other universities; employers) to increase wider awareness.
More detailed Outcomes/Impact
The course will be repeated annually until all staff attend it