20TH GENDER SUMMIT

07. - 18.06.2021 Virtual

Background
The socio-economic and environmental challenges facing societies today put new pressure and expectations on science to produce more relevant and reliable knowledge to protect their wellbeing, and of the natural ecosystems they depend on. A 2010 report by science leaders identified important risk to quality of research outcomes caused by historical gaps and biases in scientific evidence and knowledge created by a persistent tendency of researchers to adopt ‘male’ as the norm in health and behaviour research. Furthermore, studies have often omitted reporting details of the biological and/or socio-cultural characteristics of the studied population, which has contributed to the non-reproducibility crisis in research. Since 2013, the European Union has adopted in its flagship research programmes: Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, the policy to promote the integration of gender dimension in research and innovation.

The Gender Summit is a platform for dialogue, established in 2011 as an outcome from a European project, where scientists, scholars, policy makers and key stakeholders in science endeavours examine new scientific evidence showing when, why and how biological and socio-cultural factors influence results and differentiate quality of outcomes for women and men. The aim is to improve scientific excellence and identify research findings that can lead to products that meet the needs of women, or men, or society more effectively and with better outcomes. Today, the Gender Summit platform has regional focus on Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

20th Gender Summit
The 20th Gender Summit will take place in Brazil on 4-5 November 2020. It will be the third GS for Latin America. The leading convening organisations are the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication (MCTIC), The British Council, and Portia.

This Summit has three ambitions

1. Share knowledge and policy experience of different countries in developing national frameworks to advance more equal representation of women and men across scientific fields and in decision-making and leadership roles in science and research

  • Aim 1: Create efficient and effective research workforce and remove (invisible) obstacles for diversity.
  • Aim 2: identify promising and needed directions for research and innovation and its funding mechanisms to ensure bias free, quality science knowledge
  • Aim 3: Identify actions to produce, combine and interpret data, statistics and indicators on career progression and work environment.

2. Foster diversity among researches and in scientific approaches especially in health, natural ecosystems, and sustainable development

  • Aim 1: Actions to create fair, bias free and socially responsible applications
  • Aim 2: Actions to create transparent and accessible research data-infrastructures with diversity dimensions.
  • Aim 3: Actions to improve research performance in the age of open science, in order to optimize the impact of research on society.

3. Promote inter-institutional collaborations and team-driven, innovative academic culture

  • Aim 1: Identify concrete actions for realizing cultural change in academia
  • Aim 2: Concrete proposals for actions to reshape academia into a reflection of society.
  • Aim 3: Evidence-based methods of integrating differences in human characteristic and diversity analysis in education and research content to enhance innovative, ground-breaking research with sustainable impacts.

If you have any queries about GS20, please email team-br-2020@gender-summit.com
Please note, registration for GS20 has not opened, therefore please do not email requests for registration.  Instead, please monitor this website and/or subscribe to the newsletter for further updates.