Promoting gender equality is a core activity for the EU. The European Commission is committed to promoting gender equality in research and innovation. It is part of the European Commission Gender Equality Strategy for 2020-2025, which sets out the Commission’s broader commitment to equality across all EU policies. In addition, the EU has a well-established regulatory framework on gender equality, including binding directives, which apply widely across the labour market including the research sector.

Because of the peculiarities of the research sector, specific action is needed to overcome persisting gender gaps. Many structural barriers to gender equality in research and innovation persist.

The European Commission addresses these barriers through

• the main funding instrument Horizon 2020,  the first framework programme to set gender as a cross-cutting issue, with one of the underpinning objectives being to integrate the gender dimension into research and innovation  content.
• within the European Research Area in collaboration with member countries and research organisations. Already under the ERA Communication 2012 framework, the European Commission has set 3 objectives to work with EU countries and foster an institutional change (gender equality in scientific careers, gender balance in decision making, integration of the gender dimension into the content of research and innovation).

Infographic: closing gender gaps in research and innovation

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