Context and objectives
Since the beginning of the 21st century, parity has been a challenge for institutions at all levels. This principle of equality has been taken up by the European Union, which requires that projects financed by its structural and investment funds take this issue into account. The principle of parity has even become one of the “horizontal” principles for the programming of European funds from 2014 to 2020. With regard to European ambitions in terms of technology and digital, for example relating to artificial intelligence, the question of gender equality in technology appears to be a priority area of work for the European Union. Indeed, the world of digital and technology remains an almost exclusively male domain.
Therefore, the EQUAL EU project aims to achieve gender equality in technology and digital by involving stakeholders, civil society and also digital and technological actors. The project aims to formalise collective actions of networks of actors and to imagine sustainable local ecosystems of creation and social inclusion such as start-ups, summer camps or entrepreneurial empowerment programmes. The idea of this project is not simply to establish more parity in the digital and technological world, but to create opportunities for the actors of this world to take up the issue of gender equality in an intersectional way, by looking at gender, disability, race, class… The idea is therefore not so much to seek to achieve gender equality, but rather gender equity, which is fairer and more inclusive of the discrimination experienced by each person.
"The EU strategy on gender equality for 2020-2025 calls for a Europe where women and men, girls and boys, are equal, where diversity is a recognised asset for the economy and society, and where women have equal opportunities to participate and thrive in society.
PROCEDURE
As coordinator of the stage of the project that concerns the creation of new solutions for inclusion and equity, the role of Public Missions within the research project is divided into four stages.
- Contributing to the design of the various events: establishing the format, structure, materials, methods, team composition rules and the running of innovation camps and hackathons
- Coordination of innovation camps for sustainable gender equity practices. Missions Publiques will coordinate the 12 events, with the support of a host organisation, of one day duration in 12 different countries: Norway, Ukraine, Switzerland, Latvia, Turkey, Spain, Serbia, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Croatia, as well as two countries outside the European continent. The aim of these innovation camps is to reflect on solutions to achieve gender equity in communication and information technologies. Each event will focus on a specific theme corresponding to the local challenges and needs of its host organisation.
- Organisation of hackathons to find inclusion solutions using communication and information technologies. These 12 one-day hackathons will be organised in 12 different countries (Sweden, France, United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Israel, Austria, Greece, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, and two other countries outside the European continent) with the support of a host organisation. They will aim to develop products and services in the field of tech and digital technologies that integrate gender equity issues. In contrast to innovation camps, hackathons have a more practical focus and may lead the winning teams of the events to be integrated into start-up incubators.
- Coordination of the synthesis of the results and evaluation methods of these 24 events (hackathons and innovation camps) in order to feed the roadmap established by the whole consortium around the tools for gender equity in digital inclusion.
OUR ADDED VALUE
The specificity of the project lies above all in the fact that the project partners consider equity – more than equality as explained above – in an intersectional way. This intersectional perspective allows a better consideration in the elaboration of solutions of all the experiences and all the discriminations that women may suffer, whether these discriminations are based on gender as well as on other factors (disability, race, class, sexual orientation, etc).
Moreover, this inclusion process is taking place in a field that is essentially male and often neglected by the players. s s s for gender equality: the digital and tech world. This project is therefore innovative in that it aims to create opportunities for women in this field, but also to advocate for an ungendered professional world where women have the possibility of choosing their profession without having to face gender preconceptions.
Missions Publiques’ aim is to explore in depth the issues of gender equity applied to the world of digital and technology, making use of its experience in the design and organisation of creative processes based on collective intelligence.