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ALESSANDRO GRANDI
COLLABORATORE COORDINATO CONTINUATIVO Fondazione Marco Biagi
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Pubblicazioni
2018
- Gender equality in tertiary education and research institutions. An evaluation proposal.
[Capitolo/Saggio]
Addabbo, T.; Canali, C.; Facchinetti, G.; Grandi, Alessandro; Pirotti, T.
abstract
Gender inequality in research and innovation is well documented (European Commission, 2016) and tools to
measure and monitor it have been proposed and tested within EU funded projects as GenderTime (Badaloni & Perini, 2016)
or Effective gender equality in research and academia (EGERA) (http://www.egera.eu/). The evaluation proposal at the heart
of this contribution has been developed within EQUAL-IST project (Gender Equality Plans for Information Sciences and
Technology Research Institutions) funded under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
that aims at introducing structural changes in research organizations to enhance gender equality within Information System
and Technology Institutions. The dimensions and indicators used to measure gender equality are consistent to those that
the literature on gender equality in research and academic institutions have shown to be significant. Our contribution shows
an innovation in the choice on how to measure gender equality by using Fuzzy Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (FMCDA). We
propose a Fuzzy Expert System, a cognitive model that, by replicating the expert way of learning and thinking, allows to
formalize qualitative concepts and to reach a synthetic measure of the institution's gender equality (ranging from 0 to 1
increasing with gender equality achievements) that can be then disentangled in its different dimensions. The latter
characteristic of the model that we propose can be fruitfully used by policy makers and Equal opportunity officers in order
to detect and address the critical elements in the organization and carry out changes to improve gender equality. A first
application of the model has been experimented within the EQUAL-IST project and is available for other universities and
research institutions wishing to obtain an assessment of their organization in terms of gender equality. Further developments
of the model, together with its wider implementation, include the assessment by using fuzzy logic of gender equality policies
and institutional factors affecting gender equality within the institution.