The Gender Academy
About this good practice
The challenge addressed was how to secure a gender integrated perspective in the smart specialisation strategy in the region of Värmland, based on the awareness how gender and diversity are crucial aspects of innovation and entrepreneurship that can strengthen the region’s social and economic resilience. In this regional context Center for Gender Studies (CGF) at Karlstad University have successfully delivered the project “Gender Academy” by working closely together with different smaller and medium sized companies in a team of researchers and experts in gender equality work and gender mainstreaming. From these experiences CGF has continued to work in different collaborative activities to spread the knowledge and contribute to actual change. As part of the project, each company was paired with a gender equality work expert and a researcher from Karlstad University, CGF. Together they made an evaluation of the company’s current challenges and ambitions for development and innovation. Thereby the company’s perspective, the gender equality work experts’ insights, and the researchers’ observations and analysis came together in order to inform the concrete work with gender equality and diversity at each company. This setup guaranteed that research based insights were combined with practical judgements and acute needs so that the objective of innovation and change through gender equality and diversity was achieved in the specific organizational setting of each company.
Resources needed
The project had funding through the Academy for smart specialisation and ERDF to a total project budget of 940 000 euro including the staff costs for researchers and gender equality work experts. It also required involvement of specific companies, their time and dedication.
Evidence of success
The companies having gone through the Gender Academy process feel that equality is discussed among the company's leaders, managers and employees and that the insights into exclusionary norms in the company has increased. As a result some companies have started to include gender equality in employee surveys and employee interviews, changed their recruitment processes, changed the physical work environment and also included gender equality in the performance of customer assignments.
Potential for learning or transfer
The Gender Academy as a project is part of a long-standing tradition at Center for gender studies at Karlstad University collaborating with both public institutions and private businesses around issues like organizational change, gender mainstreaming and other kinds of gender equality work. This project like previous ones contributes to learnings and knowledge transfer across different sectors in the Värmland region.
However the Gender Academy has not only made an impact in the Värmland region. Several of the partners in the Debuting-project have shown great interest in the work done in the Gender Academy and have already arranged meetings and workshops with stakeholders in their region to discuss how they can set up similar projects. It is clear that it is the focus on the companies´needs and the more qualitative approach investigating how norms affect the individual company´s business that are part of creating that interest.