GEECCO (Gender Equality in Engineering through Communication and Commitment) is an EU-funded H2020 research project that aimed at achieving gender equity in science and technology institutions, including policy and decision-making bodies, through the implementation of tailor-made Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in four European research performing organisations (RPOs) and the inclusion of gender criteria in two research funding organisations (RFOs).

All participating organisations are in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) field, where gender equality remains a serious problem. The project aimed to enhance systemic institutional change towards gender equality in STEM by setting up a change framework, implementing gender criteria, creating a self-reflective learning environment, and evaluating GEP implementation using both quantitative and qualitative monitoring.

The project was coordinated by the Technical University of Vienna. It ran for four years, between May 2017 to April 2021, with eight partners in Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium and Germany.

Yellow Window led Work Package 8 “Support, training, facilitation” to establish a supporting structure that would aid in the design and implementation of Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in the participating RPOs and RFOs. This involved developing support tools customised to each RPO’s/RFO’s specific needs and providing training workshops to ensure that each organisation was equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to successfully implement their GEP. The project also included the supervision of GEP implementation to ensure that each organisation was progressing towards achieving gender equity in their institution.

You may access the reports and results of the project, here.