STEM initiatives for women and Sex/gender

Considerations in research and innovation:

AMIRES Gender Board was present virtually in two events on Gender topic recently, this time with Gender Equality Board coordinator and programme manager Mariana Pacheco Blanco.

One of them was the 6^th edition of the STEM [1] Women Congress in Barcelona , that focused specially on early childhood education in STEM. What happened in this event:

• Several panels discussing the initiatives that are implemented in different organisations and companies
• Good practices in early education that can make a difference in contributing to gender equality.
• Awards were given to companies, women and early start ups:
  • MeHRs company won the STEM company award from 6 projects presented (Volkswagen Spain, Michael Page Hiberus, Mur & Partners and Nestle).
  • First place on the STEM women award to Eva Miranda , considering the impact and effort in STEM related initiatives.
  • STEM start up award was given-Codeop

In the second event a webinar organised by the Centre for Gender and Science through the CZERA project, in which Prof Sabine Oertelt-Prigione presented the importance of the consideration on Sex and Gender on biomedical research. She provided insights on the history of its importance, which started in 1960 with the US and UK Women’s Health movement, and has evolved until now with the inclusion of the Gender dimension as obligatory criteria in the Horizon Europe funding programme. Other important takeaways of this webinar:

• Consideration of two key dimensions of sex and gender in healthcare are in
  • context – gender balance
  • content -analysis of gender and sex in research and innovation
• Three levels used to define sex exist (from the biological and medical point of view)
  • Genetics-assumption of XX (female) and XY (male) in biomedical researchHormones-highly variable in different stages of life and even in shorter periods
  • Genitalia-differences of the sex development which accounts 0.07 – 1.7%
• Four dimensions exist on gender: identity, role, relationship and sex
  • Gender identity used for the analysis of gender using a two steps approach:
    • What sex were you assigned at birth – Current gender identity
  • Gender and role have several methodologies or approaches (scales)
• Not taking in consideration sex differences and gender aspects will provide consequences in the research:
  • Reduced reproducibility

• Underestimation of hormonal effects -e.g. biomarkers interaction
• Delayed diagnosis
• Algorithmic bias
• Lack of detection of differences in effectiveness
• Analysing gender through quantitative methods, qualitative or design-based methods

• Use of guidelines: SAGER, which are the best recommendation by major publishers.

These events provided relevant information on the implementation of actions to reach gender equality, through the consideration of sex and gender in research and innovation, and the initiatives for promoting educational tools and actions in organisations , mainly through STEM fields.

More information here!

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[1] STEM is the abbreviation of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics