Reducing segregation in selection processes, ensuring equal pay, family balance, and a workspace free of harassment and discrimination are some of the strategic objectives of the plan.
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) Gender Equity Plan for the period 2022-2026 has been announced this Friday.
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) has presented this Friday September 30 the new Gender Equity Plan, which includes several actions to ensure effective equality of treatment and opportunities between women and men who develop their professional careers at the BSC, eliminating any kind of discrimination, direct or indirect, based on sex.
The new BSC Gender Equity Plan's priority objective is to adopt a shared policy to guarantee real and effective equality of opportunities between women and men at BSC, for which it proposes 44 specific actions in eight work areas: Organizational Culture, Recruitment and Hiring, Training, Promotion, and Personal Development, Remuneration, Personal, Family and Work-Life Balance, Inclusive Communication and Prevention of and Action against Sexual Harassment, and Harassment based on Sex.
Within each work area, several strategic objectives are established: consolidating the value of equality in the organization; reducing segregation in personnel selection and professional promotion processes; ensuring equal opportunities through training; guaranteeing equal pay for men and women, balancing professional life with personal and family life; and ensuring a workspace free of discrimination and sexual harassment.
"The BSC is a center of scientific and technical excellence at international level, so equal opportunities are a basic criterion for attracting and retaining talent in a context where diversity is a source of incalculable value. With the update of the Gender Equity Plan, we reinforce our commitment to all the center's employees and researchers, ensuring a safe environment that favors their personal and professional growth," says Mateo Valero, director of the BSC.
Updated strategy
The Gender Equity Plan is a fundamental tool for incorporating the gender perspective into the management and culture of institutions such as the BSC. The document takes as a reference the Organic Law 3/2007, of March 22, for the Effective Equality of Women and Men, and is aligned with the Plan for Gender Equality and non-discrimination in Science, Technology and Innovation announced by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation a few weeks ago. The plan is valid for four years, until 2026, and updates the previous one that was in force between 2017 and 2021.
According to Josep Maria Martorell, associate director of the BSC, "the new Gender Equity Plan is a key instrument for applying gender equality criteria in all BSC departments and at all levels. It is the result of the center's commitment to values that we want to promote and that seek to establish the ideal conditions for all the people who work at BSC to develop professionally in an environment that guarantees equal opportunities".
Collaborative work
The 2022-2026 Gender Equity Plan reflects collaborative work and is the result of the time and effort dedicated by the Human Resources department, the Works Council, the Equity Commission, the Women in Science initiatives of each scientific department, as well as all BSC staff who have actively participated in the working sessions, contributing ideas, good practices, and other points of view.
For the design of the new strategy, 22 meetings have taken place since last year, which have allowed the elaboration of a global diagnosis of the situation, through the collection of quantitative and qualitative information to detect existing inequalities and formulate proposals for corrective action. In the first meetings, the starting point was established based on the results of a survey carried out among all the center's employees to find out the degree of integration of equality among the people working at BSC.
Monitoring and evaluation
Finally, starting last May, qualitative focus groups consisting of 40 people from the scientific, management and operations departments were set up to finalize the content of the plan in terms of objectives and actions, as well as to establish an implementation schedule and monitoring and evaluation indicators.
"The new Equality Plan is in line with the work of the women and science initiatives of each department and focuses on three objectives: to increase the participation of women in science; to promote inclusive equality through structural and cultural change in our institution; and to enhance excellence in science and technology, through the integration of the sex and gender perspective and intersectional analysis in scientific knowledge," concludes Nataly Buslón, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion officer at BSC.