ShareAQU Catalunya celebrates International Women's Day with a web page listing all the initiatives it has implemented to promote equality
The Agency has also just launched its "2024-27 Equality Plan" to encourage actions that promote effective equality between men and women.
To mark International Women's Day on the 8th of March, AQU Catalunya added a new page to its website that lists all the initiatives implemented over the years to improve equality between men and women. The page, added to the "About us" section of the website, organises the various initiatives based on whether they relate to good governance, assessment processes, studies carried out by the Agency in the sphere or, lastly, issues directly linked to the entity's internal organisation.
While the new page improves AQU Catalunya's external projection of the actions it takes to promote equality, the Agency has also recently taken significant internal steps with the approval, this year, of the AQU Catalunya 2024-2027 Equality Plan.
Valid for four years, the document responds to the concerns of the Agency's staff in matters of equality and gender perspective, encouraging actions that promote the effective equality of women and men and the non-discrimination of people from LGBTIQ collectives.
In addition to the instruments mentioned above, AQU Catalunya also shows its commitment to equality in other ways. In terms of good governance, for example, both sexes are represented equally on the Agency's committees, which perform an essential role as the body's self-assessment structure. Furthermore, the Agency strives for equality in its appointment of experts since, for years, it has ensured a balanced representation of both sexes in terms of the experts who collaborate with the Agency's different assessment processes and activities. In 2023, this balance was almost symmetrical, with a ratio of 47% female experts to 53% male. Finally, in relation to good governance, in 2023 the Agency incorporated the possibility for trans people to include their chosen name on its registration forms and added a neutral gender field for people who define themselves as non-binary.
AQU Catalunya also applies the gender perspective to its assessment processes. For example, last year it carried out an Analysis of the age of people applying for teacher accreditations, to establish the reality faced by men and women in various scenarios in the context of higher education in Catalonia. Among other findings, the study concluded that women, despite tending to submit their requests for a favourable reading report earlier than men, actually tended to obtain their advanced research reports a year later than them.
Finally and notably, AQU Catalunya ensures continuous training for its staff in matters of equality and gender perspective, which is provided both by the Agency in internal sessions and externally through organised courses. Throughout 2023, seven people from the Agency have been trained in equality and gender perspective in 6 courses totalling 42 teaching hours.