The IGORCADIA Project is deeply committed to promoting equal opportunities in science and research from a gender perspective among participating institutions. It is a research project conducted at St. Joseph's Catholic Hospital in Monrovia and coordinated by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), with the Liberian Drug Agency (LMHRA) and the Juan Ciudad NGO.
The IGORCADIA team and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) are contributing to improving the quality of life and health of women and girls, as well as their participation in all the project's activities.
The world of research and science is a complicated one for the professional development of women scientists. Despite widespread interest in research projects that advocate for gender equality as one of their core policies, monitoring and evaluation studies have shown that, despite efforts to promote gender equality in research, women remain underrepresented, and gender issues are far from being systematically addressed in research projects.
The promotion and opportunity for women to occupy positions of responsibility in the world of science appears to be a challenge in the world of research. The percentage of female researchers at the national level is 38.47%; however, the figures are different at the highest levels of the scientific career ladder: only 19.7% of professorships are held by women. These are some of the figures from the report "Women Scientists in Figures 2013: Statistics and Indicators of Gender (In)equality in Scientific Training and Profession," prepared by the Women and Science Unit of the State Secretariat for R&D+i, using its own data and those from the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
One aspect of concern for the career development of female scientists is the emergence of what is known as the "glass ceiling," a limitation or barrier in women's careers that prevents them from reaching the highest positions in an organization's organizational chart. This obstacle is initially invisible and difficult to detect. Female researchers start out with a numerical advantage at the beginning of their professional careers and are progressively overtaken by their male colleagues until they end up as a minority in the higher ranks.
To address this widespread situation in the scientific world, the Global Health Institute and the IGORCADIA project team declare their commitment to establishing and developing policies that integrate equal treatment and opportunities between men and women, without direct or indirect discrimination based on sex, as well as to promoting and fostering measures to achieve true equality within our organization.
The principle of equality is a strategic component of all training and human resources activities. In each and every area of the project's activities, from the selection of the research team, salary policy, training activities, work-life balance, and work-life balance, we uphold the principle of equal opportunities between men and women, paying special attention to indirect discrimination, understood as "the situation in which a seemingly neutral provision, criterion, or practice places a person of one sex at a particular disadvantage compared to people of the other sex."
The research team's selection processes do not present any barriers or limitations based on gender or other factors such as family circumstances, age, disability, race, or nationality. As a rule, gender equality is objectively and systematically taken into account in the selection processes for staff and participants in activities, as well as in the evaluation of their professional development.
The gender perspective is crucial in the training programs offered, which include educational activities related to women's health and motherhood.
During the two years of project development, a monitoring system was developed, specifically in the institutions located in Liberia, to verify equal opportunities, measuring the impact on both LMHRA and SJCH organizations.
Throughout the project, communication and dissemination activities will be carried out with the aim of encouraging the participation and involvement of all institutional staff to the greatest extent possible, in order to raise awareness and mobilize attitudes toward gender equality of opportunity.
The final activity was a presentation followed by a discussion on Gender Equality at the monthly general meetings in December 2018 for all contracted staff, both at the LMHRA institution and at St. Joseph Catholic Hospital. Presented by two members of the IGORCADIA research team from each institution, the audience was informed about the global situation of women in science, emphasizing the low participation rate in Africa. They also highlighted the need to work together to achieve a gender-balanced opportunity and participation in the number of women and men working in research, and to eliminate disadvantages in the scientific world due to gender discrimination.
We provide you with the link to a PDF illustrating some of these inequalities in research and science, you can see it here.
By: Cristina Muñoz, IGORCADIA coordinator in Monrovia.
More information: www.igorcadia.org
Project: Improving the governance and research capacity of the Liberia Drug and Health Products Regulatory Authority (IGORCADIA) in infectious disease diagnostics.
Project: Improved Governance and Research Capacities in Diagnostics for Infectious Diseases of the Liberian Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Authority
The EDCTP2 program is supported under Horizon 2020, the European Union's Framework Program for Research and Innovation
