A blog from the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics (CRB)

Tag: policy

Data for gender equality in European research organizations

Inequality is not just a bad feeling that some may have, but a bad reality that we share. Especially in countries where gender equality work is not well established, it is important that inequality is not handled as a contested issue, but as a fact about which more knowledge should be sought. Who has the power over the criteria for what a successful researcher is and who has a better chance of succeeding? Which structures undermine or support gender equality? What does childcare look like? Are the research teams homogeneous and how does that affect the work? Where do women end up in the author order in scientific publications and where do they end up in the competition for research funds? Are there mechanisms and values in science that systematically make inequality invisible and prevent equality?

There is a will in the EU to improve gender equality in research organizations, especially in some of the Member States where gender equality work is particularly neglected. How can the necessary changes be brought about? In Sweden, all state universities are commissioned to collect data on (in)equality. Under the slogan “No data: No policies!” an EU project presents its approach to gender equality plans. The project, MINDtheGEPs, develops and implements gender equality plans in a collaboration between 7 European research organizations in 5 countries: Spain, Poland, Ireland, Italy and Serbia. The focus is on changing the organizations structurally and culturally and increasing women’s participation in research and innovation. The project is coordinated from the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Turin. The work is supported by a further 4 organizations: the publishing house Elsevier in the Netherlands, the research organization Knowledge & Innovation in Italy, the National Research Council of Italy, and by the Centre for Research & Bioethics (CRB) at Uppsala University, which leads the communication work.

In the participating countries, there is a lack of sufficient data on factors behind equality and inequality, which means that those who suffer from inequality also suffer from not being seen. Therefore, it is important to carry out studies that map the problems. If the studies are also carried out in one’s own organization and one contributes to producing the data, this can further contribute to making the problems visible and motivating change. Therefore, the organizations in MINDtheGEPs collect data together to develop, adapt and support interventions at the local level. Behind the approach is a reasonable idea: if you cannot provide evidence of inequality, you will not get support to remedy the problems either. The project thus collects data on existing legislation and policy in the 5 countries, as well as data on the proportion of women in governing bodies at different levels, on the proportion of women who apply for and receive research support in competition, as well as data on the existence of gender equality measures. Surveys and interview studies are also carried out with researchers, administrative staff, rectors and vice rectors, department directors and other relevant actors. This large data collection and analysis is the basis for the 7 gender equality plans that are developed and implemented in MINDtheGEPs. Here you will find a presentation of the data collection.

If you want a summary of the work with evidence-based equality plans, you can read this policy brief from the project: No data: No policies! The MINDtheGEP’s approach to evidence-based policies for Gender Equality Plans. The document gives a brief account of structural and cultural measures that are recommended on the basis of the studies in various areas. It is about balance in recruitment and career progression and about balance between work and private life. It is about making gender equality issues visible in research and teaching, for example through courses that highlight gender as an important dimension in these activities. Finally, it is about changing the work in decision making bodies so that more women can reach higher positions within research organizations in the countries in the project collaboration.

The approach in MINDtheGEPs can probably inspire other organizations in addition to those included in the project, even organizations that do not work with research. This is also a thought behind the project. The hope is that the work of developing and implementing gender equality plans in a number of research organizations will influence the rest of society. Without data, gender inequality risks being made invisible as a bad feeling.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Solera, Cristina, Balzano, Angela, Turco, Federica, Pisacane, Lucio, & Fernow, Josepine. (2023). No data: No policies! The MINDtheGEPs approach to evidence-based policies for Gender Equality Plans. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7785413

This post in Swedish

We want solid foundations

How can we set future ethical standards for ICT, Big Data, AI and robotics?

josepine-fernow-siennaDo you use Google Maps to navigate in a new city? Ask Siri, Alexa or OK Google to play your favourite song? To help you find something on Amazon? To read a text message from a friend while you are driving your car? Perhaps your car is fitted with a semi-autonomous adaptive cruise control system… If any software or machine is going to perform in any autonomous way, it needs to collect data. About you, where you are going, what songs you like, your shopping habits, who your friends are and what you talk about. This begs the question:  are we willing to give up part of our privacy and personal liberty to enjoy the benefits technology offers.

It is difficult to predict the consequences of developing and using new technology. Policymakers struggle to assess the ethical, legal and human rights impacts of using different kinds of IT systems. In research, in industry and our homes. Good policy should be helpful for everyone that holds a stake. We might want it to protect ethical values and human rights, make research and development possible, allow technology transfer from academia to industry, make sure both large and smaller companies can develop their business, and make sure that there is social acceptance for technological development.

The European Union is serious about developing policy on the basis of sound research, rigorous empirical data and wide stakeholder consultation. In recent years, the Horizon2020 programme has invested € 10 million in three projects looking at the ethics and human rights implications of emerging digital technologies: PANELFIT, SHERPA and SIENNA.

The first project, PANELFIT (which is short for Participatory Approaches to a New Ethical and Legal Framework for ICT), will develop guidelines on the ethical and legal issues of ICT research and innovation. The second, SHERPA (stands for Shaping the ethical dimensions of Smart Information Systems (SIS) – A European Perspective), will develop tools to identify and address the ethical dimensions of smart information systems (SIS), which is the combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics. SIENNA (short for Stakeholder-informed ethics for new technologies with high socio-economic and human rights impact), will develop research ethics protocols, professional ethical codes, and better ethical and legal frameworks for AI and robotics, human enhancement technologies, and human genomics.

SSP-graphic

All three projects involve experts, publics and stakeholders to co-create outputs, in different ways. They also support the European Union’s vision of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). SIENNA, SHERPA and PANELFIT recently published an editorial in the Orbit Journal, inviting stakeholders and publics to engage with the projects and contribute to the work.

Want to read more? Rowena Rodrigues and Anaïs Resseguier have written about some of the issues raised by the use of artificial intelligence on Ethics Dialogues (The underdog in the AI and ethical debate: human autonomy), and you can find out more about the SIENNA project in a previous post on the Ethics Blog (Ethics, human rights and responsible innovation).

Want to know more about the collaboration between SIENNA, SHERPA and PANELFIT? Read the editorial in Orbit (Setting future ethical standards for ICT, Big Data, AI and robotics: The contribution of three European Projects), or watch a video from our joint webinar on May 20, 2019 on YouTube (SIENNA, SHERPA, PANELFIT: Setting future ethical standards for ICT, Big Data, SIS, AI & Robotics).

Want to know how SIENNA views the ethical impacts of AI and robotics? Download infographic (pdf) and read our state-of-the-art review for AI & robotics (deliverable report).

AI-robotics-ifographic

Josepine Fernow

This post in Swedish

We want solid foundations - the Ethics Blog

 

How are ethical policies justified?

Pär SegerdahlEthical policies for practices such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research should, of course, be well justified. But how does one justify that activities involving the destruction or killing of human embryos and fetuses should be allowed? How does one justify that they should be banned?

Just because the issues are so sensitive and important, they awaken a desire to find the absolutely conclusive justification.

The questions arouse our metaphysical aspirations. Ethicists who discuss them can sometimes sound like the metaphysicians of the seventeenth century who claimed they had conclusive arguments that the soul affects the body, or that it absolutely cannot affect it; who thought they could prove that God is the soul of the world, or that such a view detracts from God’s perfection.

Since both parties claim they have absolutely conclusive proofs, it becomes impossible to exhibit even the smallest trace of uncertainty. Each objection is taken as a challenge to prove the superiority of one’s own proofs, which is why metaphysical debates often resemble meetings between two hyper-sensitive querulants.

This is how I perceive many of the arguments about the embryo’s “moral status,” which are believed to provide conclusive evidence for or against moral positions on abortion and embryonic research – based on the nature of things (i.e., of the embryo).

Others, who want to reason more rigorously before drawing conclusions, instead scrutinize the arguments to demonstrate that we haven’t yet found the metaphysical basis for a policy (you can find an example here). From metaphysical dogmatism to metaphysical pedantry.

The metaphysical vision of an absolute path through life does not seem to give us any walkable path at all. It does not even allow meaningful conversations about what we find sensitive and important. But isn’t that where we need to begin when we look for a justification?

Pär Segerdahl

This post in Swedish

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