Fostering collaborative approaches to gender equality interventions in higher education and research: the case of transnational and multi-institutional communities of practice

Figures & data

Table 1. Ten hindering and facilitating factors for gender equality plan implementation in research and innovation, adapted from Palmén and Kalpazidou Schmidt (2019).*) HR – human resources

Factor	Description
Governance Framework	National legislation and policy; legally binding measures; positive incentives.
Top-management Commitment	Managers working top-down from recruitment and changing management culture; developing key gender competences; belief in the relevance of equality measures.
Bottom-up Participation	All employees to participate in GEPs. Bottom-up buy-in from HR staff, researchers, students in an open and active process to reflect the communities’ needs.
Framing Synergies with Other Initiatives	The framing of gender issues inextricably linked to excellence in R&I and linked to external funding opportunities.
Resistance	Implicit and explicit resistance.
Resources	Both economic and human resources.
Sustainability of Actions	Fostering sustainability through staff retention; recognition that institutional change takes years and multitude of outcomes from a long-term perspective.
Gender Competence, Expertise and Knowledge	Gender experts’ knowledge integration into projects affects outcomes, with those more centrally placed linked to a more successful implementation.
Transparency, Targets and Monitoring	Realistic, measurable targets tailored to each institution's needs. Monitoring and reporting accessible and available to all.
Accessible Data and Information	Crucial for implementing a GEP; data protection limiting access; technical imperatives taking priority over social data in the design of information systems.

Table 2. The three dimensions of community of practice in GenderTime and ACT. Adapted from Barnard et al. (2016)

CoP Element	Application in GenderTime	Application in ACT
Domain Defines a set of issues to affirm the purpose and value to members and stakeholders.	The implementation of GEPs in HE and R&I in Europe.	The implementation of GEPs and institutional change for GE in HE and R&I in the ERA; focused on discipline, geography, theme, or type of organization and principal activities; the ‘know what’.
Community Members engage in joint activities and build relationships to learn from each other.	Limited in size, small, exclusive, consortium-only network of researchers and practitioners communicating and meeting regularly to share experiences, learn, build knowledge. ‘Consortium as the core beneficiary’ approach (also in EQUAL-IST, Baltic Gender, SAGE)	Unlimited in size, large, inclusive, consortium-supported network of researchers and practitioners communicating and meeting (also virtually) regularly to support each other, share experiences, learn, build knowledge to promote and work towards institutional change for GE; the ‘know who’. The community is external to the supporting consortium.
Practice Frameworks, ideas, tools, information, styles, language, stories, documents that community members share, developing knowledge in the domain.	Shared knowledge developed through data collection, analysis, synthesis; documentation of national and institutional contexts; participation in workshops and thematic discussions of experiences.	Shared knowledge and best practices for increased competence in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of GEPs and GE agenda for institutional change; workshops, thematic discussions, conferences, contributions to the Knowledge Sharing Hub online platform; the ‘know how’.

Table 3. The ACT’s seven communities of practice

CoP name	Domain	Number of member institutions
Alt+G	Alternative Infrastructure for Gender Equality in Slovenia	20
FORGEN	Funding Organizations for Gender	16
GEinCEE	Gender Equality in Central and Eastern Europe	15
GenBUDGET	Gender Budgeting in Research Organizations	10
GENERA	Gender Equality in Physics and Beyond	34
LifeSci	Gender Equality in Life Sciences	25
STRATEGIES	Strategies for Sustainable Gender Equality	12

Annex 1: Interview guideline for CoP members

Introduction

Thank you for being available for this interview in the context of the evaluation of CoPs in the ACT project. Joanneum Research is a partner in ACT and within the project responsible for an accompanying evaluation: The aim of the evaluation is to identify the added value of membership in a CoP and to figure out what works well and what needs to be improved to increase the effectiveness of CoPs for their members. The following topics will be addressed: -CoP activities so far -effects/benefits und limitations of the CoP -further needs from your point of view. Please answer all questions as openly as possible, we guarantee to treat them confidentially. To facilitate the analysis of this interview, we would like to audio tape it. The interviews will be used for analysis only in an anonymized way and stored in a password-protected folder and deleted after the end of the project. Am I allowed to audio tape the interview?

Personal background of CoP members

First of all, could you please give us a small description of your person?

What is your responsibility in your organization?

What was your major motivation to join the CoP? What do you expect from the CoP?

Was your organization interested in becoming a member of the CoP or did you need to convince the management?

How have you been involved in the CoP?

CoP Activities (immediate value)

Could you please briefly describe the main features and characteristics of your CoP?

What are the main goals from your point of view? How did the goals come about?

Set-up of the CoP: How does the CoP work? How are tasks allocated? How are decisions made? Are there any internal regulations?

Please describe briefly the activities in your CoP.

In which activities did you participate?

Which topics were the most prevalent in your CoP? And for you?

Which challenges regarding structural change to foster GE where discussed so far? Where there solutions proposed in the CoP?

How would you assess the communication culture in the CoP?

Do you communicate with other CoP members or with the CoP facilitator outside the meetings? With whom did you interact or make connections? For what purpose?

How would you describe the culture of the CoP? How would you describe the integration of new members?

How does it work to have members from universities, networks, associations and research institutions? How does the cooperation work? Do they have different needs, topics … ?

How would you describe the cooperation with the other organizations in the CoP?

How would you describe the involvement with/of the other organizations?

Would you say that the CoP helped to establish a sense of community?

Where have you seen some collective action or practices?

Are there groups inside the CoP or is everyone more or less equally connected?

Did you have also one-to-one meetings with the CoP facilitators? About what? Which aim?

How would you assess the competence of the facilitator? -to moderate and manage the CoP -to support regarding GEP implementation

What was your experience with the provided tools (on the website but also GenPORT+, GEAM tool, …)? Which ones have you been using and how did you like them?

You have not mentioned XY, how come?

After some time you received a GEP audit tool by your facilitator. How helpful would you rate this report?

In which contexts did it prove helpful?

Where would you have needed further personal assistance?

Do you receive a newsletter from the CoP? Is it a useful feature of a CoP?

Effects/Benefits & Limitations/Further needs

Where do you notice that the CoP has brought some change?

How did you personally benefit from participating in the CoP?

How has your participation changed you?

Have you acquired new skills or knowledge? Do you feel more inspired by the work you do? Have you gained confidence in your ability to engage in practice?

How has your participation changed your social relationships?

What access to new people have you gained? Do you know them well enough to know what they can contribute to your learning? Do you trust them enough to turn to them for help? Do you feel less isolated?

What access to resources has your participation given you?

Do you have new tools, methods, or processes? Do you have access to documents or sources of information you would not have otherwise?

What position has the community acquired?

Has the community changed the recognition of your expertise? Have you acquired a new voice through our collective learning?

How do you communicate the contents and learnings from the CoP into your organization? How does this knowledge transfer work?

How did your organization benefit from participating in the CoP?

What difference has it made to your work practice?

Where have you used a product/tool of the CoP? Where did you apply a skill you acquired? When did you leverage a community/network connection in the accomplishment of a task?

What difference has it made to your ability to achieve what matters to you or other stakeholders?

Did you save time or achieve something new? Are you now more successful in implementing gender equality activities? How?

Has it changed your or other stakeholders’ understanding and definition of gender equality in your organization?

Has the process of social learning led to a reflection on gender equality in your organization? How has this new understanding affected those who have the power to define criteria of success? Have any structural changes already been made?

How could you benefit from the interaction/interchange with other organizations? How could you benefit from the facilitator?

Would you say it was a collective learning experience or rather a learning from the experiences of the facilitator?

With which problems/issues/topics could the CoP help you i.e. your organization the most?

Were there relevant topics of yours that could not be addressed in the CoP? Why not?

How was it possible to achieve benefit?

What were the relevant success factors?

What should be improved regarding the implementation to increase the benefit?

How would you assess the cost-benefit ratio for your organization to participate in the CoP?

How much effort does it cost you to participate in the CoP?

What is required beyond the CoP to successfully implement gender equality activities?

What problems could the CoP not help with? What else would you need? From whom?

What was the most rewarding part of the CoP? What is the added value? What would you tell other organizations that are thinking about joining a CoP?

Do you think the CoP will continue its interchange after the ending of the project?

Why? Who will invest time in prolonging it? Why not?

What would be needed to support a further cooperation?

Could you imagine that your University pays a fee to be member of the CoP? Which amount would be conceivable?

How does the COVID-19 development influence your involvement in the CoP?

Annex 2: Interview guideline for facilitators

Personal background of the facilitator

First of all, could you please give me a small description of your person?

What is your responsibility in your organization?

Were you hired for the job as a CoP facilitator or were you previously employed in this organization? At which hierarchy level? With what kind of contract (short term/unlimited)?

Could you give us a brief description of your previous experience with gender equality/organizational change?

CoP Activities

Could you please briefly describe the main features and characteristics of your CoP?

Main goals - How did the goals come about?

Set-up of the CoP: How does the CoP work? How are tasks allocated? How are decisions made? Are there any internal regulations?

Which structural change issues have been addressed in the CoP so far? Which of these have been addressed by members? Which challenges do members face when dealing with structural change – what are their needs?

Which solutions for these challenges were proposed by the CoP?

How would you describe the development of your CoP?

In the CoP Monitoring you indicated that your CoP was in the CoP lifecycle-phase ‘ … .’ In October 2019. Where is it now? Are you satisfied with this development?

In the CoP Monitoring you indicated that your CoP focused in October 2019 mostly on ‘Main Area of Activity’, did the priorities change? Why? Why not?

How would you describe the cooperation between the CoP members?

How would you describe the involvement of the individual organizations?

Would you say that the CoP established a sense of community?

How would you assess the cooperation between newcomers and people that already knew each other from previous cooperation?

How does the cooperation work between people with gender experience and gender newcomers, if there are any?

Were there any conflicts or disagreements, and if yes, how have you dealt with them?

How would you assess the communication culture in the CoP?

Do CoP members interact and collaborate beside the CoP activities? And does this feed back into the CoP again?

Is the workspace on the CoP website frequently used by the members or do you communicate on other channels? Why?

Which methods did you use so far to support collaboration?

How did these tools influence the communication culture and cooperation?

How would you rate the helpfulness of these tools to support interaction between the CoP members? What else would you need?

What was your experience with the technical tools (GenPORT+, the survey tools, …) to foster structural change?

You have not introduced the CoP to tool XY so far, how come?

Effects/Benefits & Limitations/Further needs

How and what do members of your CoP learn through the CoP (and its members)?

Where are CoPs helpful – for which problems? How do members benefit from participating in the CoP?

Where are limits of a CoP approach to foster institutional change

What else is needed to enable CoP members to successfully foster structural change regarding GE?

Where do you notice that the CoP has brought some change? -in the organizations of the CoP members – do members report about effects of CoP activities visible in their organization? What are these? -on the individual level of participants -in the community (e.g. visibility of the GE topic)

What are your learnings as a facilitator about implementing CoPs?

What works well to support collaboration, what does not? What should be improved regarding the implementation to increase the benefit for the CoP members?

Which issues and obstacles have arisen in (further) developing CoPs and which strategies did you develop to encounter them?

What is needed and helpful to develop a CoP? Are the available resources sufficient?

What kind of support do you get in your work as CoP facilitator? And how important is this support? -From your organization -From other CoP facilitators -From the ACT consortium

What kind of further support would you need? From whom?

How would you assess the preparation for supporting a CoP? Were you prepared sufficiently or what would you have liked to know beforehand?

What has been done so far to ensure that the CoP will continue to exist after the end of the project period?

What would be needed to support a further cooperation?

In your opinion: does the CoP have the expected effects so far?

How does the COVID-19 development influence the cooperation and activities within the CoP?

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