NOVA hosted last week (July 5th and 6th), at the Rectorate, the 6th SPEAR meeting – Supporting and Implementing Plans for Gender Equality in Academia and Research - and Isabel Nunes, Vice-Rector for Strategic Planning and Quality Management and Principal Investigator of SPEAR at NOVA makes very positive hindsight of the event: “Being part of this consortium has been valuable for NOVA. The tools being developed within the project will allow NOVA to be a change agent that is capable of establishing the necessary networks to tackle structural challenges and design proximity policies, based upon the principles of equality, inclusion, and diversity".
Since 2019, NOVA has been a part of this consortium of 11 European institutions whose goal is to develop methodologies for implementation and monitoring of Gender Equality Plans in Academia and Research and has been working on gender equality that ultimately resulted in NOVA's Gender Equality Plan unanimous approval, in October 2021.
"At the end of the project, in early 2023, all partners are expected to be national advocates of the European values that foster equality, inclusion and diversity in their institutions" anticipate Isabel Nunes, while recalling that NOVA presents itself as an accelerator for the communication of good-practices focused on career progression, Work-Life balance, gender-balanced juries and decision-making bodies and strengthening of the gender dimension in research.
It should also be recalled that the number of 'Female Authors' is currently a distinguishing factor for NOVA in all rankings in which it has been evaluated - and the recent U-Multirank results were already evidence of that.