VRG26 / Gender aspects

WWTF’s Gender Strategy and Gender Equality Plan must be considered throughout the application (for applicants, pages 19 and 20 of the document are especially relevant). Please note, that WWTF requests jury members and reviewers to take into account both gender in research team composition, as well as gender in research content during evaluation processes.
The following questions should be considered:

Equal opportunities in research

• Please take into consideration gender balance/equality in the project consortium at all levels, including in decision-making positions, e.g., what steps have been taken to approach / achieve it?
• Do working conditions allow all members of staff to combine work and family life in a satisfactory manner?
• Are there mechanisms in place to manage and monitor gender equality aspects, e.g., workforce statistics?

Gender in research content and in the research ideas phase

• If the research involves humans as research objects, has the relevance of gender to the research topic been analysed?
• If the research does not directly involve humans, have potentially differentiated relations of men and women to the research subject (e.g., relevance, impact of findings) been sufficiently considered?
• Have literature and other sources relating to gender differences in the research field been consulted?

Proposal phase

• Does the methodology ensure that (possible) gender differences will be investigated: that sex/ gender differentiated data will be collected and analysed throughout the research cycle and will be part of the final publication?
• Does the proposal explicitly and comprehensively explain how gender issues will be handled?
• If there are no identifiable gender aspects after a detailed review by the applicants, this must be justified, e.g., by providing reasons to demonstrate that no sex, gender, and other relevant differences have been found.

Research phase

• If there are further aspects of the project in which sex/gender could be a factor (e.g., samples, testing groups), are these gender-balanced?
• Are questionnaires, surveys, focus groups, etc. designed to unravel potentially relevant sex and/or gender differences in your data?
• Is data analysed according to the sex variable? Are other relevant variables analysed with respect to sex?