SUPPORTER aims to support eight sports higher education institutions from Central and Eastern Europe in developing their own inclusive, innovative, intersectional, and impactful Gender Equality Plans (4I-GEPs).
Gender Equality Plan: is a set of commitments and actions that aim to promote gender equality in an organisation through a process of structural change” (EC, 2021), and constitutes a basic requirement for participation in the European Commission’s research framework programme.
The development of the 4IGEPs
The development of the 4I-GEPs followed a participatory and evidence-based process, aligned with the European Commission’s guidelines for institutional change, and tailored to the specific needs of each sport university/faculty and the sports sector. This process unfolded in three key phases:
Understanding the context: Each sports higher education institution carried out a gender equality audit, collecting data and analysing its current situation, policies, and challenges, especially those related to gender-based violence.
Designing tailored institutional roadmaps towards gender equality: Based on the audit results, institutions co-designed individual roadmaps in collaboration with expert partners. These roadmaps outlined clear and progressive grounding actions within a flexible strategic framework. The roadmaps served as practical tools to guide institutional transformation and lay the foundation for the 4I-GEPs
Co-developing the 4I-GEPs: With roadmaps in place, institutions engaged in mentoring sessions, mutual learning workshops, and capacity-building activities. These supported the final co-development of tailored 4I-GEPs that address the specific challenges and opportunities within each sport university or faculty.
This sections include the 4IGEPs, which have been officially endorsed by the institutions' rectors and published on each organisation's website, reinforcing commitment and transparency.
The 4I-GEPs below represent the outcome of three years of collaborative work and serve as a source of inspiration for other sports higher education institutions looking to design or implement their own inclusive Gender Equality Plans.