Horizon 2010: Gender in Research and Development

Horizon 2020 is the 8^th Framework Programme used in Europe to advance EU wide research and innovation.  For the first time in the history of these efforts gender has been identified as a cross cutting issue and both gender equality in research teams and gender dimension in research content have been set as criteria of success.  These milestone actions have been introduced not because gender equality has formed part of the EU policy since 1957 but because the European Commission has recognized the importance of the research evidence showing that addressing gender issues in science will improve quality of research and innovation and open up new opportunities for creating markets for science knowledge.  National level actions have now also started, and opportunities to change science’s gender-neutral paradigm into one that sees gender as an important research excellence variable are increasing.  My talk will explain where Europe is now on this journey.