Gender Equality Plan

of prof. Wacław Dąbrowski

Institute of Agricultural and Food Biotechnology – State Research Institute

2022-2025

Goal

The goal is to make the Institute’s organization and activities more gender-equal. The method for achieving this goal is gender mainstreaming. The target groups are all people working, studying or otherwise engaged at Institute of Agricultural and Food Biotechnology. All the personnel of the Institute of Agricultural and Food Biotechnology must be aware of the Gender Equality Plan for 2022–2025 so that staff can participate actively in its implementation.

Responsibility

The Scientific Council and the Director have ultimate responsibility for systematic action to promote and ensure gender mainstreaming in the Institute of Agricultural and Food Biotechnology. Operational responsibility rests with the heads of departments and all other leadership and management personnel of the Institute. These individuals must ensure that the plan is disseminated to all relevant parts of the organization.

General description

The Institute is under supervision of National Labour Inspectorate and its recommendations oblige to counteract any manifestations of discrimination. Additionally, the Institute implements Council Resolution of 10 November 2003 (2003/C 282/01 on the profession and the career of researchers within the European Research Area).

Diversity at all the levels gives organisations a clear competitive advantage because it brings about structural improvements to performance in important characteristics such as growth and innovation. There is clear added value to having mixed-gender teams representing a wide range of competencies. These teams are more productive, the management style focuses more on cooperation, team members listen to each other better and efforts are made to find win-win solutions.

Institute of Agricultural and Food Biotechnology for the first time analyses its gender imbalance and equal possibilities. This issue has become more and more urgent since it has become clear what benefits can mixed teams bring to the organization. The purpose of this action plan is to analyze and control the gender balance and equal possibilities in the Institute. The foundation of the plan is the quality of all employees at all levels of our organisation. More diversity results in better use of talent and that helps our efforts to achieve excellence. Scientific research has demonstrated that companies with a diversity of employees at the top levels perform better.

Equality-promoting actions

Within the existing framework and working methods, the Institute of Agricultural and Food Biotechnology will implement the following measures:

– Men and women have equal opportunities for the tenure.
– All the committees in the Institute should include at least one woman and one man.
– All the research departments in the Institute should include at least one woman and one man (departments with less than five employees are excluded).
– Management discussions pay attention to the position of women and men in organization.
– Raising awareness of training on gender equality and unconscious gender biases for staff and decision-makers
– The annual report containing a survey of male and female positions in various groups of employees will be prepared and analyzed.
– In case of need, the corrective measures will be financially supported by the Director from the Institute’s budget.

GEP Management

The following employees are responsible for management and updating of the document. Moreover, all advices, suggestions and reports of activities or issues related to GEP should be addressed to one of them.
– Mrs. Edyta Bobrowska (edyta.bobrowska@ibprs.pl)
– Dr Łukasz Woźniak (lukasz.wozniak@ibprs.pl)

The annual employment survey – 2022

Table 1. Male and female positions in various groups of employee (as of 1st March 2022)

Analysis:

The Institute employs 229 people of which approximately three quarters are women. The employees were divided into four groups considering their status: management (heads of the Institute and departments), researchers (full professors, PhDs, and PhD students), laboratory staff (other employees who are primarily working in a laboratory), and others (financial department, HR, administration, janitors etc.). The share of female workers is comparable in all the groups and is in range from 68% to 80%. The structure of the employment can be considered as typical for a scientific organization focused on chemical and biological sciences as these are usually female-dominated.

Actions to take:

– No corrective measures are needed at this point.
– The next surveys should be taken annually along with review and update of GEP. The comparison results should be made to identify the tendencies.
– Cooperation activities and experience sharing with national and international partners.