Co-responsability campaign addressed to researchers and professors of Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Argentina

ERICA HYNES; SACHA LIONE; SOLEDAD MENDOZA; LETICIA CHIRINOS; ROMINA KIPPES

París

Conferencia; 9th European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education and Research; 2016

Time use surveys worldwide show that women take responsibility for most of the domestic work in households, and that the main event in the shift of domestic load from men to women is the start of a living together, with even a higher impact than motherhood. In addition, couples composed of female and male researchers or professors are frequent in the academia and the research community; no evidence of a more equalitarian distribution of domestic work in these sectors is available. In Universidad Nacional del Litoral, as part of a development plan for gender focused policy making in Science & Technology, we launched a campaign addressed to scientists and professors, aimed at increasing co-responsibility in the domestic field in the search for more equality in the workplace. The moto of the campaign is ?More equality, better science? (#más igualdad #mejor ciencia) and its main products are graphical design for social media, audio spots for the institutional radio, and a series of cards and objects for laboratories and offices. Intervened objects are given away as presents during campaign launching or especial events, then commercialized at the gifts shops of the University. So far, lab coats, tip boxes, glove boxes, backpacks, blackboards, water bottles and notebooks have been designed and distributed. The objective of the gifts and is to start the debate in the workplace, especially aiming at experimental sciences, which are much less familiarized with the problem that social sciences and humanities. Together with the distribution of these objects, conferences and debates have started in the annual meeting of the Unión Matemática Argentina, in 2015, that was held in Santa Fe where Universidad Nacional del Litoral has its main site. The opportunity was spotted by researchers of the mathematical association who are also professors of Universidad Nacional del Litoral, and researchers of CONICET (the Nacional Council of Science and Technology), starting a network for the dissemination of the campaign. We also intervened in occasion of the local event of ?Three Minutes Thesis?, an international contest for PhD students. New conferences are planned for the forthcoming months, as well as the launching of a web page - specific for the campaign - in the institutional site. As a result of the campaign, we expect our scientific community to develop a more sophisticated approach to the problem, based on a deeper knowledge of the evidence on the subject, and a reduction of the impact of stereotypes and sens commun in their opinions.