“English for women”: When equality measures widen the gap

Based on the experience of working in an internationally funded group on the HFSP of physics, we want to raise three issues regarding the way equality measures can fail to address inequalities, and provide possible solutions to the identified problems.

• Inclusion, communication, and awareness-raising workshops and trainings are usually optional and organized on the level of the universities, rather than on the level of cross-university research groups, while it is precisely these groups that lend themselves to such trainings, given that they are often characterized by gender and power imbalances, as well as underrepresentation of marginalized communities that need to be systematically and proactively addressed from the project planning stage on, and not exclusively by university-level measures.
• When dealing with equal opportunity funds on the research group level, it is important to leave the decision-making about the usage of these funds to underrepresented group members, and to make the chosen usage in principle open to all.
• It is important to avoid the “first-come-first-served” principle, for example, when allocating open-access funding, since this principle is likely to disadvantage the most vulnerable members, such as early career scholars and members of traditionally underrepresented groups.