Ranking Universities by ranking gender equality scores: is this a real perspective?

Being in a ranking season of Universi�es, ranking of European Universi�es, ranking of USA universi�es facing the Asian challenge in science and technology, it becomes central to consider new indicators with respect to those commonly used such as Cita�ons Index, Impact Factor, H-Index, ect. The approach of quan�ta�ve evalua�on can be largely cri�cized but, if this is the trend, we have to start to include in the ranking process new indicators, such as indicators of gender equality. This opens and defines a new paradigm for gender studies and projects for developing instruments and tools able to monitor and measure gender equality in research ins�tu�ons. In the framework of FP7-EU GenderTime Project (2013-2016), of which the University of Padua is partner (www.gender�me.org), the main work of our team, together the team of Université Paris Creteil, is concentrated on the study and on the defini�on of a new specific set of gender indicators to be used in Research and Academic Ins�tu�ons (Godfroy – Badaloni, 2015). The idea is to have an instrument for measuring the degree of implementa�on of gender policies in Academia at different temporal points. To this aim we studied the state of the art of indicators and we found that the most robust measurement tool is, in our opinion, the EIGE Gender Equality Index GEI (EIGE Report, 2013; EIGE Report, 2015). The main problem with this synthe�c indicator is that it has been conceived to measure the gender equality for different countries in Europe and it is not tailored for Academic Ins�tu�ons. Moreover it is an absolute index where 1 stands for absolute gender inequality and 100 for full gender equality, it doesn’t represent explicitely the direc�on of the indicators, that is, if the gender gaps measured through the collec�on of data are towards women or towards men. In our work we intend to take into account the direc�on of all simple indicators. So, we started with the EIGE gender indicator and we considered the structure of the conceptual framework of the Gender Equality Index consis�ng of six domains work, money, knowledge, �me, power, health. Taking into account the study proposed in the framework of the GenisLab Project (Genova et al, 2015) we add the new domain space. The combina�on of the two approaches has led us to implement a tool specifically tailored for academia, composed of seven domains where domains are organized in sub-domains. Let’s see as an example in the domain Work. The Sub-domain: Par�cipa�on can be represented as the Variable: Types of contracts. To represent explicitely the direc�on of the indicator, the assumed conceptual hypothesis underlying is the following one: Direc�on of the indicator: Having a permanent contract is preferable than having a non-permanent contract. As for the domain Knowledge, we have taken into account that a study (Budden et al, 2008) proved that double-blind review favours increased representa�on of female authors. So in the ques�onaire that we developed on the basis of this model, we included a ques�on on this subject, that is, if the review process for the paper accepted was blind, doubleblind or something else. Data collec�on has been made at University of Padova through a specific survey addressing Academic permanent and non-permanent Staff (more than 3000 people) of all the research areas and departments. The survey run from sept. 2015 to October 2015 and we got a response rate of 31 %: respondent were 954. Women, that are the 38.4 % of the Academic staff (permanent and not), were the 47.2 % of the respondents. The research is s�ll in progress for compu�ng the UNIPD – GEI tool: from the data of all the variables to the simple indicators, from the simple indicators to the index. The conceptual model and some par�al results are published in a Report (Badaloni – Perini, 2016). A final note. Our team is characterized by a high inter-disciplinarity, combining people from Informa�on Engineering, Applied Psychology, Sta�s�cal Studies, Poli�cal and Social Studies. This broad combina�on of knowledge was necessary to develop a well founded and conceptually correct instrument such the UNIPD – GEI. But when different disciplines are involved this process becomes quite difficult: eg what an indicators is? It’s the results of a computa- �ons among specific variables or the empiric measure of a concept? The need to find a common language is central within a team like the ours. It’s also a big need in the community of the Structural Change Projects where the synergic exchange of knowledge and prac�cal experience can support the sustainability of achieved results.