The nature of Women TechEU, in that it solely targets women, inherently neutralises the need to undertake measures to avoid and undo the systematic and structural discrimination against women along their career paths in innovation, as would typically be required in projects involving open calls for both sexes. Measures recommended by leading equality bodies such as EIGE to ensure a gendered approach would be for example: unconscious bias training for recruiters; gender-proofing the language; images and tone used in advertisements and call texts; and ensuring gender-balanced selection boards. Understandably, these are rendered moot by the closed, women-only nature of the calls to be issued.

Rather, the approach that needs to be taken in this project to ensure full and effective gender mainstreaming is that of ensuring intersectional gender equality. Gender inequality is often compounded by other forms of disadvantage or discrimination that a person may experience based on age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation and other attributes. Therefore, Women TechEU must ensure that it operates in a manner that does not perpetuate intersectional discrimination, by favouring one group of women over others due to implicit and/or structural bias. Therefore, Women TechEU will ensure that an Intersectional Gender Equality framework is in place that allows for the accessibility of all women – the central tenet of the project. This involves, but is not limited to: (1) requiring standardised CVs and undertaking blind assessment of CVs to remove ethnic or racial bias, (2) in communication, spotlighting success stories that reflect the lived realities of different women, (3) similarly ensuring an intersectional balance in message tone, text, and visuals used, i.e., taking care to not overly- represent one group of women to the detriment of others. (4) Engaging with local, regional, national and European stakeholder groups that represent disadvantaged women, such as migrant women, disabled women, and LGBTQI+ groups, who would be better able to push forward the calls of Women TechEU within their respective target groups. This is part of the active scouting element of the methodology. (5) Allowing for the possibility of time frame extensions of support services provided for reasons of care work and (6) Ensuring sensitivity to geographical and linguistic differences in communication and promotion activities.

These measures will be integrated as relevant into the strategy of the Administrative, legal and financial office, the Data Management Plan, the Dissemination and Communication Plan, the Exploitation and Sustainability Plan.

Additionally, it should be noted that all entities involved in the project have an internal GEP, showcasing our joint commitment to representing the EU values of gender equality and diversity. As a result, certain horizontal approaches mitigating gender inequalities are integrated within our work and will be retained in the project, such as: (i) publication of data and statistics as a result of the project to support the progression of gender research; (ii) established codes of conduct for recruitment if required by the project); and (iii) ensuring appropriate work-life balance for all staff working on the project.