Gender equality policies in Spanish university

This project addresses the challenge of gender equality policy design, evaluation, and impact

in the university context, with the aim of promoting gender equality in Spanish university.

Gender equality policies have been for decades on the agenda of European democracies.

Spain has adopted laws that introduce gender equality in university and science since the

adoption of the Equality Law 3/2007, the University Law 4/2007 and the Science Law 14/2011,

apart from regional laws. Following these laws, Equality Units have been created in universities

with the aim of integrating a gender perspective in education and research institutions.

However, to date there have been few studies in gender and politics literature concerning the

design and the implementation of gender equality policy measures adopted in universities. The

general goal of this project is to analyse the design and implementation of gender equality

policies in universities in Spain. The project will study what policy measures Spanish

universities have adopted to comply with gender equality legal mandate and will identify the

factors that promote and hinder the implementation of gender equality policies in university.

These include the institutionalization of Equality Units, the role of actors, supports and alliances

within and outside university, and individual and institutional actors’ resistances against the

implementation of gender equality. The methodology includes the comparison of cases of

public and private universities in the Spanish context. The techniques to collect data include

content analysis of documents, mapping of actors, semi-structured interviews of key

informants, focus groups and surveys. The documents to analyse include: regional, national

and European legislation, Equality Units’ gender equality plans and protocols against sexual

harassment. The research team -whose members have worked together in former projectshas

a broad experience in the analysis of gender equality policy design, formulation and

evaluation, and includes experts in both quantitative and qualitative methods. It is moreover a

multidisciplinary team whose members come from political science, economics, sociology, and

law, whose perspectives and expertise are necessary to address policy design and

implementation of gender equality policies in university. The project fully conforms to existing

research strategies that have included gender studies at both national and international levels

and the integration of a gender perspective as a priority goal of high quality research and

innovation. However, the contribution of the project goes beyond the field of gender and politics

because it aims more generally at improving knowledge about the functioning of university

institutions and implementation of public policies.

KEY WORDS: Public policies, gender equality policies, policy design, policy implementation,

policy evaluation, Spain, equality in university, equal treatment in employment, gender

mainstreaming