GEPINC aims to address gender biases, especially targeting explicit and unconscious/implicit gender biases that affect individual behaviours, creating additional obstacles to equal opportunities for underrepresented gender groups. To this end, GEPINC developed an experimental awareness-raising Vignette, embedded in a survey, drawing on well-established behavioural psychology interventions, also widely applied in behavioural economics. According to various studies which conducted Vignette interventions, these interventions may produce immediate and significant impacts on participants’ attitudes towards the targeted group, which significantly reduce biases towards those groups.[1],[2],[3] In particular, the size of the estimated impact is a reduction in gender biases of about 14%36 when the intervention involved the military, which is typically a highly male-dominated sector and a selected group of people who were highly likely to exhibit gender biases. The GEPINC Vignette module was designed to increase awareness of LGBTIQ inclusion and gender intersectionality in the partners’ RIOs, focusing on the lack of gender inclusivity. The GEPINC Vignette is expected to bring about sustainable behavioural changes, raising awareness, and reducing/eliminating gender biases and discrimination against LGBTIQ and intersectional gender groups; promoting their integration into R&I.

[1] Finseraas, Henning, Åshild A. Johnsen, Andreas Kotsadam, Gaute Torsvik (2016). “Exposure to female colleagues breaks the glass ceiling—Evidence from a combined vignette and field experiment”, European Economic Review, Vol. 90, pp. 363-374.

[2] Felix Elwert, Tamás Keller, Andreas Kotsadam (2023). “Rearranging the Desk Chairs: A Large Randomized Field Experiment on the Effects of Close Contact on Interethnic Relations,”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 128(6), pp. 1809-1840.

[3] Dahl, Gordon, Andreas Kotsadam,  and Dan-Olof Rooth (2021). “Does Integration Change Gender Attitudes? The Effect of Randomly Assigning Women to Traditionally Male Teams, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 136 (2), pp. 987-1030.In particular, as proposed in the grant agreement, GEPINC designed, validated, and implemented a Vignette experimental module to increase awareness of gender inclusion and diversity in the partners’ RIOs, and especially in the less advanced partners’ RIOs