Minister Halligan announces launch of €10.6m international call for gender research

Minister of State for Training, Skills, Innovation, Research and Development Mr John Halligan TD has today announced the launch in Ireland of GENDER-NET Plus, an international gender research fund supported by the European Commission and a range of countries, including Ireland.

The aim of GENDER-NET Plus is to promote the integration of sex and gender analysis into national and European research funding programmes. Ensuring that research takes proper account of sex and gender differences improves the quality of research and enhances its ‘real-world’ impact.

Announcing the call today, Minister Halligan said: “The GENDER-NET Plus project will be an excellent opportunity for gender experts in the Irish higher education and research system to coordinate or join consortia to formulate proposals that address a variety of pressing gender issues.

“Gender inequality persists in many areas of society and the economy, both nationally and internationally, and the GENDER-NET Plus transnational research call will seek to bring the best gender experts in Europe and beyond together to investigate the dynamics of this issue. We also need to ensure that researchers develop the skills and knowledge to conduct research in a way that takes account of sex and gender differences.

“The Irish Research Council will be contributing up to €600,000 to support Irish gender researchers to participate in transnational research teams, and this will be ‘topped-up’ by European Commission funding.”

The transnational research call is now open, with a closing date for pre-proposals of 17:00 (Central European Time – CET) on Thursday, 1 March 2018. There is a total of €600,000 available to research coordinators and/or partners in Ireland. Up to €1 million is available per transnational project.

GENDER-NET Plus will invite researchers to develop proposals that address and explore the following topics:

• Gender-based violence
• Sex, gender and ageing
• Sex, gender and health
• Gender and new technologies
• Gender in entrepreneurship and in the innovation system
• Gender dimension in climate behaviour and decision making

Peter Brown, Director of the Irish Research Council, said: “The Irish Research Council is one of 16 committed partner organisations involved in the GENDER-NET Plus project. The project is the result of a competition run by the European Commission under Horizon 2020. The success of the proposal, which will now attract Commission co-funding, reflects the importance of what we are trying to achieve and the potential contribution the project can make to research in Ireland and internationally.

“The Irish Research Council has played a leading role nationally and internationally in developing policies that ‘gender-proof’ research. The Council was the first research funding agency in Ireland to require all applicants to its funding programmes to explain how sex/gender differences are treated in the proposed research. We also have very good gender balance in our research awards by national and international standards.

“With the launch of this new call, we now encourage gender researchers in Ireland to network and forge links with international partners with a view to submitting a proposal to the call. We would particularly like to see Irish researchers leading an international consortium application.”

Further information on the call is available on the GENDER-NET Plus website.