Gender in Innovation
About
Women and those from other marginalised groups are underrepresented in entrepreneurship and innovation at all levels. For example, they face substantial barriers to staring up their business, running it and gaining investment; they have less authority and seniority in decision making boards, and find it difficult to disrupt the current status quo.
Less is known about how the lack of gender integration into product design, technologies and processes effects new markets, global challenges and national priorities.
In order to address this, ENoLL, in coordination with City Lab Coventry, is launching a Working Group (WG) on Gender in Innovation. This benefits from the Gendered Innovation Living Labs (GILL) project. Preliminary findings highlight the notable absence of in-depth analysis regarding the diversity among female entrepreneurs, a lag of AI and digital transition research related to gender; a lack of gender-responsive policies and plans in regulatory instruments and decision-making processes; and cultural barriers stemming from unconscious bias and stereotypes.
The new WG aims to increase gendered innovation in the EU by supporting the development of methods and processes that can lead to:
- an increased representation of women and those from traditionally excluded groups in enterprise and innovation;
- more gender responsive and sensitive outcomes;
- sharing of good practices.
The group is open to all those who want to see changes to the culture around innovation. We welcome new ways of thinking and ideas around intersectionality and gender responsive innovation from all disciplines.
As a member of the WG you can expect to freely exchange knowledge and views with international and interdisciplinary colleagues, set priorities, actions and challenges for the Working Group.
Please submit your interest by registering here, and complete the quick online survey. ENoLL team will get into contact to explore the suitability of the profiles, ensuring this way a diverse group with balanced representation from academia, industry, policy, and civil society.
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Related projects
GILL, coordinated by ENoLL, the largest network of Living Labs (LL), will develop a pan-European collaboration and learning hub based on the LL principles to become the open innovation framework for all European actors for open gendered innovation. The GILL “LL” will co-create sustainable mechanisms to increase gender-responsive smart innovation and entrepreneurship (GRISE) by fixing practices and culture across the European ecosystems.GILL will focus on 4 macro-objectives: a) to enable the organisational and cultural changes, b) to enhance professional development, c) to increase the integration of gender and diversity into product design, technologies and innovation, and d) to allow gendered educational practices. In parallel, GILL actions will act along a matrix of horizontal spheres of innovation (individual & team, tools & methods, innovation & products, societal processes) and three vertical priorities(Health and resilience, Green & Digital transition).GILL will be implemented through an iterative co-creation approach structured on a four-phase cycle – understand,co-design, implement, evaluate – repeated twice to incorporate the feedback and evaluation results in fine-tuned and validated results. 15 Action-Oriented Experimentations in 8 European countries will develop new approaches to GRSIE, test, evaluate the changes, and thereby validate GILL’s outputs in real-life open ecosystems. Through this cycle, GILL will deliver a systemic review of barriers to GRSIE leading to the co-design of proven methodologies, services, and tools for GRSIE to be made available on a sustainable and easy-to-use platform. In line with the LL methodology, co-creation and open innovation will be fostered among the main actors of the QuadrupleHelix model – citizens, government, industry, and academia – who will be engaged all along the project through different participatory activities.