4th Gender Summit - H2020 - Brussels

"The 4th Gender Summit is focused on Horizon 2020. There's a lot of money at stake in Horizon 2020 and the new rules ensure that women are at the centre of the decisions on how it should be spent and at the heart of the research and innovation that is funded. Horizon 2020 provides a clear incentive to applicants to ensure a better gender balance in their research teams. If two proposals receive exactly the same scores on all other evaluation criteria, the gender balance will be one of the factors in deciding which proposal is ranked higher. Horizon 2020 also promotes the gender dimension in research and innovation content to ensure that it takes into account the needs, behaviours and attitudes of both women and men. This is the way to excellence, jobs and growth. In Horizon 2020, the gender dimension is explicitly integrated from the outset in many of the specific programmes – in more than 100 topics so far out of 610 in total, spread across 13 different programmes. This gives us a promising idea of the number of projects that will develop a gender dimension and of the new knowledge that they will produce. I hope that those attending the Gender Summit and the science community will respond to these opportunities to create better research and more sustainable technological innovations." - Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Commissioner with responsibility for research, innovation and science, European Commission