Gender Equality Plan
4
Work-life balance and organisational culture
Objective
To improve the work-life balance policy to ensure not only an equal fruition by women and men, but also that this conciliation does not penalize women careers.
Improving work-life balance
Measure 4.1
Work-life balance is not simply essential to people’s health and well-being, it is also cost-effective and improves stability for both the work environment and the institution. Ineffective work-life balance policies may interfere with smooth career progression, a situation that primarily affects women. The recognition of the problems related to gender inequalities in the conciliation of work and personal life are key to act accordingly.
The ICM will ensure availability of structured mechanisms for work-life balance, favouring the maximum possibilities of conciliation for all staff. Work-life balance measures cannot be conceived under the premise that they are only tailor-made for women. It is necessary to overcome the “women-conciliation” binomial and promote joint responsibility among women and men. However, this measure also considers the specific conciliation needs for ICM women. This implies developing supportive actions for women working in science, who need to reconcile their maternity responsibilities with their work responsibilities in order to achieve recognition and progression in their careers.
Main actions:
- To create a lactation room in the centre.
- To conduct further analysis of the impact of conciliation on the career of ICM women researchers.
- To implement measures that help improve the management of research grants in cases of maternity leaves, with the objective that these leaves do not affect the full enjoyment of the grants and the progression of women’s careers.
- To improve ICM databases for an accurate capture of the use of work-life balance measures (according to the type and circumstances) disaggregated by sex (this action will be developed in conjunction with action 2.3 Gender monitoring).
- To develop activities aimed at understanding that care activities should be a shared responsibility among all genders.
