The Faculty of Computer Science, in partnership with the UAIC-STAGES project and the UAIC Centre for Gender Equality in Science, organized the workshop “Following Anita Borg”, that aimed at bringing together Women in Information Technology of Iasi (WITchIS) to celebrate the memory of Anita Borg and her dedication to advancement of women in technological education and career. The workshop was opened by Prof. Dr. Henry Luchian, Vice-Rector of the UAIC, who congratulated the organizers for their initiative and reminded that at the origin of the IT domain there is a lady-scientist, Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron. The two organizers from the Faculty of Computer Science, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lenuța Alboaie and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Corina Forăscu, are members of the UAIC Network of Women in Academia and Research and have been awarded in 2014 for their scientific and academic activities. The programme of the workshop included a presentation of the funding opportunities for women in Information Technology. Within this frame, Prof. Dr. Doina Balahur gave a talk on the UAIC-STAGES project by emphasising its contribution to raising awareness on the need to bring more women in STEAM domains. She also presented the model of 4 I’s (I know, I can, I want, I do) developed to support female and male’s self-efficacy and confidence in their capabilities to take a career in science and technology. The second part of the workshop, “Meet the ladies in IT”, was dedicated to the launch of the initiative of setting up the Association of Women in IT from Iasi. The event brought together more than 70 participants from the UAIC academic and research staff, members of the Department of Sciences, Department of Interdisciplinary Research in Social Sciences and Humanities, representatives of the industrial and business environment, IT teachers and scholars from High Schools in Iasi.

Professor Maria Magdalena Zamfirache, from the Faculty of Biology, has been appointed as a member in the National Council of Scientific Research (CNCS). From the UAIC, Professor Tudorel Toader, Dean of the Faculty of Law, was also appointed in the same important scientific council that play a major role in research agenda setting and national research funding. Professor Maria-Magdalena Zamfirache is known for her outstanding achievements in research and was awarded in 2014 with our “UAIC Women Awards for Excellence in Science”. The documentary film “UAIC Profiles of Women in Science” (Life sciences) presents some aspects of her academic and scientific career. She is also a founder member of our UAIC Network of Women in Academia and Research and is actively contributing at our programme for gender equality in science promoted by the STAGES project at the UAIC. We congratulate our distinguished colleague and wish her good luck in this new responsibility.

The 4th annual thematic workshop of the UAIC Network of Women in Academia and Research, entitled ”Moving towards Sustainability”, has been organized at the Centre for Gender Equality in Science. The main topic selected for this year was dedicated to the strategies for sustainability and future development of the practices on promoting gender equality in science developed by the UAIC-STAGES project. After a presentation given by Prof. Dr. Doina Balahur, the participants advanced preliminary proposals for a gender equality plan and expressed engagements to contribute to its implementation. The meeting has been attended by 17 senior and young researchers, members of the Network, from the Faculties of Biology (Assoc. Prof. Dr. Luminița Bejenaru, Dr. Mihaela Danu), Chemistry (Dr. Brândușa Alina Petre, Dr. Laura Ion), Computer Science (Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lenuța Alboaie), Economics and Business Administration (Prof. Dr. Adriana Prodan), Geography (Assoc. Prof. Dr. Iuliana Breabăn), Letters (Prof. Dr. Odette Blumenfeld), Physics (Dr. Lavinia Curecheru, Dr. Mirela Aitimioaei) and Sociology (Prof. Dr. Doina Balahur, Prof. Dr. Maria Cojocaru, Drd. Petronela Munteanu. Drd. George Ichim, Drd. Florentina Cătărău. Drd. Rareș Miron) and also from the Department of Projects Management (Elena Radu Felice). The debates have underlined the need to continue the activities of international exchange of experiences and good practices with similar Centres and networks in European Universities and Research Institutions.

The second mid-term Report on the UAIC-STAGES activity (concerning the period 1.07.2013-31.12.2014) highlighted that the project team has followed the enriched self-tailored Action Plan with a special focus on the sustainability of the new structures and strategies developed according to our own model of organizational change, entitled Fixing transformative and formative praxis, which already generated real structural changes for promoting gender equality in science at the University level. On this 18 months period a number of more than 45 actions and activities have been successfully carried out and publicly communicated on the UAIC-STAGES project website in almost 90 news concerning our activities. We can mention the setting up of new institutionalised structures (as the UAIC Centre for Gender Equality in Science, the UAIC Network of Women in Academia and Research, the UAIC Research Group on Gender Studies, the UAIC Multimedia Communication Team) as well as initiatives of new organizational practices for increasing the women researchers’ visibility (like the public events “Women Researchers Day”, “UAIC’s Excellence Awards for Women in Science”, Documentary exhibition “UAIC – A Place for Women in Science”, documentary films series “UAIC Profiles of Women in Science”), training programmes, workshops, and info-days for improving women’s participation in research, introduction of GES in PhD studies, courses and debates on Gendered Science, monitoring and reporting the gender dynamics on a regular base etc. Also, within this reporting period 7 Deliverables about 12 Actions, with more than 500 pages, have been produced in the due time and uploaded on the EC portal. The WP4 team has also contributed to the common activities, like the first STAGES report (July 2013), the STAGES Mid-term Workshop (March 2014), Sustainability report (2013), 3 STAGES Newsletters (4, 5 and 6/2013-2014), 2 Evaluation reports (2013, 2014), Cross-cutting research with the other partners (2013, 2014), 2 SC meetings and mutual learning sessions and 1 IBSA meeting (from 2013). Dissemination strategy was followed both at the national level (for example, the UAIC-STAGES project was presented in the National Report for the Conference about FP7 and Horizon 2020 held in Bucharest (2013) with the participation of the EC Commissioner; in contacts with the National agencies and the Ministry of National Education representatives as well as through several TV interviews, TV reports and talk-shows, articles and presentations in mass-media) and at the international level (i.e.. communications at different European conferences and workshops - Vilnius, 2013; Brussels 2014; Paris 2014; Vienna 2014). (For more info, see the entire report on our website).

On the 26th of January, Prof. Dr. Doina Balahur, the UAIC-STAGES coordinator, and Drd. Petronela Munteanu, member of the team, have participated at the Steering Committee of the STAGES project that has been organized in Rome, at the Hotel Ariston, from 9:00 to 18:00. The meeting agenda focused on the priorities of the project like the second progress report and also on other reports that have to be produced in 2015 (evaluation reports, sustainability plans, research report etc.). An important issue debated referred to the final product named “Guidelines”, that have to be produced by the STAGES project partners based on the activities and real transformations generated by each self-tailored Action Plan implemented in the 5 Universities and Research Institute which constituted the consortium of this European project.

At the 3rd meeting of the International Board of Scientific Advisors for STAGES project, that took place in Rome on 27 January 2015 (from 9:00 to 16:30), the progress of the Action Plans and the strategies of sustainability after the end of the project have been presented by the STAGES partners. Prof. Dr. Doina Balahur. team leader of WP4, made a presentation of the UAIC-STAGES project progress and activities underlining that the process of developing the UAIC’s self-tailored AP and the permanent reflective activity that accompanied its implementation have been synthetized in a new model of structural changes to achieve gender equality in science called Fixing the transformative and formative praxis (FTFP-model). According to the new strategic model (FTFP), the actions could be differentiated, by objectives priority and concerned areas, in the following categories: 1) Actions for setting up new organizational structures able to sustain the introduction of gender equality in science on the institutional agenda; 2) Actions for enhancing organizational awareness on GES and increasing the visibility of women academics and researchers; 3) Actions programmes for improving women’s participation in academia and research; 4) Action Research for fostering gender balance in research and gendered content of science; 5) Actions for international networking with academic and scientific community of gender experts; 6) Actions for sustainability/developing of UAIC’s GES programme. At the IBSA meeting the final guidelines of the STAGES project have been presented by Doina Balahur (UAIC) and Inge Bleijenbergh (Radbound University). The members of IBSA made suggestions especially aiming at better capturing the diversity of experiences covered by each item.

A new article on the UAIC-STAGES actrivity has been published in the number 6/2014 of the Consortium’s Newsletter. The theme of this article is the Documentary Exhibition “UAIC- A Place for Women in Science” which has been organized at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi on the period 23 June-11 July 2014 and was visited by more than 1500 persons. The article was written by Prof. dr. Doina Balahur, UAIC-STAGES coordinator and is illustrated with photos from the varnishing day. More info at www.projectstages.it/images/NEWSLETTER_SMALL.pdf.

The Conference has been organized by the Policy Research Centre on Equality Policies (PRECEP), an interuniversity consortium of the University of Antwerp, Hasselt University, KU Leuven, Ghent University and the Vrije University Brussels. The 4 thematic sections of the conference have been focused on LAW (The Relationship between law and social policy), POLITICS (Re) shaping (in)equalities in and through policies and politics), WORK (Diversity and (in)equality in work and organizations) and LIFE COURSE (Equality, Policy and the life course). The conference included plenary sessions and 16 panels bringing together prestigious gender experts from the Universities and research institutes from Europe and not only (among them, Professor Sylvia Walby, from Lancaster University, Professor Jeff Hearn, from University of Huddersfield, Professor Dagmar Schiek, from Queen’s University of Belfast). Attending the conference, Professor Doina Balahur remarked novelties in communications from several panels, and especially Panel 15, entitled “Inequalities in the organization and the production of knowledge”, chaired by Professor Mieke Verloo (Radbound University Nijmegen) and Professor Liisa Husu (Orebro University), with very interesting contributions of young gender experts like Dr. Marieke van der Brink (Radbound University), Dr. Rosalind Cavaghan (University of Edinburg), Dr. Uta Klein (University of Kiel), Dr. Jasmina Crcic (University of Marburg), Dr. Katharina Kreissl, Dr. Angelika Striedinger, Dr. Johanna Hofbauer and Dr. Birgit Sauer (Universities of Vienna). More info at www.equalisnotenough.org.

In order to improve the statistics concerning Romania presented in various European Reports on Gender Equality in Science - like for example SHE Figures or Gender Equality Index reported by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) - , the National Institute of Statistics (NIS) collaborates with responsible representatives from the Ministry of National Education and from the National Agency for Research Funding as well as with Romanian specialists involved in European Projects on Gender in Science. Acknowledged as an expert in this scientific field, Prof. Dr. Doina Balahur, coordinator of the STAGES project at the UAIC, has been consulted on relevant topics included in the current questionnaire used to collect data for the next edition of the report SHE Figures 2015. A meeting devoted to this issue has been held at the UEFISCDI (Executive Unit for Financing Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation), with the participation of Ms. Magda Resiga, deputy director of UEFISCDI, Prof. Dr. Doina Balahur, and Ms. Nina Alexevici, Director at NIS, Ms. Rodica Dumitriu, Ms. Maria Predonu and Ms. Camelia Cosca, members of the team responsible for processing statistical data on gender in science from NIS.