Excerpt of the Gender Survey

EuroWeb Gender and Inclusiveness Survey

As part of its Inclusiveness and Excellency Policy, COST takes a very pro-active approach in promoting diversity and gender balance within COST Actions, emphasising the need to take the appropriate steps within the latter to ensure equal opportunities and gender-friendly paths towards career advancement.

EuroWeb has taken this commitment to heart, but to pursue these goals, it is first necessary to achieve a more fine-grained picture of the gender dynamics within our Action and, more generally, in our various fields of research.

We have therefore prepared a Gender and Inclusiveness Survey, which does not take more than 5 minutes. We kindly ask everybody, who is willing to contribute, to fill in this form:

https://skjemaker.app.uib.no/view.php?id=10756931

Please, send your answer until the 10th of November, 2021.

We also ask the core group and MC members to forward this survey further to all textile proffesionals, practitioners as well as to students of textile disciplines.

Due to its focus on the textile field, EuroWeb raises some interesting questions and challenges regarding gender representation and participation which are not necessarily common to other Actions. In fact, in several academic and non-academic fields, work regarding textiles and textile activities appears as a strongly gendered topic.

This has a clear reflection on the fabric of our Action, in which male scholars and practitioners are as of yet quantitatively underrepresented. For this reason, we decided to launch our internal gender inclusiveness agenda by conducting a survey focusing on our male members and other male colleagues working in the textile field. However, we invite everybody who is active in the field of textiles to answer this survey in order  to get a complete image of the gender situation and questions related to the diversity of the field.

Our goal is to achieve a better understanding of several key issues, including: a) the ways and degrees in which their gender identity has moulded their career paths and choices (with regard to the textile field); b) the existing perceptions regarding gender connotations of the topic of textiles and its impact on individual scholars and practitioners; and c) the possible intersections between gender identity and other factors in structuring the engagement with the subject of textiles.

This questionnaire comprises 32 questions, which aim to generate quantitative and qualitative insights and will be applied in the development of internal measures and policies to foster a more open, inclusive and gender-balanced environment in our network. We intend to use the results (1) in the management committee meetings, (2) in shaping future activities in EuroWeb, (3) for a short EuroWeb report summarizing the results in an anonymous form and (4) perhaps also for research. It is anonymous, and any personal information requested in it will be used exclusively for statistical purposes and in strict compliance with the EU’s GDPR and the specific COST Guidelines for Data Protection.

We gratefully acknowledge everybody who is willing to answer this survey. We hope that it will contribute to better conditions in the field of textiles.

Hana Lukesova, Francisco B. Gomes, Marie-Louise Nosch and Agata Ulanowska