Gender inclusion funding for spokespersons

CEPLAS introduced a new financial measure to encourage candidacy of CEPLAS female PIs for the role of speaker with the aim to increase female representation at leadership level. An extra budget of 80.000 €/year will be allocated to female faculty after candidacy and successful election as cluster speaker.

From the backdrop of female underrepresentation at professorial level, female PIs receive more requests for participation in committees or invitations for guest speakers in events when compared to their male colleagues. In addition to workload related to academic-self administration, taking up a spokesperson position within CEPLAS will increase time constraints for research significantly. The funding for spokespersons is meant to contribute at compensating  restricted time budged due to additional speaker duties and can be used for example for hiring administrative or research support staff in the own institute.

This new initiative follows the example set by the DFG, who  recently introduced a gender inclusion funding for spokespersons in coordinated programmes (Research Units, Research Training Groups, Priority Programmes and Collaborative Research Units). Networks whose spokesperson/coordinator belongs to an underrepresented gender at the management level in their specific field (currently mostly women)  can apply for additional €80,000 per funding year.