Striving for gender equality generally means striving to attain the same possibilities, rights, and obligations for both women and men. In practice, it consists of redistributing resources and opportunities so that they are shared by men and women equally, preventing sexual harassment, creating conditions that allow for combining work and parenthood, and integrating a gender perspective into education and course literature. Achieving equality requires an active and continuous effort. This gender equality plan functions as a guide to action and also as a policy document for Inoq/IFP. The CEO is responsible for the equality issues at Inoq/IFP and will, together with the Equality Officer, monitor Inoq/IFP’s activities and ensure that the gender equality plan is followed.

The plan was approved by INOQ/IFP’s Group Management on 10.2.2022. The document sets out INOQ/IFP’s ambition and targets linked to its work to promote gender equality within the organisation, as well as important initiatives designed to achieve this ambition. The plan is based on INOQ/IFP’s current situation and circumstances as a biotech group.

INOQ/IFP appreciate the EU’s initiative to strengthen gender equality and diversity in the field of research. In order to maintain our key role in society, deliver the best results, and continue to address the major societal challenges, INOQ/IFP requires diversity among its employees’ experience, attitudes and perspectives. INOQ/IFP has for many years been working to encourage diversity and promote gender equality within the organisation.

INOQ/IFP has zero tolerance towards any type of bullying, gender-based violence and sexual harassment. Incidents or matters worthy of criticism will be reported according to our internal routines for whistleblowing. In addition, we monitor and map incidents regarding bullying and sexual harassment through our annual working environment survey. All reported cases are followed up in accordance with established procedures in INOQ/IFP’s management system in order to resolve each specific case, take care of the individual, and prevent improper conduct from happening again.

The current situation

We have been working actively to recruit women and men equally, since 25 years the majority of employees is female, including management, the current proportion of women working at INOQ/IFP group is 77 % (2/2022).

Objectives

We wish to strengthen our efforts to achieve an organisation-wide gender equality by means of systematic and long-term work. As a foundation for this work, we have defined as development target the number of employees. We believe that a ratio of 60 % women to 40 % men is an appropriate target for the organisation as a whole. The option of a 50/50 ratio is considered to be unrealistic due to the inherent bias in INOQ/IFP’s recruitment base in several fields.
Our starting point is the current status of a series of number of employees as metrics of gender equality development (see the table below). Our assertion is that INOQ/IFP as a whole can achieve a minimum 60/40 gender equality ratio within five years.

INOQ gender equality targets

Responsibility and resources

Adherence to INOQ/IFP’s Gender Equality Plan will be mandatory for INOQ/IFP’s team leaders. They will be responsible, within their fields of authority, for drawing up plans containing targets and actions and for implementing these so that INOQ/IFP can achieve its overall objectives. Team leaders will receive support in exercising their responsibilities from dedicated resources and shared systems.

The INOQ/IFP CEO will have the overall responsibility for supporting and monitoring the work to implement INOQ/IFP’s Gender Equality Plan and will act to ensure the development and facilitation for managers and other employees of systems and tools that support the work to achieve gender equality.

Progress reports

We will use our established systems to monitor and document the progress of the gender balance over time yearly. We will focus in particular on the Senior Research Scientist level because this is a key position in relation to our core activities. It also forms the basis for gender equality development in organisational dimensions such as the administration of major research projects, publication and management roles.

Status assessments

We have prepared reports setting out levels of gender equality related to the organisational dimensions listed below.

• Gender equality for INOQ/IFP overall

Documentation of progress and target/action adjustment

We will establish a system for annual reporting of the status of the dimensions listed above. This will also include the monitoring of corporate governance activities as each year progresses. The aim here is to determine whether the plan is progressing in the direction required for INOQ/IFP to achieve its objectives. These annual status updates will also provide the basis for the adjustment of targets and the adaptation of actions in support of ensuring progress in the required direction. The results will be collated and presented in an appendix to INOQ/IFP’s Annual Report that will be duly considered by INOQ/IFP’s Board.