G-EPIC

Introduction

The Global Gender Gap Report (2021) from the World Economic Forum described Western Europe as the most advanced region in the world in terms of gender political empowerment. Yet, only 43.8% of the gender gap has been closed in this area and only 14.2% in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Do you know that only 30% of the young consider it essential to live in a democracy providing young people with substantial freedom for political participation. The ERIS team is happy to announce tha t Prof. Dimokritos Kavadias and his research team have been awarded project entitled: ‘G-EPIC’ in HORIZON EUROPE Pillar II (HORIZON-CL2-2022-DEMOCRACY-01-). The VUB team of researchers, took the initiative to coordinate this new European consortium consisting of 6 universities and one civil society organisation. G-EPIC aims at reducing gender inequality in politics by fostering social innovation. The utmost goal is -as the title shows- : creating Gender Empowerment in classroom interventions reducing the gender gap in ‘political leadership’. This with a specific focus on girls with a disadvantage background. The transnational and interdisciplinary consortium consist of 7 partners in 6 countries (Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Spain and United Kingdom) and has a longstanding experience of conducting research in school settings with a first-hand knowledge of young people’s perspectives. G-EPIC will roll out an interdisciplinary approach that combines insights from political science, sociology, gender studies, youth studies, and educational sciences. In addition, G-EPIC will work together with networks of educational, civil society and policymakers and build further and enhance its sound understanding of the sociological landscape and local conditions in the countries under analysis.

To have some more in-depth information about G-EPIC, we have asked Dimokritos what the project is about and why it is important.

What is it about?

Dimokritos: G-EPIC is the continuation of a set of (past and current) research and innovation activities, which were conducted by members of the consortium on topics such as socio-economic and political inequality, political socialisation, youth civic and political engagement, civic education, disadvantaged young people, gender equality, intersectionality and pedagogical practices. I am thinking about a project (FP7 SocIETY), empowering young people to bring in their voices, aspirations and engagement to enhance their options for democratic participation and social inclusion. The ambition of G-EPIC is to develop innovative and state-of-the-art, design-based school interventions, and to provide a framework to rigorously test their effectiveness in reducing gender inequalities in political engagement.

G-EPIC’s mission focuses particularly on addressing the gender gap in politics by increasing girls’ political self-efficacy in the classroom, in school contexts -with a high share of disadvantaged pupils. Due to the fact that we work in a school setting, as a consequence, it requires considerable commitment from the schools, which sometimes may be difficult to guarantee due to the daily tasks that they need to perform.   Therefore we will use a participatory approach by working closely with the students, teachers, advisory board,….  This will include an explanation of how the intervention may contribute to capacity building, uplift their educational practice and fulfil their educational and social commitments, including those coming from local or national regulations.

Why is it important?

Lately we have experienced that democracy and political stability in the Western world, including Europe, have been challenged by health, political, military and economic developments. The COVID-19 health crisis, the continuing rise of the radical right within the European Union (e.g. in Serbia, Hungary, France) and the latest armed conflict in Ukraine along with a rise in living costs have hindered to freely and inclusively participate in politics. These upheavals within and around the EU have deepened inequalities in access to and voice in politics, opening spaces for parties which take advantage of and exploit the politically marginalised. Moreover, research shows that when confronted with situations of existential threat and precarity, as in our current crises, young people tend to be particularly at risk of endorsing a less emancipative outlook. Therefore, our focus in this project is to work with schools with socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils, and our broader target group are young people, and particularly, girls with less advantageous conditions. Other relevant target groups for G-EPIC will be: In the educational sector: municipal decision-makers, teachers, principals and schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. In the policy sector: policymakers and civil society members (including women activists) at the local, national and European level.

The strength of VUB is that we have led -together with other groups- and are still leading the organisation of international studies related to both democratic and citizen education and STEM in primary and secondary schools. I am referring here to the International Civic and Citizenship Study (ICCS) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). These studies will feed G-EPIC by mapping knowledge of educational interventions concerning gender and by providing information on questions tailored to pupils of this age category, variables which will help understand young people’s political interest, civic engagement and participation, and measurements on open classroom climate.

AIM

Ensuring the future of democracy requires empowering all social group to engage, yet the gender gap in political leadership, political ambition and political self-efficacy is the most persistent and most difficult to tackle across Western democracies. The situation when looking across the intersect of gender, social class and ethnicity becomes even more grave. These differences have been shown to begin in the school and classroom dynamics has been cited as the likely socialisation process that leads to these different outcomes. G-EPIC, a multinational consortium of universities and civil society organisations, has been brought together with the aim of fostering social innovation and testing interventions to reduce gender inequality in politics.

METHODOLOGY

The 7 partners in 6 countries (Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Spain and United Kingdom) will begin by establishing the state of play through classroom observations and reanalysis of existing quantitative data to understand how inequalities in attitudes and dispositions towards political engagement are learnt. G-EPIC will then create experiments in schools and pilot design-based interventions co-developed with civil-society, teachers and students. These experiments and interventions will be rigorously evaluated in comparisons with control groups and will lead to the development of the Gender Empowerment in Classroom intervention that will be disseminated and delivered in schools across Europe creating the possibility for real change and the reduction of the gender gap in political leadership. In addition, G-EPIC will also carry out a holistic evaluation of the national context and the local and European policy framework to design strategies, regulations and policies that are conducive to a more equitable gender political involvement, particularly of girls with a disadvantaged background.

IMPACT

The aspiration of the G-EPIC’s research activities will in the short term directly help to increase confidence in the political capabilities of the girls who are involved in this project and develop key attitudes. In a broader time frame, the toolbox generated during the project could be incorporated into the daily practice of teachers in the classrooms.  As such, it will become an international reference of best practice to foster gender equity in politics from the classroom onwards boosting more girls to get involved in politics when they reach adulthood.