Sustainable Gender Equality Champions

The prizes will increase public awareness of the importance of addressing gender equality in academic and research organisations through institutional change, incentivise a high degree of commitment to the implementation of inclusive GEPs, and create a community of champions inspiring other academic and research organisations into becoming gender equality champions themselves.

Expected Outcomes:

• Enable the development of a European community of academic and research champions in institutional transformation towards inclusive gender equality;
• Strengthening of the inclusiveness and connectivity objectives under the new European Research Area.

The “EU Award for Gender Equality Champions” is a recognition prize scheme meant as a booster and a complement to the requirement for higher education establishments, research organisations and public bodies applying to Horizon Europe to have in place a Gender Equality Plan (GEP)^[1], and as a tool for advancing inclusive gender equality plans and policies in the framework of the new European Research Area (ERA) Policy Agenda.

The Award is also an enabler for the transformation agenda for universities set forth in the new ERA, in synergy with the European Education Area (EEA) and the European Higher Education Area (EHEA, Bologna process), and in line with the Communication on a European Strategy for Universities adopted on 18 January 2022.

The Prize will be awarded to four academic or research organisations, and contestants can apply to one among the following three prize categories:

• Sustainable Gender Equality Champions: Organisations that can demonstrate a significant and sustained record of activity and a high level of achievement through the implementation of their GEP(s);
• Newcomer Gender Equality Champions: Organisations that have recently finalised the implementation of their first GEP and can demonstrate the most progress achieved through its implementation;
• Inclusive Gender Equality Champions: Organisations that have developed the most innovative inclusive GEP – i.e. a GEP addressing intersections between gender and at least two other social categories, such as racial or ethnic origin, social origin, sexual orientation and gender identity (LGBTIQ) or disability – and can demonstrate concrete results obtained through its implementation.

Each prize winner will receive EUR 0.1 million: EUR 0.4 million in total from the 2024 budget and EUR 0.4 million in total from the 2025 budget.

Contestants can only apply to one of the three prize categories.

In addition to the complete application, contestants may be asked at a later stage for further documents (for legal entity validation, bank account validation, ethics review, declaration of honour, etc.) or for a short video message on their achievements in the chosen Prize category. This video will be used for communication purposes only.

[1] See General Annexes to the Horizon Europe Work Programme (Gender equality plans and gender mainstreaming in Annex Part B – Eligibility)