European Research Council (ERC) demographics and initiatives to promote diversity

<p>The European Research Council (ERC), Europe’s premiere funding agency for frontier research, views equality of opportunities as an essential priority. The ERC monitors closely various demographic data yearly on every call and has taken actions to tackle imbalances and potential implicit and explicit biases.</p> <p>In this presentation, we will focus on demographic data of the three main funding schemes: Starting Grant, Consolidator Grant and Advanced Grant. The data of the ERC population, collected over the two past European Framework Programs (FP7 2007-2013 and H2020 2014-2020), will focus on gender and geographic location within the area of Universe Sciences and more particularly Planetary Sciences.</p> <p>The ERC is aware that promoting diversity is a continuous effort. We will present the various initiatives put in place since the inception of the ERC together with the recent actions taken to adapt to the COVID19 pandemic.</p>

Prediction of transition probability from unemployment to employment in Argentina (2003-2019)

Despite their growing participation in the labor market, women who decide to go out and look for a job face greater difficulties in obtaining it. The participation of women in the labor force is considerably lower, even if entering the labor market the possibility of actually finding a job is also less than the chance that men have of doing so (CIPPEC, 2019). Being able to predict the probability of occupational insertion of men and women, and inquire about the factors that influence this probability, is essential in order to understand gender gaps in the labor market, helping to improve the design and implementation of public policies with a gender perspective, with the final goal to achieve equality of opportunities. In this framework, the present work will seek to predict the probability of transition from unemployment to the employment in Argentina from 2003 to 2019, using the Permanent Household Survey, based on traditional prediction techniques and Machine Learning, with the objective to find the most robust model that achieves the highest level of accuracy.

Diversity in ERC populations: applicants, grantees and reviewers

<p>The European Research Council (ERC), Europe’s premiere funding agency for frontier research, views equality of opportunities as an essential priority and a vital mission to ensure credibility in the review process. The ERC monitors closely various demographic data yearly on every call and has taken actions to tackle imbalances and potential implicit and explicit biases.</p><p>This presentation is focused on demographic data for the three main funding schemes: Starting Grant, Consolidator Grant and Advanced Grant. Attention is directed mainly to gender and geographic distribution. The demographics presented here consider various stakeholders, such as reviewers, applicants and grantees.</p><p>After more than 10 years of existence, ERC data provides an insight on demographical evolution. In the first framework programme (FP7, 2007-2013), 25% of applicants were women. In the last years (Horizon 2020, 2014-2019), this percentage increased by 4%, with 29% of women applied for ERC grants. In the same periods of time, the share of women as grantees has also increased from 20% to 29%. In the last years, men and women enjoy equal success rates. This presentation also sheds light on the population diversity of ERC reviewers, both panel members and external reviewers.</p><p>The ERC knows that work to ensure equality of opportunities is never finished. This presentation analyses critically the institutional efforts and considers possible steps to consolidate the accomplished results.</p>

All scientists are equal but some are more equal than others: theory of justice applied to academic institutions to create a fair community with true equality of opportunities

1. The lack of diversity and equality of opportunities in academia is often seen as evidence of unfair processes in academic institutions when it comes to the distribution of goods. In this paper, I propose a novel framework to address this issue. 2. The framework integrates the body of literature on human developmental ecology with the theory of justice by John Rawls. The underlying premise of the framework is that academic institutions should account for the arbitrary ecological factors (e.g., culture, socioeconomic background) that influence the opportunities for academic achievements by individuals throughout their lives prior to application for goods. 3. The framework is designed to help academic institutions mitigate (or potentially, eliminate) the benefits accrued over time by individuals that experienced arbitrary but favourable ecological conditions, and assess and judge candidates relative to the expected academic performance given candidates’ ecological contexts (i.e., objective fairness). In doing so, this framework is a process that, if adopted by academic institutions, can result in fair equality of opportunities in the distribution of goods. 4. I also discuss the concept of ‘years post-PhD’, which attempts to make competition fair by discretising career trajectories. I propose a different landmark, which takes into account years post-first authorship publication, and argue that years post-first authorship publication is less relativistic and accounts for differences in academic structure between countries. I discuss the limitations and alternative attempts to make processes in academic institutions fair throughout the text. 5. Overall, this paper proposes a framework designed to improve the academic environment by creating fairness in the distribution of goods by academic institutions, thereby generating true equality of opportunities to all. Keywords: social justice; policy; equality; minorities

Creative aspect of regional development in the Message of the President of the Russian Federation

The article contains an expert opinion on regional development issues reflected in the Message of the President of the Russian Federation of 2021 (hereinafter – the Message). It is noted that the issues of regional development in the Message correspond to the logic of the principles of coordinated functioning and interaction of the bodies included in the public power system. It has been shown that along with social measures, the key idea of the Message is the economic development of the regions. The prerequisites and setting of regional development goals within the framework of the new regional support scheme proposed in the Messageare revealed. The regional block of instructions for implementation of the Message is presented, the implementation of which will ensure the fulfillment of the role of the Message as a document of spatial development and equality of opportunities for the different territories and population groups.

Editorial: The Privatization of Work-Related Risk Control

This introduction starts by linking the privatization of work-related risk control to a political context in which social investment policies are prominent. Subsequently, a short overview of different forms of privatization is given. Finally, the different contributions to this special issue are introduced by either relating them to the governance or the consequences of privatization. Based on the contributions to the special issue, it is concluded first that the governance of privatized risk control poses difficult challenges of finding the right balance between public objectives and the involvement of private interests. Secondly, it is concluded that, by excluding or marginalizing the most vulnerable group, the privatization of risk control does not always achieve the equality of opportunities that social investment policies aim for. These risks of exclusion and marginalization seem to be particularly salient when the privatization of social investment policies is embedded in a context of retrenchment or a dualization of the labor market.