The SPEAR project, coordinated by the Gender Equality Team (GET) at SDU, focused on supporting implementation of gender equality plans (GEPs) in European universities in accordance with the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)’s toolkit GEAR.
The project established communities of learning where supporting partners facilitated sessions to identify both shared and different needs for action in the various institutions. In tandem, SPEAR also established communities of practice where the focus was on sharing practical experiences and transforming learning points into action and practice as the institutions started their GEP work.
SPEAR thus offered supportive structures through its interconnected Community of Learning (CoL) and Community of Practice (CoP). CoL provided learning platforms while CoP provided an arena for experience exchanges. Both were crucial to successful and sustainable implementation of gender equality plans (GEPs), a key instrument to improving GE.
SPEAR’s central objective was to support and implement GEPs based on a step-by-step guide to GEP implementation devised by the European Institute for Gender Equality. SPEAR employed this guide with a unique methodological path committed to creative, open, mitigating, processual, accountable, SMART and sustainable changes (SPEAR’s COMPASS).
Integral to SPEAR’s project design was an enhanced impartial evaluation scheme to boost the feedback and learning of participants throughout the project. SPEAR also employed strategic dissemination to boost its central sustainability commitment during and after SPEAR.
SPEAR aimed to foster sustainability in GE-practices in academia through a range of measures and outcomes, including ties to other EU-based GE projects, network and community building within and beyond SPEAR, and formulation of practicable policy recommendations.