Days of Gender Equality?

“We are not gender tired!”, “We want more gender equality topics in our research and studies!” is some of the feedback we received from this year’s ‘Days of Gender Equality’ events held at UL FF.

From March to May 2021, our faculty organized a series of events on gender equality in academia.

During the planning and strategy phase of the event, the organizers, including myself, talked about the different types of approaches we could take when organising these events. Some of the thoughts included: whether we should focus on institutional activities, whether we should include only researchers and professors or whether we should focus on a particular theme?

As this was the first event in the series, we decided to include everyone and then see how it goes. When we sent out the invitations, we were amazed at how many activities and initiatives there were in our school. It seemed that people had just been waiting for the opportunity to share their own research and work, and any fears we had that there might not be enough interest in the events were quickly forgotten.

So, we organized a wonderful series of events, including talks, round tables, lectures and presentations.

There was a very nice and rather nostalgic discussion about the first postgraduate program on Women’s Studies and Feminist Theory in Slovenia, where the founding mothers of the program described their memories and insights.

Fresh perspectives on gender equality were provided by students of pedagogy and non-binary individuals. They explored new themes in gender equality studies and discussed individuals who break the gender binary framework of men and women.

One of the most controversial topics of this event was also the prevention of sexual harassment. The renowned scholar Marta Soler Gallart gave an inspiring lecture on “Successful measures against sexual harassment in academia”.

The event on Inclusive Grammar, was also very informative. Slovenian NGOs and other institutions were also invited to the event to share their visions (and problems) of the use of gender-sensitive language in Slovenian.

Finally, we heard a very inspiring speech by world-renowned feminist Prof. Dr Lynne Segal, known for her book ‘Why feminism’ and ‘Is the future female?’. She spoke on the topic of the language and politics of care. We ended the event with a roundtable discussion on best practices for implementing a Gender Equality Plan in which our project partners, Sabanci University (Istanbul) and Deusto University participated.

It was truly inspiring to listen to active scholars, established individuals in the field, and students and early career researchers who spoke about their work and studies and how gender equality has inspired them, impacted their worldview, work, and daily lives. These events also demonstrated that gender equality is a dynamic and broad field of research within the humanities and social sciences. We believe that the participatory structure of the Days of gender equality was crucial. In order for the series of events to be satisfactory and sustainable in the future, we believe that we should maintain this approach.

We are very proud of this event and everything that was presented. We must highlight the students and their extracurricular and engaging activities in the field of gender equality. Without the slightest doubt, we consider this series of 15 events with 80 speakers a great success and we are already looking forward to next year’s events.

Below are some screenshots of the events:

Picture is from the event ‘Persons who go beyond the binary framework of men and women at the gender level’, organized by the Association of Students of Andragogy and Pedagogy on 8.4.2021.

Picture is from the event ‘Roundtable on stopping harassment’, 8.3.2021.

Picture is from the event ‘Closing event: Good practices in the implementation of the Gender Equality Plan’, 17.5.2021.

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