LIBRA – the EU-LIFE alliance project to develop and implement gender equality in research – has been launched. The kick off meeting of this H2020 funded project took place on 27-28 October 2015 at Sitges, Spain. CeMM is one of the thirteen partners, who are going to contribute to the design and implementation of harmonised and tailored Gender Equality Plans at the research institutes’ level. 

Approximately half of the PhD students in Europe are women. However, the levels of women researchers decrease at the postdoctoral level and drop dramatically in leadership positions. These numbers demonstrate a dramatic waste of talent and resources in education, research and the labour market. Thirteen research institutes in life sciences in Europe, all of them partnering the EU-LIFE alliance, are to beat the current unbalanced situation regarding men and women in science. Supported by a gender expert organisation they will undertake the LIBRA project, aimed to evaluate the current status of gender equality in the different institutes and implement innovative actions to increase representation and participation of women in leadership positions in life sciences in Europe as well as raising science excellence by including sex and gender dimension in their research.