CRESYM commitments  – Diversity & Gender Equality Plan

1 – Scope

CRESYM’s present Diversity & Gender Equality Plan (DGEP) aims at promoting and implementing diversity & gender equality principles within the organisation and among its members and partners.

2 – Background

CRESYM (Collaborative Research on Energy System Modelling) is a small European organisation based in Brussels, with presently 10 board members (3 women, 7 men) and 2 personnel (1 woman and 1 man), stemming from 7 European countries, ranging over 4 decades and all with degrees in engineering. The women/men ratio is 1/2, slightly better than the energy sector as a whole (1/4).

Our primary role is to set up and run R&D projects, gathering and possibly hiring PhD students and researchers with various expertise (in engineering, mathematics and computer science). In addition, we shall promote, and ease access to, energy system understanding, modelling and simulation.

3 – Ambition

CRESYM fully recognises that equality, diversity and inclusion are critical to excellence in research & discovery, teaching & learning and social responsibility.

CRESYM is committed to maintaining gender equality among its employees, improving diversity among its employees and its members’ and partners’ staff (especially energy operators’) and contributing to a higher proportion of women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics.

4 – Actions

Three main streams of action are implemented at CRESYM to support diversity and gender equality.

4.1 – Recruitment &  employment policies

CRESYM’s recruitment & employment principles are the following:

     Equality: apply equal remuneration for one same job, regardless of gender or any other personal feature but the applicant’s skills;

     Diversity: diversify recruitment whenever possible and improve employees’ differences in age, color, culture, education, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, socio-economic status;

     Gender balance: maintain the balance between men and women around 50% for every category of employees with similar skills and duties;

     These two principles are supported explicitly by the first two monitored criteria – see §6.

     Responsibility: encourage the involvement of every employee in the planning and direction of their work;

     This principle should lead especially to a better gender balance in decision making and leadership.

     Flexibility: grant every employee total freedom in managing working time and location provided prior notice is given, personal security and well-being is ensured and expected outcomes are delivered as planned;

     This principle supports work-life balance for every employee.

     Promotion: give every employee an equal opportunity to best use and develop her talents;

     Care: nudge discussion on diversity- or gender-biased remarks or situations and provide every employee with channels to report concerns.

     This principle is supported explicitly by the third monitored criteria – see §6.

CRESYM’s youth and size makes it easy to ensure the monitor the among staff.

4.2 – Advocacy of diversity & gender equality

CRESYM undertakes several actions to actively advocate diversity and gender equality:

  • Our diversity & gender equality is promoted publicly on our website, where the present DGEP is available.
  • CRESYM pays attention to mitigate the present gender unbalance in every public reports, presentations and pictures about R&D projects and events with a higher number of women and female leaders.

     This is supported explicitly by the second monitored criteria – see §6.2 (iii), (iv) and (v).

  • CRESYM’s promotes, and nudges the implementation of, its “indicator-based” strategy to foster diversity and gender-equality in recruitment and daily R&D business to all its members and partners – see §6.

4.3 – Educate & advocate science, engineering and mathematics

The present low performance of the energy sector regarding diversity and gender equality at work is largely a consequence of the fact that few young women choose science, technology or engineering at university level.

On the long run, CRESYM shall develop and disseminate means to promote the energy sector and R&D on energy system simulation to a large audience, especially to high school teacher and high school students.

5 – Expertise & material resources

The association is small enough (2 staff) so that awareness about diversity & gender equality is there. Caring for diversity & gender equality when recruiting for projects comes thus for free.

Yet, the association staff, as well as its members’ staff through their own gender equality plans, are trained to identify, and appropriately react to, unconscious biases or misconduct regarding gender or group dynamics.

The specification and budget to develop material and tools (“serious games”) to advocate energy sector and R&D on energy system simulation to secondary school students are being defined, in the framework of our “Advocacy”, “Education”, and “Training” cluster activities (aside from projects or asset maintenance).

6 – Monitoring

As a small organisation, CRESYM monitors simple indicators about diversity & gender equality, and their evolution:

  • Cultural diversity of every project team, i.e. (nr of countries that participants stem from)! per cluster, with 3! as minimum goal for every cluster;
  • Gender balance ratios, i.e. nr women/nr men per cluster with 4/6 as minimum goal per cluster, and 1/4 as critical threshold,
    • (i) regarding its own staff,
    • (ii) at every project team,
    • (iii) regarding all mentions of individuals in a project workspace,
    • (iv) in every published picture,
    • (v) in the population of panel speakers at CRESYM organised events;
  • Number of gender-biased remarks or situations among (i) its own staff over time, (ii) every project team, with a goal of minimising them over time, and possibly, more importantly, the role of maintaining awareness and induce cultural change.
  • These data are monitored on a case by case basis and reported annually.

     The compilation and discussion of such indicators shall trigger cultural change for CRESYM and percolate through the networked organisations.
     Especially the gender balance ratio in staff and project teams shall support gender equality in recruitment, in research and in teaching overall.
     The last indicator forces discussion on gender-based issues and help mitigate risks of gender-based violence, especially sexual harassment.

7 – Changes to this Diversity & Gender Equility Plan

This Diversity & Gender Equality Plan may be changed over time.

Individuals are advised to regularly review this Diversity & Gender Equality Plan for possible changes.

This Diversity & Gender Equality Plan was last updated in December 2022.