The Raoul Wallenberg Institute together with the Faculty of Management Technologies and Humanitarisation at the Belarusian National Technical University (BNTU) is working to implement a gender plan to spread awareness on gender related issues and culture. The plan is also meant to prevent gender discrimination and stereotypisation among staff and students of the faculty.
“It was a really great experience when we developed this plan in 2016 – and now we are even more excited to get to implement this gender plan during 2017-2019,” says Olga Bezbozhna, an RWI programme officer working with academic cooperation in Belarus.
“Our partners are really committed to this, and especially on the management level a lot of support was provided by the staff who took up the challenge to identify the questions that can be addressed by the plan,” says Bezbozhna.
The plan is based on human rights principle such as equal opportunities for men and women. The goal is to create an environment at the Faculty where the gender of a person does not define the resources and possibilities available to them, nor how this person is treated by colleagues, teachers and classmates. Education is a central part in the process since it is one of the ways through which information and knowledge will be spread among the students and the staff of the faculty.
Irina Kandrichina, a vice-dean of the FMTH and a person directly engaged in the development of the gender plan, says it requires actions in four areas in to order to be implemented successfully. First, education, which will consist of lectures, trainings, materials and workshops for staff or students that aims to expand knowledge about gender. Second, the gender plan encourages Faculty’s researchers and students to include gender-related topics and gender analysis in their research efforts. Thirdly, as an outreach effort, publications of relevance to the topic articles and information booklet are planned. Finally, the Faculty management will form a team which will be responsible for handling implementation of the plan and work on the development of a gender audit system.
“The gender plan is a great way to outline what the faculty’s ambitions are about matters of gender equality but the most important is for the topic to be spread and to continue to be supported throughout the years,” says Gennady Brovka, dean of Management Technologies and Humanitarisation at the Belarusian National Technical University.
Our previous work in Belarus:
Building a Model Curriculum for Clinical Legal Education in Belarus
Supporting the Promotion of Gender Equality in Belarus
Belarusian Researchers Think About Each Individual
Report on the Results of Gender Equality Analysis of Belarusian Legislation Regulating Relations in the Field of Higher Education