The first open and collaborative portal in Europe to specialize in Gender and Science exceeds one thousand documents

In just one year, GenPORT has compiled one thousand publications, teaching and informative materials relating to science, but from a gender perspective. The platform has grown thanks to the collaboration of over five-hundred registered users who have uploaded resource materials – articles, projects, videos, guides, etc. – they consider to be relevant. In broad terms, the content of GenPORT is classified into three large areas: reference to equality policies at universities or research centres, introduction to the gender perspective in different disciplines and, thirdly, successful cases in the introduction of equality and gender policies in institutions and good practices. 

This European project was created in 2013 and is coordinated by the UOC in partnership with GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany; Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, Italy; Portia, United Kingdom; Matej Bel University, Slovakia, and Örebro University, Sweden.

Jörg Müller, senior researcher at the UOC and coordinator of the GenPORT project, said that “GenPORT wants to become a knowledge reference in all social, natural, technological and human disciplines, from a gender perspective”.

Quality materials and collaborative base

A key characteristic of the articles selected is quality. “Normally, they are materials referenced to scientific or informative journals. In addition, the GenPORT team checks that the content provided by users is related to knowledge of gender,” confirmed Lídia Arroyo, UOC researcher and member of the GenPORT team.

A second characteristic of the catalogue is that it has been defined according to a philosophy of cooperative knowledge. Consequently, access is free and users simply need to register to consult it or send materials to the coordinators. “The resource materials available are continuously growing thanks to the contribution of the GenPORT community,” explained Arroyo. 

Users interested in gender equality

With regard to the users, they are not a homogeneous group, but do share an interest in gender issues. The majority are researchers and university students, but they also include policymakers and professionals. “There are two profiles: experts in gender issues who can sign up as expert users using the ‘Expert2Expert’ tag and the remainder, who are not experts but wish to introduce the gender perspective in their area of work,” said Müller. 

The materials are in various languages but all the articles are easily identifiable thanks to the key words that reference them in English. “Therefore, even if the resource material is in a foreign language, we know that there is a publication, project or organization that is working in the subject area that interests us,” said Arroyo.