Prevention of gender-based violence in work environment of Czech public research institutions and universities

EU policies have been mapping the prevalence of gender-based violence and working on the prevention of this form of violence for a long time; however, the situation in science and research in the Czech Republic does not correspond to this. This project, therefore, focuses on A) the creation of a training package on the topics of prevention of gender-based violence for persons employed by public academic and research institutions in the Czech Republic. This package will contain a set of short instructional videos and information materials and will also include self-testing tools to verify the acquired knowledge. In this way, we will support employees' ability to recognize, name and know discriminatory behaviour based on gender and other intersectional categories in the workplace and learn how to behave in case one faces violence and/or harassment as a victim or a witness. In the next training package made of videos, presentations and tests, we will focus on B) training of members of the selection and evaluation committees of these institutions in order to support the prevention of discriminatory behaviour among decision-makers and managers. The packages will then be piloted and evaluated by one university and one research institute in the Czech Republic. The project will also C) map the motivation of people for being interested in topics related to gender equality through the pilot phase and prepare a manual for effective distribution at the institution. Based on the mapping and feedback on the form and content of the training packages, we will adjust the training packages. After the end of the project, the training packages will be made available to other Czech public academic and research institutions where they enable the personnel of HR departments to provide information on the topic of gender-based violence and sexual harassment in the work environment in a comprehensive and high-quality manner to other employees of their institutions.