How inclusive governance should drive gender equality in universities: A proposed methodology

Abstract

The article tackles the topic of inclusive governance in institutional change and gender equality in universities. It has two objectives. First, it envisions inclusive governance as a method to effectively convey cultural change aimed at gender equality and proposes the implementation of a pilot case applied to the University of Brescia through a mixed-method approach. It develops a framework for the par-ticipatory governance process that lies on the theoretical basis that inclusive gov-ernance promotes institutional change and drives gender equality. In particular, the research identifies and describes three core elements: actors and roles, legit-imacy and delegation, and participation process. Second, based on this framework, the analysis suggests a methodology to evaluate the participatory governance pro-cess for introducing a Gender Equality Plan (henceforth GEP) within universities. The research employs a mixed-method approach and proposes a parallel conver-gent design that adopts three instruments: interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups. The article provides insight into understanding whether deep levels of co-operation in the GEP implementation through a participatory governance process would enhance the gender mainstreaming capacity of public administrations.

Keywords: inclusive governance, participatory governance process, gender equal-ity, Gender Equality Plans, mixed-methods.