WiTEC Austria contributes together with partners from Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Sweden, UK, Hungary and Estonia in the project “Tackling Stereotypes”, which lasts from December 2004 to February 2006. It is the aim of this project to improve women’s professional situation in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) and academic sectors searching for the involvement, connexion and cooperation of key agents in academy, business and the social actors in each national environment. The research is carried out on the industrial and the academic level, which are also the target addresses for the results evolving of the project. Therefore, the partners explore the reasons explaining the fact that women are under-represented in some SET sectors on these areas through the research of the depictions of stereotypes regarding women in SET in the European countries. This will be followed by a research on existing best practices on a national level. The output which results of this project is:

• national reports on stereotypes and on existing good practices in industry and academia on the three levels recruitment, retention and progression
• evaluation of the European good practices with national focus groups (expert feedback)
• international report on European best practices to counteract stereotypes in SET
• conference in Barcelona in February 2006

The partners will benchmark their results and experiences. This is done to favour an increase of the representation of women in the SET sector in terms of the access and permanence of women in high qualified and decision making workplaces in private companies and in the academic field.

WiTEC Austria, represented by Technikon Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, will contribute the results of the research on existing experiences & materials at national level, participate actively in the project website, organise national focus groups, etc.