D3.11 Cross-cutting Analytical Synergies across INSPIRE

This deliverable contributes to INSPIRE’s project ambition to advance the foundations of Inclusive Gender Equality in the European R&I ecosystem by providing a synthesis of the cross-cutting themes found in the empirical work carried out across Work Package 3 (WP3). Two key points are addressed directly for policy makers and change agents in the European Research Area (ERA) working on Inclusive Gender Equality: how to advance the conceptual, methodological, and practical foundations of Inclusive Gender Equality Plans (IGEPs) and Inclusive Gendered Innovation (IGI) as instruments capable of producing structural change, while addressing intersectional inequalities and making innovations with demonstrated benefits for scientific quality and societal relevance.

INSPIRE data show that whether equality policies produce real change or remain symbolic depends not only on what happens within organisations but also on how research funding and innovation are governed at the organisational, national, and EU levels. Each level sets different conditions for how research agendas are formulated and evaluated, how resources are allocated, and whose knowledge and needs research is designed to serve. Addressing this complexity requires governance tools that can operate across all three levels simultaneously, in a structurally uneven, politically contested, and epistemically fragmented ecosystem. This synergies analysis forms the foundation for developing guiding principles to advance IGE from an intersectional perspective. Because national policy frameworks, historical trajectories, and institutional cultures vary significantly across the ERA, these principles must enable meaningful contextualisation without sacrificing coherence.

The deliverable is structured in three parts: first, the introduction situates the project's ambition and analytical approach. Second, we present three cross-cutting themes that emerged from the project's empirical research and respond to the questions of where, who and how: context, actors, and governance structures. Third, we present a set of guiding principles for change agents and policymakers working in the R&I ecosystem in the ERA, derived from the convergence of evidence across these themes. The principles are organised addressing different moments of the policy process: the diagnostic moment, the design moment and the infrastructure necessary to sustain the changes over time. The principles also address the issue of different contexts in the ERA, the need to have intersectionality as political practice, the participatory processes necessary to tailor policies, the need to have common standards of governance infrastructures and integrate IGI into R&I funding and practice, investment and conditions for evidence infrastructure and system learning and, finally, the relevance of recognising, resourcing and protecting equality work and expertise in the organisational, national and ERA levels.