Equality plans that are not

Imagine a university asking students to submit a written assignment about reading a book. Many submit it. Few have read it. All pass the course. The system works, some would say. I would say the system pretends to work, which is not the same. Something similar happens with the gender equality plans that Horizon Europe (the European Commission's 2021-2027 research funding program) requires research centers and universities to have as a condition for accessing European funding.For the first time in the history of European research framework programmes, having an equality plan in force is a requirement. For this plan, the Commission set 4 mandatory elements: a public document signed by management, dedicating resources to it, sex and gender disaggregated data, and training for staff. And, in parallel, it recommended addressing 5 areas: work-life balance, equity in leadership, equality in hiring and professional careers, the integration of the gender perspective in research and teaching, and measures against gender-based violence. On paper, it is a lever for structural change. On paper.The problem is that the requirement has created, in some contexts, only a formal compliance. Organizations that hastily draft the document. Plans that no one has consulted with staff or students. Commitments without deadlines, training sessions attended only by the convinced. The letter of the regulation, complete. The spirit, absent. And the Commission knows it: it has already announced adjustments for this year (without waiting for the new framework program) to verify its real compliance.It is very clear that we are talking about institutional culture. And changing the culture of an institution requires leadership to assume it as a real priority, not as an external obligation. It assumes that all personnel, from the newest to the management positions, understand why equality improves the quality of science. Research has repeatedly shown that diversity in teams produces more solid science, more interesting questions are asked, and biases that homogeneous teams do not see are detected. When a clinical trial does not stratify by sex, or when an algorithm is trained with data that overrepresent a profile, the results are, at best, incomplete. At worst, harmful.Let's return to students and their work. The difference between submitting the work and reading the book is that if you haven't read it, it couldn't have changed you at all. Universities and research centers that want to compete in the European space must not only have the equality plan signed; they must be able to demonstrate that their policies work, that the data improves, that culture changes. Not a document saved on the institutional website, but an organization that has changed from within. And this is not achieved by signing a paper. A paper does not make spring. But an institution that truly fulfills it, does.