Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) have emerged as a prominent tool employed by Research & Innovation institutions to enact strategies aimed at attaining gender equality. Nonetheless, the existing body of literature has not extensively delved into GEPs. This study endeavors to uncover prevalent trends pertaining to the various actions and approaches concerning gender equality delineated in the latest GEPs. Our focus is specifically on European universities in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). In this research paper, we establish a theory-based classification framework, which can be utilized to chart and evaluate diverse GEPs. We perform a Qualitative Document Analysis (QDA) on Politecnico di Torino’s GEP to test the framework. Subsequent research endeavors will center on leveraging this framework to gauge the current status of GEPs within STEM Research & Innovation institutions.

This article examines the role of gender in inventors’ collaborations and individual patenting success. We study how the time needed by an inventor to eventually become a "star" relates to their portfolio of female and male co-innovators with different characteristics in terms of career seniority and accomplishments. Our empirical analysis applies different survival models to a representative sample of almost 40’000 inventors and all their patenting co-authors, followed over a period of 10 years. We find that both gender and the relationship to other successful individuals matters. More precisely, gender diversity in inventors’ teams supports a faster career progress to stardom, seniority of peers plays a significant role only when they are mostly of the same gender, and the presence of stars among conventions is a strong catalyst of other stars, especially when among women.

The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic caused a sudden and massive change in work organizations. One of the major consequences of the crisis was the acceleration towards teleworking, through the specific phenomenon of Mandatory Work From Home: the situations in which workers overnight found themselves to work seven days a week from their home environment, constantly online, often without adequate equipment and little to no preparation. Different workers reacted in different way to this important change, depending on age, gender, family characteristics and other impacting factors. Mandatory work from home and these other variables impacted employees’ physical and mental health, triggering or increasing symptoms of overwork and emotional exhaustion among others. This paper contributes to the literature on the impact of the pandemic on workers’ health by giving an overview of the effects of MWFH on university staff, using Politecnico di Torino as a case study.

This article examines the factors that underlie the gender gap in patenting activities with large predominance of male innovators. In particular, the study investigates the presence of women among outstanding inventors, which we define as the "stars". Star innovators are identified through two different definitions with respect to the quantity and quality of their output, distinguishing between prolific inventors with high numbers of patents registered in their name and inventors with high numbers of citations per patent. Using data for more than 600’000 inventors, with up to 30 years of patent activity for each individual, we find that women are underrepresented among the overall pool of inventors, but less so among stars, and on the contrary, there seems to be a female advantage among top innovators, probably driven by selection effects.

This article examines the role of women in innovative start-ups in Italy, specifically focusing on young companies with a business commitment to sustainability. Within the population of more than 12’000 Italian new companies legally defined as innovative start-ups, we identify "green" firms through a web crawler search of sustainability-related keywords. We then analyze the prevalence of women among managers and shareholders in green companies, compared to normal ones. We find that women are neither over- nor underrepresented in green companies on average, despite the fact that women operate more in companies with a social vocation, which are also on average more common within green companies. Our findings indicate that, once women surpass the barriers to entry in this highly innovative form of entrepreneurship, they do not favor differently eco-businesses over the others.