Policy Recommendations

Next steps involve researchers, policy makers, institutional leadership, and industry. This section provides a timeline of important policies related to gendered innovations, recommendations for major granting agencies, and peer-reviewed journals.

Important Next Steps:

  1. Researchers need to be brought up to speed in sex and gender analysis. They need to learn to harness the creative power of gender analysis to discover new things.
  2. Granting Agencies can ask applicants to explain how sex and gender analysis is relevant in their proposed research. Several granting agencies have developed innovative policies in this area.
    1. The European Commission has made this an important part of Horizon 2020, their next funding framework.
    2. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research requires all applicants to consider the sex and gender in their research (for a review of this policy, see Johnson et al., 2014).
    3. The Gates Foundation requires applicants to consider gender in agricultural research.
  3. Hiring and Promotion Committees can evaluate researchers and educators on their success in implementing gender analysis. This can be one factor taken into consideration.
  4. Editors of Peer-Reviewed Journals can require sophisticated sex and gender analysis when selecting papers for publication. A number of journals do so: Nature, for example, has a limited policy. Journals might enforce a consistent use of keywords, such as "sex" and "gender" to facilitate meta-analysis.
  5. Industry can incorporate the smartest aspects of gender to open new markets and enable innovation in products, processes, services, or infrastructures. Products that meet the needs of complex and diverse user groups enhance global competitiveness and sustainability.
  6. Professors from elementary to high school and graduate school can integrate the results of gendered innovations into the curriculum. It is crucial to train the next generation. Textbooks should also be revised to integrate sex and gender results and methods.

Works Cited

  • Johnson J., Sharman Z., Vissandjėe B., Stewart D. (2014). Does a Change in Health Research Funding Policy Related to the Integration of Sex and Gender Have an Impact? PLoS ONE 9 (6), e99900.