Peer Consultation Reflection Session

All participants in the GenderTime project has been divided into four different peer reflection groups to discuss four different themes, provided by the Work Package 3 leaders. After 30 minutes discussion in these four groups, four new groups were formed, discussing four new themes. Besides the themes to discuss the participants were also provided with instructions for how to discuss them.

The participants were expected to switch between taking on the role as a presenter, i.e. a person that describes and reflects over a situation, action, challenge or good practice and the role as reflection facilitators. Reflection facilitators are expected to pose questions to the presenter to further clarify the challenges or to further increase the understanding of the success factors. The participants in the groups thus form a so called peer reflection team that not only facilitate the reflections of the presenter but also contributes with their reflections on how to for example overcome challenges or how to best take advantage of the success factors. In order to facilitate reflections to be shared in a helpful manner and to stimulate sharing of good advice and solutions to challenges the themes are constructed as so-called “how to”- themes. The reflection experiences are supposed to focus on success and challenges within the specific “How to”-theme: how to overcome challenging factors and how to use supporting factors?

The first round of reflection sessions was thus organized around the following four themes:

1. How to assess equality in complex organisations (employment/salary)?
2. How to understand the gendered career through interviews and focus groups?
3. How to raise awareness within the organization?
4. How to support women through mentoring?

The second round of reflection session was organized around the following four themes:

1. How to monitor through gender sensitive indicators?
2. How to identify career obstacles through exit interviews?
3. How to disseminate good practices outside the organization?
4. How to challenge male dominance through women’s networks?

The participants in the workshop were divided into the Peer Consultation Reflection Sessions groups based on information reported by the GenderTime partners in the Interim Feedback Report but also in two previous monitoring tools: the Operational Process Monitoring Tool and The Self-Assessment of Change Agent Role. The groups were thus constructed based on whether they could construct helpful advice based on previous experiences within this field of subject – or whether they had requested or could use such advice in the near future. GenderTime participants from national teams that had already successfully performed exit interviews were thus teamed for example teamed with participants from GenderTime teams that were planning to perform exit interviews in the near future.

After 60 minutes everybody had participated in two Peer Consultation Reflection Sessions and a short “check-out” phase commenced, where one rapporteur in each eight teams reported back their main reflection results and the key insights that had surfaced during the reflection sessions. This “check-out” round revealed that the workshop concept had been successful as to providing an arena for sharing and reflection over a wide range of relevant and important themes. During the session there had also been a note taker in each eight team and the notes were handed in to the Work Package 3 leaders on so called “reflection sheets”.