Specific actions are scheduled within the project  to improve the involvment of women in research and in all the other activities of MORPHEUS.

These actions include:

• Initiatives to bring more women into the project. This action includes all the initiatives aimed at involving women directly into the MORPHEUS project.
• Triggering the interest of women-students in the field of reconfigurable computing. This action includes all the dissemination activities of the MORPHEUS project, they will be targeted also to the issue of raising women participation and awareness.
• Monitoring the gender issue within the project. This activity involves the publication of gender-disaggregates statistics about the industry, the original organizations of the project partners and the conduction of the  project.

This page in the MORPHEUS web site corresponds to the  implementation  of an action which contributes to the improvemet of the awareness about the gender issue.

An analysis of the problem is contained in the public deliverable D6.2. This document introduces the basic terminology about the issue, introducing for instance the concept of "Leaky Pipeline", that is the progressive disappearing of women as we pass from university to the highest levels of career in industry or academia. While in the university women are more that one half of the students who obtain a degree, they represent only 30% and 15% of employees in academia and industry.

A list of references is provided to allow a deeper analysis for further research.

REFERENCES

1. Women and Science: Excellence and Innovation – Gender Equality in Science
2. Towards a European research area, Commission of the European Communities, Brussels, 18 January 2000, Commission of the European Communities, Brussels, 18 January 2000, COM(2000)6, Communication from the commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the economic and social committee and the committee of the regions
3. Report from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European economic and social committee and the Committee of the Regions on equality between women and men,2005
4. Report “Women in industrial research, a wake up call for European Industry”, second edition, European Commission/Directorate-General for Research. A report to the European Commission from the High Level Expert Group on Women in Industrial Research for strategic analysis of specific science and technology policy issues (STRATA), p viii
5. Women and Science Statistics and Indicators – She Figures 2006
6. Science policies in the European Union – Promoting Excellence through Mainstreaming Gender Equality – A report from the ETAN Expert Working Group on Women and Science, 2000
7. Guide to writing a Gender Action Plan for submission with proposal to the European Union’s 6th Framework Programme - Fraunhofer Gesellschaft