The European Commission (EC) strives for equal opportunities and treatment for women and men. The EC describes this ambition in their policies as the promotion of gender equality and actively encourages all EU projects to take gender issues into account. For the EC, gender equality is a two-fold issue of both promoting the participation of women and taking account of the gender dimension of the research content.

A European Platform of Women Scientists (EPWS) was launched on 28 March 2006 to empower and encourage women scientists to participate in the EU research policy debate and to enhance their careers in science.

SAFE FOODS also recognises the importance of equal opportunities between women and men and wishes to initiate activities to promote gender equality in the food safety research area. Within our project, Workpackage 4 deals with the gender issues and is responsible for the gender equality.
The responsible expert is Dr. Ineke Klinge (University of Maastricht, the Netherlands). Questions or remarks related to this topic can be sent to i.Klinge@zw.unimaas.nl

To promote the participation of women in our project the following activities have been initiated:

• The project promotes an equal participation of both gender and has set the target that at least 40% of all scientists working for SAFE FOODS are women. SAFE FOODS wishes to see this percentage on all scientific job position levels: from the lowest scientific job position in one’s academic career (a PhD-student or lab assistant) to the highest position (full professor or scientific manager). Currently, 1 of the 7 Workpackage leader and 6 of the 18 positions in the Project Management Team are occupied by women.

• SAFE FOODS wants to contribute to scientific knowledge that is applicable to both women and men. This means that the project’s research results must be valid for both sexes. This can only be achieved when both women and men are subject of research and when possible differences between women and men are taken into account.

Sex, gender and food risk assessment

There are biological and social differences between women and men. We usually refer to the biological differences with the term sex differences, while gender differences refer to the cultural and social differences between women and men.

There are also gender and sex differences related to the research activities in SAFE FOODS. For example, it is known that women interpret and experience food safety and food risk information differently (a gender difference) as men do. Women estimate technological risks (GMO’s) higher than men and women pay more attention to food hygiene. Furthermore is known that some foods or food production technologies may have higher risks for pregnant women (a sex difference).
SAFE FOODS does not ignore the existence of this kind of differences. In fact, we study how women and men differ with respect to food risk assessment and what implications these differences might have, e.g. when communicating about food safety.

Below you can find the portraits of some female researchers in SAFE FOODS, click on their pictures to read more about their scientific career and life.

Prof. Dr Marina Miraglia	Dr Louise Shepherd
Dr Ellen van Kleef	Dr Ariane König