During the month of November, UNIgreen organized its Equality Days on our various campuses.
This year, the chosen topic was intersectionality: a sociological concept that describes how different forms of discrimination (i.e. racism, sexism) intersect and reinforce one another. Rather than simply adding up, these forms of discrimination create unique and specific experiences of oppression for the people who experience them simultaneously.
A webinar was led by Thibaut Lamoureux (teacher at HEPL) and brought together speakers from minority groups who were directly affected by the topic: Tindara Addaboo, from Italy, Bastien Bomans, from Belgium, and Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir from Iceland. Sharing their experiences provided greater clarity on their situation and how to work on ourselves to avoid our biases, whether cultural or interpersonal.
To explore this topic further, multiple events took place in each institution:
Agricultural University of Iceland hosted a watch party of the Let’s Talk Intersectionality Webinar that featured the Icelandic expert, Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir who discussed key notions of intersectionality and its impact in their personal experience.
At Agricultural University – Plovdiv, students gathered for a highly engaging seminar on the gender pay gap, jointly organized by Work Package 5 and Work Package 2 of the UNIgreen Alliance. Participants learned about the difference between the unadjusted pay gap, which reflects overall earnings disparities, and the adjusted gap, which takes into account education, occupation, working hours, and sector. The seminar also examined the social and structural factors shaping pay inequality, from career progression barriers to long-term effects on pensions and financial security.
Polytechnic University of Coimbra promoted reflection on intersectionality in higher education through the development of a social awareness campaign created by students from the fields of Art and Design, Communication and Multimedia Design, and Organizational Communication.
SupBiotech Engineering School of Biotechnology hosted an Escape Game and debate for first-year students to raise awareness about gender equality, both in society and within SupBiotech.
University-College of the Province of Liège organized a “diversity fresco” aimed at students but also at administrative and teaching staff. This allows us to highlight our cognitive, emotional, cultural, biases, to understand them and learn to tame them in order to avoid them. The activity was met with great enthusiasm and sparked debate: how do our biases define us?
The University of Almería organized a meeting on public policies, embodied care: deferred experienced, a discussion of how, in the field of care, public policies are integrated and form a broad matrix of mutual and intersubjective relationships.
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia released a special edition of Voices of Change at UNIgreen podcast, concentrating on raising Awareness of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, featuring Dr. Giacomo Guaraldi and Giulia Cattaneo, student.
Warsaw University of Life Sciences organized an open meeting for the entire university community on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. The event brought together its team supporting people with special needs to discuss relevant issues and topics in this domain.
Once again, UNIgreen demonstrates its dedication to inclusive education, open to all and deeply rooted in evolution.
