This paper presents the activities of the COST Action VOICES (CA21137, gendervoices.eu), a research network funded by the European Commission « to increase the visibility of inequalities faced by Young Researchers and Innovators (YRIs) from a gender perspective, and to promote a sustainable dialogue between YRIs and stakeholders in the research ecosystem at the systemic level (European & national policy-makers) and at the institutional level (senior researchers, academic managers) by creating a community of gender equality practitioners composed of various stakeholders (YRIs, independent researchers, academic managers, organizations) across Europe. » (MoU of VOICES). The Action is chaired by the presenter of the paper. 

Besides more than 300 young researchers and senior researchers from all Europe, the network includes networks of stakeholders as EPWS (European Platform of Women Scientists) and Eurodoc (Platform of Young Researchers Associations across Europe) and is organised in six working groups. It organises an annual conference and an annual training school. 

The paper will focus on the poor visibility of young researchers in institutional policies regarding equality and inclusion. If doctoral students are easy to track and benefit of specific policies at local and national level, post-doctoral students are more difficult to study because of the variety of status they have, the variety of career paths across disciplines and countries, and their high level of mobility. They are poorly represented in decision-making bodies and sometimes not even considered as full members of the staff because they are funded by another organisation, or not considered as researchers because they officially fill an administrative job in research support. The duration of this precarious status and the working conditions are also very variables from a case to the other. This can be summarised as a blind spot of gender equality policies. Nonetheless, many inequalities originate in early career stages and understanding how and why they develop would be crucial to design and implement effective policies to tackle them and to ensure more diversity in academic staff.

VOICES tries to document gender inequalities among young researchers, but also intersecting inequalities and existing policies to prevent them. It also gathers all stakeholders to promote new policies and will release a white book at the end of the Action in 2026.

A first conceptual framework was provided in the MoU of the Action, based on EU policy papers and recent literature (especially Murgia & Poggio 2019). This first draft is now challenged by the introduction of intersectionality including more dimensions than gender only. This new approach tends to challenge the institutional definition of "young researcher" and to promote new perspectives, notably a perspective from the experience of young researchers' lives telling their own stories instead of an institutional perspective based on the payroll. At the moment, VOICES framework is still in a process of co-creation across the deferent working groups under the coordination of Prof. Victoria Showunmi, leader of the intersectionality working group. 

The methodology of VOICES is based on co-creation, participatory workshops, and communities of practice. This methodology was experimented in the ACT project (act-on-gender.eu, 2017-2021) to facilitate GEPs implementation and sustainability across different institutions. It facilitates knowledge exchange, which is at the heart of the network. It is well adapted to the topic of the network mixing conceptual research, research policies, and very practical implementation issues.

Work is still in progress. The expected outcome of VOICES is better knowledge and visibility about the situation of young researchers and the origins of the inequalities they experiment with at that stage and in their later careers. From this knowledge, policy recommendations designed with stakeholders will be published and promoted. At the time of the conference, the paper aims to present the first findings and to make connections with projects or persons interested in the topic.

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