• The European Institute for Women's Health has drafted a manifesto to promote gender equity in public health, research and social policies throughout Europe.
• The action is in line with IDIBGI's commitment to gender equality between women and men in the institution, which is promoted through internal policies such as the Equality Plan.

The Institute of Biomedical Research of Girona (IDIBGI), with the certainty of continuing to work for gender equality, has signed up to the European Manifesto for Women's Health. The main objective of the manifesto is to promote gender equality in health policy, research, labor rights and personal care.

Among the various aspects that the manifesto takes into account on women's health, biomedical research is specified. The text emphasizes the need for gender-sensitive research to ensure the efficacy of drugs or to avoid possible adverse reactions to a drug if research does not take into account possible biological differences between the sexes.

Emphasis is also placed on the importance of research in the field of diseases specific to women. We speak for example of endometriosis, which is diagnosed with a delay "of 7.4 years on average, although this disease affects 1 in 10 women", as the manifesto mentions, or polycystic ovary syndrome, which has no standardized treatment - the IDIBGI participates in the European project Spiomet4health to find the first specific treatment for this pathology. Other issues such as menopause and dysmenorrhea - painful menstruation - are still stigmatized today.

You can read the European Manifesto for Women's Health by clicking here.

IDIBGI's commitment to gender equality

IDIBGI's involvement in gender equality is structured with the Equality Plan, available since 2014. The objective of the Equality Plan is to create an ordered set of measures, adopted on the basis of a diagnosis of the situation, aimed at achieving equal treatment and opportunities between women and men in the company, and to eliminate discrimination based on sex.

From this diagnosis, the magnitude of inequalities, disadvantages, difficulties and obstacles, existing or that may exist in the institute, is estimated in order to achieve effective equality, obtaining the necessary information to design and establish the evaluable measures to be adopted, priority in their adoption and the necessary criteria to evaluate their compliance.