Creativity for women and men

What are the promoted models of innovative behaviour? Do the policies supporting innovation equally take into account the creative behaviour of men and women? These are some of the issues raised at the work meeting of the project InnoGend, which was held in February in Warsaw.

Prof. Barbara Liberda from the University of Warsaw explained that the concept of "innovative gender" should be understood as innovativeness analysed from the point of view of gender. The researcher pointed out that equality policies relating to entrepreneurship and innovation assume that innovators and inventors do not have gender. Meanwhile, there are problems and inequalities that arise from prejudices, history, stereotypes, the lack of childcare infrastructure. Due to this, part of society utilizes its capabilities to a lesser extent. In her opinion, innovativeness of a country, region, company can be improved, if the skills and talents of women and men are put to better use.

"We show that diversity is beneficial from the point of view of economic growth and development and it should be promoted. Policies aimed at supporting innovation are gender-neutral. Pretending that there is no gender does not exactly work" - confirmed Dr. Anna Zachorowska-Mazurkiewicz from the Jagiellonian University.

She explained that the term "gender" extends the meaning of biological sex. It defines sex as a set of traits, behaviours, attitudes and attributes assigned by culture and expected by society of both women and men. The phenomenon of gender also relates closely to the relationship between them.

The research project focuses on professional relationships in innovative companies. A survey conducted in more than one hundred enterprises shows that it is mainly men who define themselves as a "sowers of ideas", managers or team leaders. Women define their roles primarily as team members, persons performing representative or organizational functions.

"We observed that women believe that their respective roles in the innovation process are auxiliary. At some stage, for example, after winning funds or organizing a team, they take a step back. They downplay their role, unless they are the main inventor" - said Prof. Barbara Liberda.

Project leader Prof. Ewa Okoń-Horodyńska from the Jagiellonian University explained that the point of interest of her research group is considering equal opportunities, measures and situations in decision-making processes, in the amount of wages on the labour market, in occupying managerial positions. But the focus is on the indicated assumptions in the specific process, the process of innovation. This equality, which unfortunately is lacking, may in fact lead to better use of the talents, abilities, competences men and women, and consequently to effective use of intellectual potential for progress.

"It happened that a woman played the role of a leader of the team that worked on innovation, but the decision on what to do with her idea depended on the decision of the manager. One of the directors in a large company told us before completing the survey that there were no innovative women, and women did not have any role in the innovation process" - said Prof. Okoń-Horodyńska.

At the same time, other entrepreneurs draw attention to the lack of institutional solutions that would promote creativity of women or men. The problem of equal treatment is noticed by representatives of both sexes. Eliminating barriers can lead to progress in the culture of innovation.

Male innovation model is considered dominant. Policies supporting innovation do not take into account the creative and innovative behaviour of women, thereby privileging one sex. Once again, traditional thinking is confirmed that innovation, creativity, inventiveness has nothing to do with sex... For this reason, innovative activity may be more difficult for women than for men. Identification and analysis of common areas and the differences between the socio-cultural roles, attitudes, expectations of women and men in the process of innovation are the main objectives of the project "Innovative gender - a new source of progress".

Researchers put together competency requirements of individual stages of innovation, with scientifically described personal traits important in the workplace. The comparison covered systems of values, abilities - range of skills - competencies, roles in the innovation process and the conditions of the institutional environment. Knowledge of the differences and commonalities allows for far-reaching conclusions about the creativity of men and women. Man and women innovators, as well as auxiliary team members may - by complementing and supporting each other - achieve synergies for progress. The idea is to gain on the differences.

Can selected state policies change the cultural conditions? The answer to this question is difficult. But no one today doubts that the policies facilitating women\'s access to education, giving them the opportunity to decide about social, economic and political issues, were historically necessary. Even 200 years ago, women did not have access to universities. Currently they are beating men. According to the researchers, it is time to give them similar opportunities by introducing different types of policies supporting the development of innovation.

"Policies are designed to eliminate discrimination. We combine study of the ability to innovate with investigating the role of women and men in the formation process of innovation. Nobody in Poland has done that. We examine the economic aspects of the unused talents of women and men. If you fail to use all the potential talent by restricting access to education, research, employment, labour market, entrepreneurship, patent creation, and making the most important decisions in these matters, the national income of the country is growing more slowly. For the United States it has been calculated that, thanks to anti-discrimination policies in the past 50 years, GDP is 25% higher" - summarized Prof. Liberda.

PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland, Karolina Olszewska

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