Doing comparative research on gender equality plans across Europe

The lack of systematic and comparable analysis of gender equality plans (GEPs) across institutions within the European Research Area has hindered the understanding of their impact on advancing gender equality in research and innovation. GEPs make a challenging research object, as they vary widely in form, scope, or purpose across national and organisational settings, which makes their outcomes and impact difficult to compare. They also lack a clear academic home and are mostly studied through practitioner-focused, application-oriented literature, limiting theory-driven and long-term comparative research. This chapter describes in detail the methodological challenges involved and proposes solutions to carry out comparative research on 14 GEP impact case studies across Europe. Distributed between five research teams, a total of 135 interviews were carried out to gather in-depth information on the design, implementation, and impact of selected equality interventions. By comparing similarities and differences between cases, six facilitating factors were identified and consolidated with a second wave of 21 additional case studies. This chapter offers important insights into achieving qualitative depth across cases while ensuring comparability across Europe.