The R&I PEERS project will be based on the concept of gender equality, that can be expressed as “women and men enjoy the same status and have equal opportunity to realize their full human rights and potential to contribute to national, political, economic, social and cultural development, and to benefit from the results”. The R&I PEERS project aims at creating and validating pilot experiences aiming at disrupting the gender-biased approach and those unconscious rules that limit the participation and the career of women in research and innovation in the Mediterranean Area. To do so, we will leverage on the synergies of structured dialogues and women’ empowerment through skills and entrepreneurial perspective of research and innovation. The project objectives are: 1. Implementation and improvement of 7 GEPs in R&I related organisations 2. Smooth the gap of gender representation in decision-making and research-performing processes 3. Maximise the impact and the efficacy of gender content into the research programmes The proposal aims at realizing and providing a double vision of equality (increasing the numbers of women in decision making positions throughout the R&I system will reduce the waste of European talents) and opportunity (providing support to the R&I entrerpreneurship based on more effective deployment female human capital, hence offering an important competitive advantage for strengthening the scientific endeavor). Dissemination and exploitation plans of the project results will then ensure the sustaianbility of the action after the ending of the H2020 project.

The Marina proposal overall aim is to create an all-inclusive Knowledge Sharing Platform (KSP) catalysing and organising the convergence of already existing networks, communities, on-line platforms and services providing an online socio-technical environment that facilitates and stimulates the direct engagement of researchers, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), citizens, industry stakeholders, policy and decision makers, research funders and communicators for improving Responsible Research and Innovation. In particular, the project will establish, curate and experiment a Responsible Research and Innovation platform involving societal actors working together during the whole research and innovation process for aligning better both the process and its outcomes, with the values, needs and expectations of European society, integrating citizens visions, needs and desires into science and innovation, promoting RRI with focus on marine issues and pressures that have important effects on the European societies. The project activities and outcomes, even if connected with marine research field, will define this systematic approach in order to make it transferable and reproducible for any RRI thematic domain. All project results and activities will be extrapolated from the RRI marine field to general RRI and broadly disseminated. The expected outcome of the Work Programme is a clear improvement of the integration of society in science and innovation. The MARINA project will follow this strategic line of “strengthening and facilitating” the capacity of the research and innovation to align and integrate the social needs through a suitable knowledge sharing platform and federating activities.