This communication brings UBI (University of Beira Interior) experience to debate. UBIgual was the first Portuguese gender equality plan (GEP) in the context of a public university, signed in 2011. With ten years of work developed around the fundamental cause of promoting equality of opportunities to women and men in all domains of academic life, UBI Equality Commission has recently transferred a considerable part of a virtual space called “Equality in focus”. The outputs and learnings from this experience are considerable and we aim to discuss them In order to improve and grow this virtual project. In the context of a organizational changed project funded by European Commission and the Portuguese State for GEPs implementation in organizations, UBI was able to institutionalize the cause of equality between women and men in academic context. This was particularly complicated in Portuguese Academic where deep believes in academic neutrality existed and in fact still persist (Augusto et al, 2018; Pereira, 2019). After the end of the project (2013) until 2019, without a dedicated budget nor time allocated, the intervention was able to continue due to a volunteer group of feminist teachers/researchers who deeply believe in it. We developed several awareness, training and research activities with the fundamental support of engaged students and kept pressure through the high management responsible for the accomplishment of the measures of women segregation fight (both vertical and horizontal) and for the creation of a formal equality structure. In 2019 CI UBI (Equality Commission of UBI) was created, an official body composed by a paritarian team of teachers, workers and students from all UBI faculties with the responsibility to promote equality between women and men. When Covid 19 hit Portugal, CI UBI was celebrating the Women International Day with a mobile exhibition and performance. Worried about the expectable negative effects of the confinement, CI UBI created a virtual space of debate called ”Equality in focus”. Until the end of 2020 academic year, twice by month people from UBI gather by videoconference and discuss the impacts of confinement on women mental wellbeing and other topics from a feminist perspective. The format was very open and flexible, from the assistance of short films, to more academic debates but also open talks about daily problems. Student’s testimonials have been impressive and from these sessions has emerged the detection of important needs and lines of intervention that CI UBI is addressed afterwards. In fact the engagement In the sessions made the team understand the potential of “Equality in focus” and essay new ways of enlarging the project. One of its unexpected consequences were the seeds spreaded among students. During this last year several talks of this kind are happening at UBI and in the local community developed by students, teachers and other actors with the involvement of CI UBI with impressive repercussions. But it is important to consider also the weaknesses of this project: as a non-planned initiative developed in the context of the first confinement, it wasimpossible for “Equality in focus” team to keep the regularity of the first “season” during academic year of 2020/2021. One of the main reasons was the fact that sessions were in the evening. This consubstantiates the double-edged sword of women’s empowerment and participation and dangers of virtual activism: actively involving can have negative impacts in personal time and rest, the dividing line is ever more difficult to draw. In this communication, we analyse the initiative “Equality in focus” arguing that this virtual space-time of academic feminism filled an important gap that is now important to address in a sustained way. Sharing an analysis of its strengths and weaknesses in the light of digital feminism activism we essay to design possible paths for the future of our project.

--

mujeres,online,ativismo,academia