Building a territorial working group to reduce gender gap in the field of artificial intelligence

The gender gap (both at vocational and professional sides) in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and scientific and technological fields in general, is one of the most critical challenges that the current digital society must solve. This paper describes the proposal of the gender commission donesIAcat to create a gender working group formed by Catalan AI scientists and professionals who work in a network for bridging this gap. The main objectives for letting girls know that they can study and work in the AI field are presented in this paper. A general methodological framework is proposed, following the internal organization of the Catalan group donesIAcat. Several key actions are explained and classified into six blocks. A relevant contribution of the paper is the definition of the guidelines required to build a territorial network-based structure capable of launching several AI-related activities targeting people at different stages of their life. The activities done at donesIAcat illustrate the possible outcomes of the proposed methodology and show successful initiatives to engage girls in technology and AI. The paper shows the validity of this model for small homogeneous territories where activities can be suitable for the different cities in the region. Proximity is one of the advantages of such a model and one of the reasons for its success.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

II Plan for Gender Justice 2021-2025

Presentat al Plenari del Consell Municipal de 29-09-2021L’objectiu de la nova estratègia és consolidar les polítiques municipals per lluitar contra la desigualtat i la discriminació vers les dones en tots els àmbits. El Pla es planteja com un full de ruta transversal que incorpora la perspectiva de gènere en les pràctiques municipals i que vol ser un motor de canvi per a tots els agents de la societat.The aim of the new strategy is to consolidate municipal policies to combat inequality and discrimination against women in all areas. The Plan is intended as a cross-cutting roadmap that incorporates a gender perspective into municipal practices and aims to be an engine of change for all actors in society.El objetivo de la nueva estrategia es consolidar las políticas municipales para luchar contra la desigualdad y la discriminación frente a las mujeres en todos los ámbitos. El Plan se plantea como una hoja de ruta transversal que incorpora la perspectiva de género en las prácticas municipales y quiere ser un motor de cambio para todos los agentes de la sociedad

Women in Artificial intelligence (AI)

This Special Issue, entitled "Women in Artificial Intelligence" includes 17 papers from leading women scientists. The papers cover a broad scope of research areas within Artificial Intelligence, including machine learning, perception, reasoning or planning, among others. The papers have applications to relevant fields, such as human health, finance, or education. It is worth noting that the Issue includes three papers that deal with different aspects of gender bias in Artificial Intelligence. All the papers have a woman as the first author. We can proudly say that these women are from countries worldwide, such as France, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Australia, Bangladesh, Yemen, Romania, India, Cuba, Bangladesh and Spain. In conclusion, apart from its intrinsic scientific value as a Special Issue, combining interesting research works, this Special Issue intends to increase the invisibility of women in AI, showing where they are, what they do, and how they contribute to developments in Artificial Intelligence from their different places, positions, research branches and application fields. We planned to issue this book on the on Ada Lovelace Day (11/10/2022), a date internationally dedicated to the first computer programmer, a woman who had to fight the gender difficulties of her times, in the XIX century. We also thank the publisher for making this possible, thus allowing for this book to become a part of the international activities dedicated to celebrating the value of women in ICT all over the world. With this book, we want to pay homage to all the women that contributed over the years to the field of AI

Comparative perspectives on rural development and policy challenges in Sogn og Fjordane

publishedVersio

Empirical evidence on tax cooperation between sub-central administrations [WP-IEB]

The literature on horizontal tax interdependence pays limited attention to interactions in administrative policies, although they can play a large role in determining the amount of tax revenues collected. We investigate the incentives for sub-central tax authority cooperation in a decentralized context, with the aim of identifying the determinants of that cooperation. Our results are congruent with standard theory; in particular, the existence of reciprocity is essential for sharing tax information, but there is sluggishness in this process, which is partly the result of the short-sighted behaviour of tax authorities influenced by budget constraints. Hence, this is good news for the functioning of a decentralized tax administration, as in the medium-long run the gains to be made from sharing tax information are achieved

The INSESS-COVID19 Project: evaluating the Impact of the COVID19 in social vulnerability while preserving privacy of participants from minority subpopulations

In this paper, the results of the project INSESS-COVID19 are presented, as part of a special call owing to help in the COVID19 crisis in Catalonia. The technological infrastructure and methodology developed in this project allows the quick screening of a territory for a quick a reliable diagnosis in front of an unexpected situation by providing relevant decisional information to support informed decision-making and strategy and policy design. One of the challenges of the project was to extract valuable information from direct participatory processes where specific target profiles of citizens are consulted and to distribute the participation along the whole territory. Having a lot of variables with a moderate number of citizens involved (in this case about 1000) implies the risk of violating statistical secrecy when multivariate relationships are analyzed, thus putting in risk the anonymity of the participants as well as their safety when vulnerable populations are involved, as is the case of INSESS-COVID19. In this paper, the entire data-driven methodology developed in the project is presented and the dealing of the small subgroups of population for statistical secrecy preserving described. The methodology is reusable with any other underlying questionnaire as the data science and reporting parts are totally automatized.Peer ReviewedObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::1 - Fi de la PobresaObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::5 - Igualtat de GènereObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::10 - Reducció de les DesigualtatsObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::3 - Salut i BenestarObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::8 - Treball Decent i Creixement EconòmicPostprint (published version

Long-term care services in 4 European countries: labour markets and other aspects

XREAP, a Catalan Network for Research in Applied Economics of 7 research groups, has organised together with the Management School of the Radboud University a seminar on long-term care service bringing together insights of the situationof this sector in Catalonia and the Netherlands. However, this electronic book includes also contribution from Germany and Finland faciliationg the lecturer a wider European perspective on developments in the longterm care labour markets and the organisation of the care service. One of the mayor concerns of the European Union is its ageing population and to develop adequate social and economic strategy to face this challenge. One of the key issues is how care for elderly and dependent people in the future assuring the access of all, who need care, to high quality services. There is a wide range of system configuration in the European Union as well as at national as at regional level. But all these particular systems must gave respond to two main challenges caused by the multiple demographic changes: a) The increasing demand of professionalized care services and b) The lack of qualified workforces to satisfy this demand assuring a high care quality under public budget restriction. This e-book brings together articles of authors from four European countries reflecting trends in the search for new combinations between institutional, family and community provision for high quality long-term care services

Just energy transitions to low carbon economies: Coal mining areas and welfare policies

This thesis explores the socioeconomic effects of energy transitions towards renewable sources, their implications for justice, and potential courses of political action based on the Welfare States to provide just energy transitions. Initially, we explicit the goals of the research and the hypotheses under study and disclose the theoretical and methodological frameworks that support our work. Afterwards, we present the literature review findings, which determine the potential effects of renewable technologies on employment and income distribution and delimit gaps to propose a research agenda. Most studies find a positive, yet small, effect on employment levels and some negative effects associated with the difficulties in the reconversion of some jobs and the scarce labour mobility of certain sociodemographic profiles. Concerning income, analyses conclude negative effects through rising electricity prices and regressive subsidies. Nonetheless, there is a margin to enrich the status of the literature. We suggest as high priority tasks furthering the availability and complexity of studies about income distribution, with a focus on the need and design for fiscal countermeasures to compensate for regressivity, widening the methods applied to employment, introducing degrowth scenarios, varying the number and typology of cases, and observing a gender dimension. Additional tasks comprise the exploration of systemic tools, broadening the scope of models, and introducing subjective perceptions in quantitative techniques to orientate decision-making and assessments. Subsequently, we dive into the Leonese case study, a restructuring from coal mining and thermoelectric production of electricity to wind, solar, and biomass power. We estimate the consequences of such a shift for employment levels and land requirements through a systemic modelling exercise inspired by System Dynamics. Additionally, we show the gaps between the theoretical framework of just energy transitions, the findings of the review, and the current political proposals for León. The model indicates that the preferential installation of the current renewable tenders in the province compensates for the jobs at risk in the short term. Notwithstanding, renewable sources cannot keep the population in the areas, so the restructuring should be complemented by alternative activities, such as rural tourism, agroindustry, and "silver economy" around care. Furthermore, the model detects relevant shares of required land for the installation of renewable technologies and sensitive trade-offs between the promotion of employment and the modification of land uses. These insights could enhance the current processes of just transition, which show shortcomings in their concept and design, diagnosis, and mechanisms of public participation. Finally, we increase the scale in our approach to analyse the capacity of Welfare States to ease the transition through the hypothesis of eco-social synergy, which results rejected under a comparable methodology that seeks to avoid past shortcomings in the literature through the joint application of Ward’s hierarchical clustering algorithms in squared Euclidean distances and Thorndike’s criterium of optimality in a sample of 23 European countries from 2008 to 2016. The results illustrate that the paradigmatic Nordic countries fail to mobilise local resources sustainably and are responsible for the worst environmental performances. Parallelly, Liberal and Conservative regimes tend to display better environmental results, although worse social situations. However, there is not a clear correspondence between the typologies of welfare regimes, the social dimension, and the environmental status. Despite the rejection, some traits of Social-democratic regimes motivate a discussion about Sustainable Welfare and its downscaling to local levels. Specifically, there is a relevant potential in the implementation of Conservation Basic Incomes and Services.Esta tesis explora los efectos socioeconómicos de la transición energética hacia renovables, sus implicaciones para la justicia y potenciales políticas basadas en los Estados de Bienestar para proporcionar transiciones energéticas justas. Inicialmente, explicitamos los objetivos y las hipótesis de la investigación y revelamos los marcos teórico y metodológico que apoyan nuestro trabajo. A continuación, presentamos los hallazgos de la revisión de la literatura, que determina los efectos potenciales de las renovables en el empleo y la renta y delimita los nichos para proponer una agenda de investigación. La mayoría de los estudios encuentra un pequeño efecto positivo en los niveles de empleo y efectos negativos asociados a las dificultades de reconversión y la escasa movilidad laboral de determinados perfiles sociodemográficos. En materia de renta, los análisis concluyen efectos negativos por los precios crecientes de la electricidad y subsidios regresivos. Sin embargo, hay margen para enriquecer el estado de la literatura. Sugerimos como tareas con alta prioridad avanzar en la disponibilidad y complejidad de estudios sobre la distribución de la renta, con el foco en la necesidad y el diseño de contramedidas fiscales para compensar la regresividad, ampliar los métodos aplicados al empleo, introducir escenarios de decrecimiento, variar el número y tipología de casos y observar la dimensión de género. Tareas adicionales comprenden la exploración de herramientas sistémicas, el reforzamiento de los modelos y la introducción de percepciones subjetivas en las técnicas cuantitativas para orientar las decisiones y evaluaciones. Posteriormente, nos adentramos en el caso leonés, una reestructuración desde la minería del carbón y la producción termoeléctrica hacia la energía eólica, solar y la biomasa. Estimamos sus consecuencias para los niveles de empleo y los requisitos de terreno con un ejercicio de modelización sistémica inspirado por la Dinámica de Sistemas. Adicionalmente, mostramos las brechas entre el marco teórico de las transiciones energéticas justas, los hallazgos de la revisión y las actuales propuestas políticas para León. El modelo indica que la instalación preferente de las actuales licitaciones renovables en la provincia compensa los empleos en riesgo en el corto plazo. No obstante, las renovables no fijan población en las áreas, por lo que la reestructuración debería estar complementada por actividades alternativas, como el turismo rural, la agroindustria y una "economía plateada" en torno a los cuidados. Además, el modelo detecta tasas relevantes de terreno para la instalación de tecnologías renovables y sensibles intercambios entre la promoción del empleo y la modificación del suelo. Estas ideas podrían mejorar los actuales procesos de transición justa, con carencias en su concepto y diseño, diagnóstico y mecanismos de participación pública. Finalmente, aumentamos nuestro enfoque para analizar la capacidad de los Estados de Bienestar para facilitar la transición a través de la hipótesis de la sinergia eco-social, rechazada mediante una metodología comparable que busca evitar las limitaciones previas en la literatura a través de la aplicación conjunta de algoritmos de agrupamiento jerárquicos de Ward en distancias euclídeas cuadradas y el criterio de optimalidad de Thorndike en una muestra de 23 países europeos desde 2008 hasta 2016. Los resultados ilustran que los paradigmáticos países nórdicos fallan al movilizar de manera sostenible los recursos locales y son responsables de los peores desempeños medioambientales. Paralelamente, los regímenes liberales y conservadores tienden a mostrar mejores resultados medioambientales, aunque peores situaciones sociales. Sin embargo, no hay una correspondencia clara entre las tipologías de regímenes de bienestar, la dimensión social y el estado medioambiental. A pesar del rechazo, algunos rasgos de los regímenes socialdemócratas motivan una discusión sobre bienestar sostenible y su adaptación a los niveles locales. Específicamente, hay un relevante potencial en la aplicación de rentas y servicios básicos de conservación.Escuela de DoctoradoDoctorado en Economí