Mondragon Unibertsitatea adopts eight solutions for gender equity following the close of the European project Labs4Change

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Mondragon Unibertsitatea adopts eight solutions for gender equity following the close of the European project Labs4Change

European Project

Mondragon Unibertsitatea adopts eight solutions for gender equity following the close of the European project Labs4Change

A Basque-language inclusive dictionary, free menstrual products on campus and the development of two new elective courses are part of the legacy of two years of work with students and teaching staff

2026·10·19

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Mondragon Unibertsitatea has brought Labs4Change to a close. The university coordinated this Erasmus+ project, co-funded by the European Union, between 2024 and 2026. Its partners were TU Dortmund University (Germany), the University of Thessaly (Greece), the social consultancy Dinamia (Spain) and the German organisation 2811 Social Enterprise. The aim was to turn commitments to equality, diversity and non-discrimination into concrete practices within the university.

At Mondragon Unibertsitatea, the project was carried out through a Living Lab. In this social innovation laboratory, students, teaching staff and other university staff designed solutions to gender-equity challenges they identified in their own environment. Different methodologies were created and used to identify challenges and to audit universities in this field. More than 50 students took part in this participatory process.

Eight solutions, and what remains of each

  • Menstrual Rights Kit: free hygiene products and information materials in the toilets of the Irun campus.
  • Inclusive Dictionary: a digital dictionary of inclusive language in Basque, shared with students during the 2026–27 academic year.
  • Feminist Indicators: a digital tool that applies equality criteria to entrepreneurship projects in the LEINN degree. It will be integrated into all of the faculty's entrepreneurship projects from the 2027–2028 academic year.
  • Elective Courses: the development of two new elective courses on feminisms and inclusive social economy.
  • Role Wheel: a tool for company assessment processes. It helps entrepreneurial teams analyse how they share productive and reproductive tasks.
  • Catalogue of Women Entrepreneurs: a collection of female role models, compiled with LEINN students, to be made visible across the university.
  • Inclusive Space: a feminist reading corner with an active book club and visible equality resources. These include information and contacts for preventing gender-based violence, materials on co-responsibility and work–life balance, and infographics on the gender pay gap, women's leadership and women's rights.
  • Internal Training: the university has stated its intention to launch training on preventing gender-based violence for teaching and other staff from the next academic year.

From a European dimension to transnational impact

Labs4Change brought together universities and organisations from Spain, Germany and Greece, and its reach extended beyond the consortium. The project organised an open international panel with four experts:

  • Prof. Dr. Liudvika Leisyte (TU Dortmund, university governance);
  • Dr. Inés Sánchez de Madariaga (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, UNESCO Chair on Gender in Science, Technology and Innovation);
  • Dr. Yenniffer Ávalos Carrasco (Director of Gender, Equity and Diversity, Universidad de Santiago de Chile);
  • Irune Martínez Rebolledo (former Gender Advisor, Chilean Undersecretariat of Higher Education).

The Beyond Gender Academy, the project's online course, trained and certified 113 students from 25 universities in 14 countries around the world.

Locally and regionally, the Living Labs produced concrete changes on three campuses and engaged municipal and civil-society organisations. At European level, the comparison across Spain, Greece and Germany showed that the equality dimensions identified are structural and cross-border. The open tools available at labs4change.org enable other universities to replicate the model.

The final conference, held in Volos (Greece) in May 2026, included a co-creation workshop on a challenge set by the Volos Municipality Shelter for Women Victims of Violence. The Hack Your City methodology was also developed and implemented with students. It is a participatory urban audit with a gender perspective that assesses safety, accessibility and inclusion in public space through systematic observation and collaborative diagnosis. The conference was supported by local organisations, which gained new ideas and links with students and universities.

Internationally, the results were shared at ISA 2025, at the EAIR 2026 conference (Vilnius), in an exchange with UCLouvain and at the Global Indicators of Social Innovation workshop in Buenos Aires (2026). In this way, Labs4Change's learnings feed into a wider social-innovation agenda. In addition, a scientific article on the Living Labs experience will be published in SocietàMutamentoPolitica, an open-access, peer-reviewed sociology journal published by Firenze University Press (University of Florence).

Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Spanish Service for the Internationalisation of Education (SEPIE). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.