What name and pronoun do you recognize yourself with? CREAF claims 28J with a campaign on felt names and pronouns

There are demands that fill the streets, and there are others that begin in almost latent gestures: how we write an email, how we introduce ourselves, how we call a person or how we avoid taking for granted what we don't know.

This 28th, International Day for the Rights of the LGTBIQA+ Community, CREAF also wants to look inward and continue to care for the rights of all people in the everyday spaces that surround us, such as work, professional relationships, forms, signatures and day-to-day conversations in corridors and laboratories.

With this in mind, the JEDI Committee of CREAF (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) together with the People Management department propose a very specific voluntary action which is to invite all the people at the center to add their pronouns to their email signature and institutional profile . The idea of the campaign is to open another window so that daily communication between workers is more respectful of their identity .

The proposal this year has been very simple: anyone who wants to can incorporate their pronouns into their email signature and internal profile. Why does this matter to us at CREAF? Because making these pronouns visible can help avoid automatic assumptions about gender, especially in an international environment like ours, where we work with very diverse people, languages and contexts.

It also gives a push to normalize that everyone can be called as they feel recognized and recognized, in coherence with their gender identity . And, of course, it is equally important not to add them, because it is also a perfectly valid option.

The pronoun campaign did not come out of nowhere. It is part of a path that CREAF has been taking for some time to move towards a safer, more inclusive and discrimination-free work environment for LGTBIQA+ people.

One of the central pieces is the LGTBIQA+ Plan 2025-2027 , the first document of its kind at the center. The plan was born out of Law 4/2023, which requires organizations with more than 50 people to adopt specific measures in this area. But at CREAF, the idea has not been just to “comply with what is required”, but to take advantage of this framework to listen better and put in order measures that can have a real impact. “ I wanted to listen to the LGTBIQA+ community and build the plan together, so that it responds to real needs. Without their voice, this plan would not make sense ”, explains Teresa Rosas, head of Academic Talent and Gender at CREAF.

The result? A plan that is organized into five areas: equal access to employment , classification and promotion, training and awareness , inclusive work environments, and social permits and benefits . In addition, it also incorporates a glossary with concepts such as sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or intersexuality. Because before transforming and changing practices, it is necessary to understand well what we are talking about.

In recent years, CREAF has been adding actions along these lines. For example, a training for the center's staff carried out with PRISMA , an association that works for affective, sexual and gender diversity in science, technology and innovation. Also the CREAFTalk by Brigitte Baptiste , biologist, international reference in biodiversity and trans woman, who connected science, diversity and social transformation from a perspective that is as powerful as it is necessary. In addition, the center's harassment protocol incorporates a specific section on situations linked to the LGTBIQA+ collective.

Although these are all very different actions, they are all heading in the same direction: that no one has to spend extra energy explaining who they are, justifying themselves, or constantly correcting what they are called. That work can be work, and not a hostile space.