Gender equality and innovation – towards sustainable development and social innovation using the example of activities undertaken by the European Union

The main aim of the article is to analyse the importance of gender equality in the context of implementing social innovations and the principles of sustainable development. These processes will be shown in the context of activities undertaken at the European level and by European institutions. The main research problem of the article is to present arguments relating to the growing importance of the concept of sustainable development and social innovation, for which social order and gender equality are of key importance. Such identification of the concept of sustainable socio-economic development with social order and gender equality in the creation of contemporary innovations can be analysed in a scientific perspective with the functional theory of social change by A.R. Redcliffe-Brown and B. Malinowski. On the other hand, in practical terms it is entwined with all types of activities, strategies or programmes undertaken and implemented in the pragmatics of European Union activities (eg. Commission Work Programme 2020 “A Union that strives for more”, the Ljubljana Declaration, the Horizon Europe Programme, including "Women TechEU"). The author uses both traditional research methods as a middle-order system analysis and institutional-legal method, as well as new methods, including sociological neoinstitutionalism and network analysis. The research techniques used in the analysis are mainly quantitative techniques, i.e. desk research or analysis of existing data from databases “She Figures”, GEM, Statista.com