Practical
examples - Equal Opportunities
The transnational GM tool factory
Joining forces for gender mainstreaming - GM
"We created a strong culture of working together and this is why we were
able to generate added value through our transnational cooperation." This statement was made at a steering group meeting of the
Pro(e)quality Transnational Partnership (TP) and it is a sentiment shared by all
its members. The TP linked EQUAL Development Partnerships (DPs) from five
countries. More than 20 organisations including NGOs, companies, universities,
employers' organisations, trade unions and public authorities were involved in
the national DPs that worked together for a time span of three years. They were
all committed to making equality a reality for women and men, regardless of
their ethnic or cultural backgrounds. Although the national projects that were
implemented in Austria,
Germany,
Poland,
Portugal and
Slovakia had different priorities, they complemented each other in ideal
ways. Between them, the DPs covered the most crucial gender equality issues and
developed instruments to help different key players to face structural change,
whilst taking account of gender equality. The tools, which were developed
jointly, are designed to promote and reinforce action in four major fields:
- tackling barriers to implementing gender equality at
company and institutional level;
- strengthening women's labour market participation and
overcoming horizontal and vertical segregation through positive action;
- facilitating the use of gender mainstreaming and/or
diversity management in personnel departments of companies and organisations;
and
- promoting strategies for achieving gender equality on the
labour market and in all spheres of society.
The five DPs established three types of working structures for the smooth
running of their activities and to ensure that these led to optimal outcomes.
These included the Transnational Steering Committee (SC), four Working Groups
(WGs) and an evaluation team. The TP insisted on the balanced involvement
of all countries, and so all the DPs shared the tasks through, for instance,
rotating the SC Secretariat and taking on different responsibilities in the WGs.
These structures and a well-defined work programme clearly enhanced the
intercultural competencies of, and the communication between, TP members. "It
was interesting to learn about different national traditions and current
political developments and debates, and how these aspects influence the
respective gender mainstreaming and diversity approaches", says Irina Meyer,
the transnational coordinator of the German DP DiverCity and describes some
results of that learning process: "We learnt to be sensitive to language and
terminology, especially terminology. Even between Austria and Germany there have
been differences when the participants were speaking of quality criteria, gender
or diversity, because the theoretical concepts differ." Barbora Kachnikowá
from the Slovakian DP Centrum Rodových Stúdií emphasises the same point: "The
understanding of other partners is crucial, explanations of concepts and
discussions on different professional and cultural backgrounds are important and
also to spend enough time on communicating interests, needs and ideas at the
very beginning to avoid misunderstandings later on."
Tools, tools, tools
When asked what they see as the added-value of transnational cooperation, all
TP partners came up with the same answer: "Placing the joint development of
gender mainstreaming tools at the heart of the partnership was simply the best
thing amongst all the valuable experiences we made". Four tools[1]
have been developed. Three of them are guidebooks that are provided as print
products and PDF downloads from the TP partners' websites. Currently these
documents exist only in English, but translations in Portuguese, Polish and
Slovakian will soon be available.
Tool number 4 is a web-based "International Knowledge
Management System on Gender Diversity" which will be available on a learning and
communication platform that is organised as a
Wiki system.
The system is a
common
product of the German DP and the Pro(e)quality TP. The coordination of the
development process is handled by the German project and considerable input has
already been provided by its partner organisations. Transnational partners have
also fed the Wiki with background information, learning materials and best
practice examples related to gender equality, gender mainstreaming and diversity
management. During the final period of the projects' lifespan they are all busy
storing national and transnational achievements on the Wiki and to also adding a
vast array of background information related to theoretical approaches to gender
mainstreaming, relevant legislation, policies and practices existing in the
participating Member States. "Now is the time to broaden the range of the
Wiki even further", says Duscha Rosen the DiverCity DP's products
coordinator: "
A lot of activities have taken place, (...) lessons were learnt
in the framework of the national projects. We would like to see them all on the Wiki, learn from them and disseminate them in a European context." For the
time being the Wiki is available just to the members of Pro(e)quality who are
currently testing it. Once the test runs are completed the system will be open
to a wider public such as people who are interested in gender equality and
diversity issues. After the end of EQUAL the Wiki stands a good chance to
receive funding from the German Telekom and thus be able to survive and grow.
The TP was very aware that producing ready made tools would probably limit
the scope of their application. "By developing principles and criteria rather than tools we
tried to facilitate transfer to different fields of action", explains
Veronika Weisskircher, the transnational coordinator of the Austrian
qe→gm (Qualitätsentwicklung Gender Mainstreaming) DP. She goes on to explain "to
avoid remaining on a merely general level – which may be the danger when
developing principles – the application of our principles is illustrated through
case studies from all the countries involved. The quality criteria for gender
and diversity training can be used in a large variety of training contexts, as
can those for national practices of public funding which also exists in a large
number of fields."
A performing production process
Each tool was developed and tested by a working group which consisted of project
managers, experts and representatives of the DPs' operational, and in some case
also strategic, partners. This arrangement had two major advantages. It allowed
each project to involve a significantly larger number of partners than would
have been possible if just those in charge of transnationality had been
participating. "Everybody benefited from this approach", says Veronika.
For her the main asset was the opportunity to create common products in an
international team "as operational
partners we gained new insights and skills through a very goal oriented
exchange of experience in the course of defining and clarifying different
approaches and agreeing on a common product that all partners consider useful in
the context of their national work."
Moreover, the working group included people who were from those key players or
organisations that are being targeted by the different tools. Their
contributions helped to define and fine-tune aims and methods of the intended
tools. They were also "guinea pigs" when it came to assessing whether the new
products were attractive and meaningful for the target audiences. Marta
Rawłuszko who is the transnational co-ordinator of the Polish Gender Index
DP emphasises the benefits for those who were actively involved in the
production process: "They saw a direct link between transnationality
and better development of their everyday activities, for example, in the case of
the tool on quality standards in gender training that has been produced by
working group 4, the Polish partners very often work in training and adult
education so that, on the one hand, they could provide the working group with
their expertise and experiences in the field, but on the other hand, they
possess now a transnational product that enriches their work."
Anita Sares, the SG
member representing the Portuguese Diálogo Social e Igualdade nas Empresas
project pinpoints what the joint production process meant to her: "It was a
very interesting and important experience, a process of learning, sharing and
agreement, not only in terms of contents but also of understanding of the
different ways to work and think about the issues. It was a great opportunity to
exchange experience and knowledge."
In some cases national
partners involved in transnational cooperation considered the development of the
transnational products as the most interesting part of the whole EQUAL project.
According to Marta Rawluszko this
is due to key features of that work such as multicultural environment, different
experiences, new ideas and new approaches to topics of common interest.
Lat but not least, it is
also important to note that the strategic partners in the various countries
which supported the DPs but were not directly involved in their activities
highly appreciated being provided with products that reflect an international
state-of-the art on the discussion of quality in Gender Mainstreaming and
Diversity Management.
Synergies between transnational and national tools
For all partners the link between national and transnational activities was an
important priority. Not everybody chose like Austria and Germany to participate
in all transnational working groups. Other projects selected one or two working
groups whose intended outcomes sounded promising and likely to improve what had
been planed "at home".
There are many examples that show how the rationale of give and take applied by
the TP has provided advantages for current and future activities of the national
partners. The Austrian DP
provided the concept of the "Circle of Gender
Diversity Management" which was used as kind of blueprint for the definition of
the ten principles presented in the guidebook "Principles for the Successful
Implementation of Equality Measures". Austrians and Germans introduced their
proven approaches to successful knowledge management into the development of the
Wiki system and the Germans benefited from the Austrian experiences with
introducing a gender dimension into public tendering. In terms of expertise in
gender training, partners from the old Member States supplied a wealth of good
practice to those which had more recently joined the EU. However, Slovakia and
Poland brought fresh perspectives to the discussions on training, especially as
they were both represented by experts in gender issues. The main focus of the
Portuguese and Polish DPs on establishing gender equality in the daily reality
of private companies was of high interest to all other partners, since it is the
business world that has the most important role to play when it comes to
implementing equal treatment in the labour market.
For instance, a study tour undertaken by a Polish group to the Netherlands (the
Dutch partners withdrew early from the TP) yielded fruitful lessons and
practical tips for improving the training programmes entitled "How to manage an
equal opportunity company" developed thanks to EQUAL. "These programmes are
provided to Polish employers in the framework of our national activities",
reports Marta Rawłuszko and explains that "the concept of diversity
management is little known in Poland. Moreover, as we have little experiences
with offering training to employers that is related to gender equality and the
workplace, transnational partners gave us deeper and very practical insights
into these issues. They also shared some very useful educational and training
materials. We were also inspired by the Dutch example of the so called
"Ambassadors' Network". This is a high profile group of Chief Executives that
promotes, by their examples and advocacy, the idea of gender equality in the
workplace among other employers. At the moment, we are planning something
similar in Poland." Already now it is visible how the training agenda and
materials were improved by the transnational experience. The evaluation of these
training courses states that they met participants' expectations, received a
good response from the business sector and that participating employers were
very satisfied with the outcomes.
This training is just one example of how the intermediate target groups of the
DPs at national level benefit from the outcomes of transnational cooperation.
Whilst employers are very important, these target groups also include decision
makers in organisations, trainers, consultants and policy makers in public
institutions. The TP partners are convinced that new insights will make it
possible for these groups to develop effective high quality measures and that
the publications which have been produced will contribute to a wide debate on
the topic of quality in equality practices. Barbora Kachnikovà from Slovakia
emphasises the importance of new EU members including quality criteria in gender
equality practices from the very beginning. She believes that "The gender
trainings are still expecting their `boom` on the market in Slovakia. We think
it is crucial to prepare the quality crieria as a tool for an umbrella
organisation and the outcomes of the training. We want professional and 'usefu' trainers in this field, and the organisations seeking this service should be
able to select the most suitable trainer or consultant to meet their
expectations."
Growing roots in mainstream systems
Achieving lasting impact and sustainability in the
'regular' training provision, labour market and economic development systems of
the participating Member States is the big challenge for the TP partner
projects. However, it is evident that their national mainstreaming strategies
are benefiting from transnational work. It raised the visibility of our
national activities (...) among the enterprises associated to our project and
helped with "marketing" our good practices", confirm Anita Sares and
Natascha Cabral from the Portuguese DP. "The involvement of enterprises is a
strategy for the sustainability and the mainstreaming of processes and products
developed by our project. To bring these enterprises to the transnational
final conference was a strategy to raise their awareness of the importance of
transnational exchange of experiences and knowledge in this domain. This
awareness will help the full integration of transnationality into future
projects."
Barbora Kachniková agrees and describes how making the national team members
work on the transnational products and present their experiences and outcomes
continuously on the national level has gradually developed that awareness.
Also,
being able to present the transnational products at the visibility event
organised in Vienna and Bratislava by Austrian and Slovakian partners in April
2007 triggered the interest of a wider audience. "There is time to keep
working with dissemination and mainstreaming strategies since our project shall
last till March 2008 ", she says and Veronika, her Austrian colleague
underlines "that the visibility of the national concern on quality in
equality measures was enhanced through the fact the new tools were not only
presented but also commented by international experts." The linking of the
two locations by a "floating conference" that took participants on a boat trip
from Vienna to Bratislava really caught the imagination of a number of key
people who had not been involved in the DPs' EQUAL activities.
This final visibility event was an important component of the steering
committee's dissemination and mainstreaming plan. This included, first of all,
the identification of and outreach to target audiences at the national level,
but also, and not least, EU policy makers and those in charge of implementing
the new ESF programmes. Renate Wielpütz, the director of FrauenComputer Zentrum
Berlin (FCZB) that coordinates the German DP is confident: "The transnational
tools focusing on gender mainstreaming in public procurement and
gender-diversity quality criteria will support decision makers in Berlin and –
hopefully – in other regions and Member States of the EU to improve the
implementation of gender mainstreaming and diversity strategies in Structural
Funds programmes. The Federal State of Berlin, for instance, will use this
transnational product to incorporate two transversal objectives in the
Operational Programme, namely 'gender equality' perceived as dual approach of
gender mainstreaming and positive actions and 'labour market integration for
migrants'." Dissemination and transfer of those valuable tools to even more
regions and Member States might also be enhanced by the results of a special
programme evaluation of the German EQUAL DPs that focussed on the
interconnections of gender mainstreaming strategies and innovation.
Whilst gender discrimination may be an old and persisting
problem, the experience and achievements of this TP prove that those committed
to promote equality have enormous potential for pushing social innovation and to
driving social change.
Contact
Irina Meyer
Renate Wielpütz
FrauenComputerZentrumBerlin (FCZB)
Cuvrystraße 1
10997 Berlin
Germany
Tel: + 49 30 617970-0
E-mail: wielpuetz@fczb.de;
meyer@fczb.de
Website:
http://www.berlin-divercity.de
[1]
For detailed information on the Pro(e)quality tools see description in
the
EQUAL Product Database
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