The Equality for Women Measure

1
The Equality for Women Measure

• Learning for equality and social inclusion

2
Equality for Women Measure

• First introduced as Measure in Social Inclusion
  Sub-Programme of Regional OPs
• First round operates 2000 - 2004
• March 2002 reinforced through funding from the
  EHRD OP
• Positive action programme, complementing
  horizontal commitment to gender mainstreaming in
  NDP

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Equality for Women Measure

• Eight strands of activity
• Strands A-E project funding for work on
• Improve access to education, training, and
  employment, especially upskilling, for women
• Career development for women
• Entrepreneurship for women
• Disadvantaged women and women over 50
• More women participating in decision-making

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Equality for Women Measure

• Strand F gender-proofing of personnel practices,
  undertaken by Equality Authority
• Strand G National Framework Committee on
  Work/Life Balance, chaired by D/ETE
• Strand H research projects, to date includes
• Developing Women in Enterprise
• Fathers Mothers Dilemmas of Work/Life Balance
• Getting out of the House Women returning to
  employment, education training

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Equality for Women Measure

• Projects engaged in actions focused on
• Women in the economy
• Women in poverty and social exclusion
• Women in decision making
• But generally not restricted to any one area
• multi-dimensional activity
• Effectiveness efficiency of action one area
  improved by complementary actions on others

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What rate of progress do we want to achieve?

• Progress to report on many indicators of gender
  inequality
• But progress slow in many areas
• This is not inevitable!
• We choose the rate at which we progress
• EWM shows that postive action can make an
  important contribution to gender equality work

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Why is gender equality still important?

• Social justice - demand for equality will
  continue
• Also required to achieve key economic goals
• Gender inequality isnt good for men either
• Approach determines benefits of change
• A passive acceptance of inevitable change means
  we will not capitalise on the benefits of change
• An active approach, anticipating and welcoming
  change, allows us to reap maximum benefits from
  change

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An active approach how?

• Tools of active gender equality strategies
• Gender mainstreaming
• Positive action
• Complementary and mutually reinforcing
• Gender mainstreaming reduces need for positive
  action in future
• Positive action adds value to gender
  mainstreaming
• Learning from EWM relevant to both approaches

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EWM Women in the Economy

• Outreach mechanisms of particular importance when
  recruiting very disadvantaged women
• Provision of personal supports, e.g. the REACH
  personal and career development programme
• Flexible training provision
• Progression pathway planning bridging the gap
  between training and employment, including post
  placement support
• Quality matters!

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EWM Women in the Economy

• Women in management (vertical segregation)
• Women in SET (horizontal segregation)
• Labour shortages
• Women returners
• Decision making
• Gender pay gap
• An issue of horizontal, vertical segregation, WLB
• Women in business
• An untapped resource current self-employment/ent
  repreneurship supports not useful for women

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EWM Poverty Social Exclusion

• Empowerment
• At individual level
• At collective / decision-making level
• The broader equality agenda - recognising women's
  diversity
• Many projects have brought together different
  categories of women within their programmes
• Different groupings of women help to raise each
  others expectations, and to break down stigma

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EWM Decision-making

• Three layered typology used by EWM projects
  tackling womens under-representation in decision
  making
• Systems, processes and structures
• Existing membership of decision-making fora
• Women

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EWM key learning

• Its childcare stupid!
• Clear and overwhelming evidence that lack of
  affordable childcare is distorting womens
  decisions in relation to labour market and civic
  society participation decisions
• Priority now must be on an affordable supply
• Crisis is particularly acute in rural areas,
  where women rely almost exclusively on
  childminders

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EWM key learning

• Work/life balance
• In workplaces, flexible options associated with
  not being serious about career
• Similar views appear to operate in state
  sponsored employability / training interventions
• Decision making fora, meeting times etc. make
  many of these fora notoriously unfriendly to
  those with a life!

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EWM key learning

• Accomodating womens needs
• Programmes designed to address the reality of
  womens lives, and advertised as such
• Realise significant, and previously unrecognised,
  demand from women
• Demonstrates the depth of womens current
  exclusion

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EWM key learning

• Sometimes its hard to be a woman
  male-dominated environments can be hostile to
  women
• Networking allows women to share experiences,
  strategies, support each other collectively
• Mentoring at the level of the individual, women
  benefit from the experience of others
• Not a solution to gender bias in organisation

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EWM key learning

• Empowerment
• Personal facilitating women to address their own
  circumstances, participate in decisions about
  their own training, progression etc.
• Collective supporting women to become active in
  engaging with service providers, decision, and
  policy makers

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EWM key learning

• Identifying and targetting need
• Women often excluded from labour market supports
  as not entitled to social welfare
• EWM projects have developed different approaches,
  designed to meet identified need e.g. educational
  disadvangate, women returners, rural women
• Can incorporate low-income targeting

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EWM key learning

• Equality among women learning from womens
  diversity.
• Many EWM projects include women from a range of
  target groups
• Women have the opportunity to raise each others
  expectations
• Breaks down stigma associated with certain groups

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EWM key learning

• Significant additionality can be achieved by
  focused partnership / inter-agency arrangements
• Time, and cost, effective way of delivering
  integrated, one-stop-shop, services
• Customer oriented services
• Facilitates existing service providers in meeting
  new target groups