Issues across Europe

A delegation from the Agender project DP (Development Partnership) recently returned from a workshop with our German, Catalan and Italian partners in the Rhur region of Germany. This proved an extremely interesting and focussed set of working meetings. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the issues in each country and how we as a trans-national partnership can work together.

From the group that I was in an interesting issue unfolded, we were looking at women into non-traditional job roles. Across Europe this is a problem with each country having it's own set of issues, barriers and subtle differences as to why women are not in non-traditional roles. This comparison proved useful as we hope to learn and be informed by each others different approaches to breaking down these barriers.

The work I am doing in the project is looking at the journey of the participants, the soft indicators, capturing the distance travelled, i.e how they as individuals have grown in for example self-confidence, aspirations and ability to confidently enter a job which has otherwise been a male-domain. The approach to this work will be to interview the beneficiaries throughout the process, their trainers and organisations involved. What emerged in Germany was that this approach, if captured in the right format, could be a useful tool for raising awareness amongst other women. i.e. those beneficiaries’ become role models.

From an international perspective this gave out to some interesting issues. How well would, for example, a women from Birmingham’s experience translate? not just in terms of language but in terms of experience and culturally, to women from other countries. A clue was given by our Catalan colleagues who had created a video of two female Electrician/plumbers being interviewed about their experiences of working in a male dominated environment, the film had English sub-titles. Although not tested out amongst UK beneficiaries the women, their stories and the challenges they'd faced were extremely engaging and their confidence and enthusiasm for their work was evident regardless of the language barrier.