The Promotion of Gender Equality within Local Development ...

3.Institutions and regulation3.1. Equal opportunitiesand local developmentThe possibility to integrate equal opportunitiesobjectives within local development issue iscomplicated by the difficult definition of this fieldof intervention, both because of the multiplemeanings that can be attributed to it, and to thevariety of policies that can contribute to constituteit. In fact, the design of local developmentinterventions, in the Italian tradition, presentsmany differences and it is the product of a varietyof pilot experiences, based on a bottom-upapproach, and this makes it difficult to reach aunique definition.The Italian economic development path isdistinguished by its territorial differences and byan idea of development strongly tied to a territory’sability to produce wealth.Several studies on the subject - from the analysisof the industrial districts to the more recent oneson the local productive systems- have underlinedhow the prosperity of an economy is tied, beyondthe competitiveness of the individual enterprises,to a more general competitiveness of the territory.This means that the socio-economic developmentdoes not exclusively depend on the availability ofmaterial factors (such as infrastructures) and theexistence of a competitive advantage for theproductive system, but also on the so-calledrelational factors which are part of local realities(trust in relationships between economic,institutional, social actors, shared regulations andvalues). These are summarized into the conceptof social capital 7 . The main dimensions which canqualify local development are:• the territorial nature of the process so thatrelationships between actors have spatialboundaries;• the capacity to mobilize the actors and all theeconomic, environmental, social and culturalresources existing on the territory;• the vertical integration (between the differentlevels of competency, both local, national, andcommunity) and horizontal integration (amongthe different institutional, economic, and socialtypes) among different involved actors;• the innovation and learning to assist the actorsinvolved;• the sustainability over time. The presence ofthe cultural dimension in the local development7 Social capital can be considered as a pattern of relationships between actors that facilitate the achievement of cooperative interactions, reducing opportunistic behaviorsand consolidating loyalty and trust in relationships.17