The Promotion of Gender Equality within Local Development ...

The promotion of gender equality within local development processes: Italyreference experts in a network for each specificterritory involved in the Pacts, is significant also interms of the reproducibility and sustainability ofthe experiences planned and implemented,activating a gender reasoning within.The other experiences found in this category arecharacterized in just the same way by having“brought to the network” women operating in thedifferent territories increasing the possibility todevelop synergic actions, to promote the femaleparticipation in decision-making processes andto speed up and give visibility to the gendermainstreaming processes.In particular, we refer to the project “Rete delleReti” and to the project “Women agreement”.In the first case, the most innovative element isthe formalization, within the Union of ItalianProvinces (UPI), of the Equal opportunitiesConsult constituted by all the women elected tothe Italian Provincial Councils. The formalizationof such body at a provincial level is positive initself because it promotes gender sensitive actionsin favour of local development in each territory.The provinces represent, in Italy, the territorieswhere the possibilities are the greatest (also at alevel of competency) for taking measures on thevarious policies (territorial, environmental, etc.)that together influence local development.However, the Advisory also made it possible toconstitute the Rete delle Reti internally (and theWeb portal Rete delle Reti, used to disseminateand increase knowledge on experiences andprojects going on in the national territory) whichrepresents the construction of a permanentadvisory structure for consulting equalopportunities networks started on the Italianterritory at the provincial level.Women agreement, promoted by the cooperativeFIDET, also manages a network of local actorsdistributed both at a provincial level andmunicipal, with the involvement of differentmunicipalities on issues such as the relaunchingof female employment in the Centre-South of Italy(Lazio, Marche and Calabria are the Regionsinvolved in this project) and the reconciliationbetween family and working life.Finally, there are two extremely interestinginitiatives (both undertaken in Southern Italy) tofoster the female presence within the regionalorganizational structures.We refer, in this case, to the guiding act on genderequality in the election of political positions in theCouncil of the Region of Campania and theconstitution of the network of departmentalwomen representatives in the Region of Sicily.In the first case, the initiative, if opportunelyimplemented, could prove to be extremely importantfor fostering the female presence in allthe decision-making fields, even where there is alack of the national legislation that explicitlypromotes the principle of 50-50 in therepresentation of the two genders.In the second case, the creation of a network ofgender representatives within each Departmentin the Region of Sicily, allows it to preside from agender point to view over the decisions inherentto the policies to be implemented in all theregional intervention sectors, thus contributing,to the increase in the female presence within thestructure. The network will only be able to acteffectively once some barriers in the functioningmethods are overcome.The lessons that can be learned from projects suchas these are various and bring to light bothpositive and critical elements that could benefitfrom careful monitoring:1) above all they demonstrate the need to “createnetworks,” to get people “around a table” thatoperate at various levels and can benefit fromexchange experiences by developing stronglearning processes. This is extremely importantin a territory like Italy where there is a stronglack of homogeneity between the territoriesthat, in the case of gender themes, takes on36