Steering group Meeting

1
City of Crotone URBACT II WEED

• Steering group Meeting
• Brussels, 3-4 June 2008

2
The Crotone story

• Socio-economic situation of
  the city
• Following the sharp decline in the chemical and
  metallurgy industries, in the last two decades of
  XX century, Crotone has become a city in crisis,
  with problems deriving from industrial
  redundancies as well as others of a social and
  economic nature.
• It is in this context that a fresh strategic
  approach, based on environmental, cultural and
  economic resources, is being adopted and is
  forging a new model for development in which
  attention to cultural recovery, sustainability
  and environmental regeneration prevails.

3
The Crotone story II

• Demographic profile of the city
• Increasing trend towards concentration of the
  population in the coastal area, to the detriment
  of the inland rural areas where depopulation is
  linked to poor prospects in a backward economy.
• Large scale emigration abroad as well as to
  Northern Italy, which began to diminish only in
  the nineteen seventies, has had a lasting effect
  on the demographic situation in the city.
• Now Crotone is changing into an immigration city
  with migrants from Asia(Pakistan,China) North
  Africa and East Europe.

4
The (Crotone) story III

• Provincial Network of a Permanent Observatory on
  women entrepreneurship born on 2 July 2002.
• Network for Equal Opportunities of the Department
  for Equal Rights and Opportunities
• Regional Project STRASS  women enterprises and
  local development 
• -aim at highlighting the limits of current
  corporate approaches toward gender diversity,
  considering the valorisation of diversity as a
  strategic asset for enterprises as well as a way
  to promote social cohesion
• -promote women participation in programming FSE
  and FERS Actions 2007-2013 for Convergence Areas
• -constant monitoring of the territory through
  the exchange of information and good praxis with
  social partners and other relevant actors

5
The Crotone story IV

• Key players and stakeholders
• Regional Equality Councillors
• Provincial Equality Councillors (Law 196/2000)
  one for the Region and two for each province
• Provincial and Municipal Commissions for Equal
  Opportunities
• Provincial and Municipal Chairmanships.
• Womens groups and associations .
• Their role is to design, promote the
  implementation of, execute,
• monitor, evaluate, advocate and mobilise support
  for policies
• aiming at equality between women and men.

6
What are the main challenges the subject is
facing in Crotone?

• Integrating gender perspectives in legislation,
  public policies, programmes and projects
• Programming actions against violence against
  women or for the integration of women on the
  labour market, which are still necessary to
  counterbalance existing discrimination and
  inequalities between women and men in all areas
  of life.
• Improving promotion, monitoring, co-ordination
  and evaluation of the process of gender
  perspective and mainstreaming in all policies,
  programmes and projects.
• Fighting against inadequate financial and human
  resources combined with a lack of political will
  and commitment, the lack of training as well as
  continuing gender stereotyping and discrimination
  which are also important obstacles to the
  efficiency of gender equality policies

7
Plans to address the challenges

• Promoting the knowledge about existing
  machineries dealing with womens rights and
  gender equality, as well as, in some cases, a
  lack of visibility of their work.
• Giving more publicity to their work, but also to
  more monitoring and evaluation.
• Reducing the gaps in the implementation of gender
  mainstreaming fighting against the through lack
  of a coherent strategy, reliable methodology,
  financial resources and a clearly stated
  political will and commitment. The use of gender
  mainstreaming as an alibi for inaction or worse
  for eradicating of positive action calls for
  attention and monitoring.
• Making it clear that Gender mainstreaming is not
  a goal in itself, but it is one of the strategies
  besides specific institutional mechanisms,
  programmes, policies and positive actions to be
  used to achieve the goal to transform society in
  support of womens rights.
• Making institutional mechanisms play a role of
  capacity builders for gender equality at
  different levels and make them develop methods,
  instruments and tools for gender mainstreaming,
  gender impact assessment, gender budgeting and
  training

8
Transnational experience

• Daphne strengthening transnationalcooperation in
  assistance to victims of trafficking
• URBAN II Pink Network against Violence
• Aiming to improve assistance and support to women
  victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation,
• Building on strengthened cooperation between
  NGOs, police, judiciary, and public authorities.
• Focusing on assistance to women victims of
  trafficking.
• Promoting a greater awareness in the province on
  sex trafficking, better cooperation at provincial
  and regional levels between NGOs and different
  government agencies, and the concrete improvement
  of assistance and services to women victims of
  trafficking.