REPAIR

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Realising the Potential of Abandoned Military Sites as an Integral part of Sustainable Urban Community Regeneration

Realising the Potential of Abandoned Military Sites as an Integral part of Sustainable Urban Community Regeneration
Gender equality is a key challenge in the strategy the European Union is implementing for economic growth and employment. The “Europe 2020” strategy sets a goal of a 75% employment rate from women and men between the ages of 20 and 64, and the European Commission’s strategy for equality between women and men (2010-2015) recommends “using the potential and the reservoir of women’s talents more intensely and more effectively in order to increase economic and commercial benefits.” However, achieving these objectives remains compromised by obstacles that women face on the labour market and in their business creation projects. The involvement of cities remains an approach that is rarely supported, even though it is a key factor of progress. A considerable challenge for the partners was to juggle between their initial objectives and a context of economic crisis that was hardly favourable in order to make gender equality a local policy priority.
The main objective of WEED is to provide capacity building for professional development on the issue of women and economic and local development. To this end we will establish a transnational exchange programme in order to facilitate transfer of policy, planning and good practices.
The project will focus on a number of issues:
Gender equality and the labour market: Much can be done at a local level to better employ women's potentials. Cities, in particular, should become more women friendly locations, by developing and supporting measures which: promote a life cycle approach to work, help reconcile work and private life, tackle women's unemployment, promote equal opportunity in the workplace and the labour market, and clearly confront discriminatory practices.
In the past our city has had very positive and successful experiences working with other European cities and we are pleased to be once again involved in a transnational exchange programme. The theme of our network Women, Enterprise, Employment in Local Development is an important subject for our city and we hope to share and learn from each others experiences and to develop solutions that can be adapted to our local context.
In Celje women play a significant part in the labour market and make up around 45 % of the employment rate. However among the biggest 50 private companies in Celje only 8 are officially led by women (16%). Within the framework of the WEED project we would like to address this issue and explore how the level of women owned and run businesses can be increased. We also would like find ways of how to best promote women interest and involvement in new technologies and/or science which is a newly developing sector in our region.
Through transnational sharing and analysis of examples of effective actions and Local Action Plans, the partner cities of the WEED project were able to develop new solutions to counter the obstacles that women face in employment, entrepreneurship and innovation.
Municipalities have a role to play in supporting women and their entrepreneurial projects:
At a local level, it is possible to act on the quality of women’s employment:
Gender inequality in the knowledge economy can be overcome by:
Throughout the WEED project, the partner city network organised working meetings on the three major topics that served as a framework for developing their Local Action Plans. These meetings led to the publication of collections of good local practices led by eight partner cities as well as by other European and North American municipalities. These documents represent a lasting source of ideas for cities that would like to launch similar projects.
Identifying and developing integrated local actions that improve women’s situation in employment, entrepreneurship and the knowledge economy are key to this thematic network. It is clear that the role that women play in terms of local regeneration is crucial, however, urban regeneration has always been a predominantly male affair. In particular, this network will focus on the key issues of: women and entrepreneurship, women in research and knowledge economy, gender inequalities in the workplace and the labour market.
Cooperate among partners to optimise a sustainable, and affordable supply of housing and to assure social cohesion through social mix and sustainable housing.