Training and empowering women for smart, sustainable and inclusive rural life

Women play a major role in civil society and in the economic growth of rural areas: they are a driving force for their maintenance, conservation and development, both in cultural and socioeconomic terms. They not only contribute to the preservation of traditions but they also represent a considerable proportion of the workforce in the labour market and strengthen the countryside in the face of a constant process of depopulation. The function played by women in help to maintain vibrant communities and viable businesses is crucial for the development and sustainability of the rural areas. Despite their crucial contribution, rural women still face numerous economic, social, cultural and educational challenges. More concretely, the gender gap caused by difficulties accessing the labour market, the unequal treatment as regards employment opportunities, job remuneration and participation in decision-making is wider in rural areas.The access to lifelong learning, the opportunity to validate skills acquired in a non-formal environment, and to re-train and to acquire knowledge, skills and competences that can be used in a dynamically developing labour market are crucial prerequisites for increasing women’s employment and living conditions in rural areas.In this context, the RuralFemmes project seeks the empowerment and support of women through the promotion and improvement of their training and education. The partners will work together to transnationally design, implement and evaluate a training and coaching programme addressed to rural woman workers, based on their own identified needs.The main project result will be a tailor made training and coaching programme addressed to rural women to acquire and foster key skills and competences for their daily work and life. The training experience will allow women workers not only to acquire key competences useful at work and for their daily life, but also some skills and capacities to increase their job opportunities in key rural economic activities, other than “traditional” agriculture. It will structured in two main groups:• Basic transversal skills: to train final beneficiaries in key basic competences (mathematical, digital and entrepreneurial skills, communication, learning to learn, etc.), prioritising to the identified necessities. • Specific technical competences to up skill/reskill women workers in their economic sector of interest: sustainable agriculture, tourism, entrepreneurship. Given that the training contents will be based on the needs analysis carried out at regional level, the programme will emphasize its transnational character, so that it can be applied and transferred to other European countries.From the qualitatively point of view, the project will:• Identify and analyse the main needs and challenges faced by working women in rural areas. Such needs will focus on the field of training, although the social, economic and cultural components will be properly addressed.• Create and implement a training programme based on the analyses carried out at the regional level, in a way that responds to the needs and challenges identified by both the final beneficiaries and other relevant stakeholders.• Highlight, recognize and give viability to the role played by women in both the rural labour market the society; and promote gender equality processes both in training and in the presence of women in the agricultural labor market and in related sectorial associations and networks.• Formulate and propose recommendations that can improve policies related to fostering education and training for rural women and achieving gender equality.RuralFemmes will achieve the following results during the project lifetime:• A personalized training scheme, the RuralFemmes training programme.• A transnational composite analysis on the educational, socio-economic and cultural needs and challenges of women in rural areas.• Four regional analysis on target groups’ needs.• At least 160 interviews with the target group and some focus groups with rural women.• The formation of regional support groups, the women’s support think tanks, composed of relevant stakeholders and women’ representatives in each partner country.• Pilot training courses (at least 48 beneficiaries) in the 4 participating countries.• Creation and update of a project website and connection and interaction in social networks.• A project video.RuralFemmes has been built based on their technical capacities, communication skills, geographical balance and direct contact to the final beneficiaries. The partnership gathers a pool of expertise in adult learning, rural development, entrepreneurship and women support as well as wide experience in management of transnational cooperation projects. The project partnership is composed of relevant institutions from 4 EU countries (France, Ireland, Germany and Spain).