Empowering women, transforming regions: WINning together!

The Danube Region is considered an area with above-average gender inequalities in the employment sector. Unemployed women outnumber unemployed men especially in highly industrialised peripheral regions. Economic activities in such regions are traditionally concentrated in mining, manufacturing and engineering, which were predominantly male-dominated. Those traditional norms continue to shape narrow labour markets, which can reinforce gender stereotypes (e.g. men occupy high-skilled jobs, while women work in low-skilled jobs). The recent COVID-19 crisis has exposed and even exacerbated the problem of gender inequality in labour markets through the sudden increase in women's unpaid care work. The manifested problem of gender inequality and the resulting vulnerability of women in finding adequate and well-paid jobs appears to be a persistent and intractable problem that has not yet been effectively addressed by any country in the Danube Region. The overall objective of the project WIN is to improve the position of women workers in peripheral industrial regions, contributing to more accessible, inclusive and effective labour market for women. In this way, the project aims to open up new employment opportunities for all women and remove cultural and institutional barriers that prevent women from realising their professional potential. The expected impact is to bring about positive change in terms of 1) a better understanding of women's specific needs and skills gap on the one hand, and cultural and institutional barriers on the other, which together contribute to gender inequality, 2) empowering women with the necessary tools and opportunities to increase their professional potential, 3) improving the socio-economic development of peripheral industrial regions throughout the Danube Region, and 4) more effective policy-making at different spatial levels that can adopt more inclusive measures and practices, bringing down institutional barriers. The project WIN proposes a three-step transnational approach. First, the project aims to deepen the understanding of women’s challenges in labour markets by focusing on their needs and institutional barriers via transnational overview/analysis, networking and knowledge exchange. Second, the project aims to implement 7 pilot actions in different peripheral industrial regions by developing, testing and reflecting the overarching concept of social innovation, while enabling regional diversification. Third, the project aims to increase public and private institutional capacities by focusing on innovative awareness-raising campaigns and tailor-made policy-making on local, national and EUSDR level. Following this approach, the WIN project will contribute to more socially equitable, accessible and inclusive labour markets in peripheral industrial regions. The transnational approach is needed to address shared challenges of marginalisation of peripheral places, social exclusion of women and out-migration of women’s workforce that has not yet been adequately addressed by any national or regional government in the Danube Region. The main outputs of the WIN project include several jointly developed solutions, pilot actions, local/regional action plans and policy recommendations, supported by the strong WIN network structure cooperating across borders and the joint WIN awareness-raising campaign to promote gender equality and women's skills in the labour markets of peripheral industrial regions. The jointly developed solutions relate to the methodological toolkit for developing social innovations to promote women's employment in peripheral industrial regions, which is being tested by WIN Innovation Groups in 7 pilot areas in AT, BIH, BU, CZ, HU, RS and SI. The experiences from the pilot areas are summarised in the WIN Social Innovation Booklet. The sustainability of the results in the pilot regions will be ensured through seven action plans, while key messages for the national and EUSDR levels will be delivered through tailored policy recommendations and targeted policy briefs. The results will be of primary interest to working women and women with employment potential, women's associations and associations working with women, employers, business support organisations, public authorities at different spatial levels, academia and civil society. The WIN project targets women as a vulnerable group at risk of exclusion from the labour markets of small and medium-sized industrial towns and regions with a bad reputation as "places that don't matter" or "left-behind" places characterised by economic decline and out-migration. National governments often feel powerless and rely on the spatially blind measures of European cohesion funds. The project WIN leverages macro-regional policy frameworks and mechanisms to bridge this gap by addressing the place-specific challenges of peripheral industrial regions through people-centred solutions and strategies.

WP1: Women’s needs and institutional barriers in labour markets of peripheral industrial regions

WP1 aims to deepen the understanding of women's challenges in the labour markets of peripheral industrial regions by focusing on women's needs and institutional barriers via a transnational overview, networking and knowledge exchange. The transnational overview aims to synthesise a cutting-edge theoretical understanding of the position of women in the labour markets of peripheral industrial regions and to conduct an empirical comparative study in 7 pilot areas of the Danube Region. The academic knowledge serves as a direct input for the creation of an applicative methodological toolkit for the development of social innovations to promote women's employment in peripheral industrial regions. The creation of theoretical and practical knowledge is highly supported by various forms of transnational networking and knowledge exchange (e.g. workshops, study visits, peer-review of policies, catalogue of good practises) within the WIN network and beyond.

WP2: Implementing social innovations for better labour markets for women in peripheral industrial regions

WP2 aims to implement 7 pilot actions in different peripheral industrial regions of the Danube Region by developing, testing and reflecting on the overarching concept of social innovation, while enabling regional diversification. Each pilot region will establish a WIN Innovation Group representing the project's target groups (women, employers, business support organisations, public authorities...). Each WIN Innovation Group will then focus on the respective pilot region and co-develop social innovations. To close the loop and get feedback from target groups and key stakeholders on the impact of the social innovations created, we will use human-centred evaluation tools and techniques. All findings and lessons learned from the piloting process, which includes the phases of development, testing and reflection, will be summarised in the WIN Social Innovation Booklet.

WP3: Capacity-building for women’s participation in the labour markets of peripheral industrial regions

WP3 aims to increase public and private institutional capacities for more effective and equal participation of women in the labour markets of peripheral industrial regions by focusing on innovative awareness-raising activities and effective policy-making. Awareness-raising activities aim to promote women's professional competences, skills and creative potential in order to raise their awareness of career opportunities. The core of the awareness-raising activities will be an innovative WIN awareness-raising campaign, complemented by the WIN pilot video and the transnational conference. A jointly developed campaign will have 7 national implementations allowing for modifications. The policy-making part aims to address cultural and institutional barriers that have led to gender inequality by developing 7 local/regional action plans and the policy recommendations to the EUSDR to improve the position of women in the labour markets.