Digital competences for women in rural areas to increase their entrepreneurial opportunities and employability. Towards inclusion through entrepreneurship. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Digital competences for women in rural areas to increase their entrepreneurial opportunities and employability. Towards inclusion through entrepreneurship.

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Gender equality / equal opportunities; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal)

Project Summary

Today, European rural environments have to deal with three major challenges:
– Low economic diversification – loss of the weight of agriculture as an activity;
– High rates of unemployment – especially among young people and women; and
– Depopulation and ageing of the population.
These three trends are leading rural areas to a disadvantage, with a severe negative effect on those who choose to remain in them. Women from rural areas still being the collective more vulnerable:
a) They have higher unemployment rates (11,4% – EUROSTAT 2018);
b) The activity and employment rates of women remain lower than those for men and the difference in employment rates between men and women is about 13% (Employment indicators 2020 – EU)
c) Traditionally there are still taking care of tasks (housekeeping, family, help on family farms, etc.) that are still considered informal.
In addition, only 35% of women in Europe are in charge of family farms (compared to 65% of men).
But, the rural areas also offer also opportunities for women collective. The social needs can promote the creation of new jobs in occupations that previously were considered “informal occupations”. So, entrepreneurship can be an opportunity not only to deal with the employment gap but also to empower rural female enhancing their employability.
The digital transformation offers immense opportunities for economies and societies. However, the benefits of the digital transformation are currently not equally balanced between societal groups and genders and access, use and ownership of digital tools are not gender-neutral.
Therefore, it is of utmost importance to foster women’s acquisition of digital skills to enable their participation in today’s digital society on an equal basis, as digital technologies can significantly improve women’s capabilities to join the labour market and carry out actions of entrepreneurship.
However risk aversion, scarce access to seed funding, and rigid social and economic structures which limit the accumulation of funds can jeopardise entrepreneurship propensity of individuals.
Considering the above described situation, seven organisations from six different European countries and coordinated by AFAMMER (ES) have gathered to launch the BRIDGING THE GAP initiative.
The project BRIDGING THE GAP main objective is to develop new digital knowledge, skills and competences for women in rural areas in order to increase their entrepreneurial, employability and employment opportunities, at the same time fighting the gender digital divide.
Based on this main objective, the following operational objectives are defined:
– To define a training path for the empowerment of rural women through the development of ICT skills for entrepreneurship.
– To identify the different actors in the training process and provide them with a clear pedagogical approach.
– To create an intervention framework for the training where all the agents involved participate and collaborate.
– To build an online platform that allows and ensure the training process.
This intervention structure will respond and act on the following strategic objectives:
* Developing the ICTs competencies of rural women entrepreneurs.
* Bringing ICT training closer to the target group, enabling their empowerment and contributing to fighting the gender digital divide
* Fostering rural women’s employability through ICT skills development.
Addressed to rural female entrepreneurs (women from rural areas who accepts challenging role to meet their personal needs and become economically self-sufficient), the project will develop a MOOC that will enable the upskilling of rural women in ICTs. The MOOC Bridging the Gap will be available as an Open Educative Resource in October 2022.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 280787 Eur

Project Coordinator

Asociación de Familias y Mujeres del Medio Rural & Country: ES

Project Partners

• DRAMBLYS
• INSTITUTUL NATIONAL DE CERCETARE STIINTIFICA IN DOMENIUL MUNCII SI PROTECTIEI SOCIALE
• Ce.F.A.S. – Centro di Formazione ed Alta Specializzazione
• INTERACTIVE MEDIA KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER INTERMEDIAKT
• WOMEN IN DIGITAL INITIATIVES LUXEMBOURG ASBL
• A & A Emphasys Interactive Solutions Ltd