Website developed with the support of the
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)

Complementary Strategies

Return to the graph

In order that training for work consolidates as an equity tool and promote an equality conditions and opportunities between the people, it is essential to design and implement methodologies and specific actions, as well as to assign resources to attend the different situations of the various populations and thus contribute towards to revert them.

Toolbox >> Conceptuals materials >> Strategies and application experiences >> Results and impacts

The incorporation of the gender perspective- which has been adopted by the model of policies proposed by FORMUJER as the methodological framework- allows for the identification of inequalities and factors occurring behind the unequal distribution of opportunities and resources which prevent or hinder access to and permanence in a "decent job" and a quality vocational training. Many of these inequalities are due to gender and class, cultural, and ethnic relationships, and in the same way as these are of different but interrelated natures, the strategies and approach to overcome the same should be equally diverse and put into context. Traditionally, employment and training policies have resorted to subsidies or scolarships to compensate such differences in the starting points; these have been mainly conceived as additional tools and have been managed in a standardised way. The FORMUJER Programme has led, firstly, to a revision of this instrument from the gender perspective in order to overcome those issues which prevent or limit women's access and permanence (limitations and demands deriving from child and/or senior citizen care, stereotypes and barriers which condition vocational options, access to managerial positions, to technologically novel areas, to the field of science and technology, etc.) and, then, to a reformulation of its role, aims, modes and management forms. In this way, the incorporation of training policies in the compensatory strategies component was defined and validated, directed to design and to implement a set of replies (methodologies and actions) and/or diverse pedagogic, economic, cultural or organisational contributions, which, taking into account inequalities existing in the starting point, facilitate the entry and permanence to the training programmes of people who are in a situation of social and economic disadvantage, therefore improving their employability and increasing equal opportunities. In the design and at beginning of execution of the FORMUJER Programme, a system of scolarships due to gender conditions was established to facilitate and support the participation of low income women in the training processes, as well as promoting occupational diversity. As competency-based training developed and the Occupational Project (OP) device was defined, it was found that the scolarships, in coherence with the gender perspective, could become a strategy, a didactic tool for strengthening employability competences, promoting women's power of decision and women's and men's self management capacities. Therefore, the Occupational Guidance workshops worked on how to apply the scolarships to resolve their problems and impediments to carry out their OP. Participants were encouraged to define the type of support they needed, according to their actual and different needs, creating a process of participation in which people express themselves and become involved in the analysis of their own realities and problems, as well as in the identification and management of solutions. In many cases, the solution to these needs was found collectively and mutually, (e.g. the organization of a day care centre in the work places, where the participants themselves worked in different shifts to those in which they received their training or those who had no jobs, the collective purchase of materials or equipment for an occupation or micro enterprise). The institutions also acted in co-ordination with the environment in order to support the students' instrumentation and solve the different issues (child care, transport, access to loans for self work, associative work, micro entrepreneurial work, etc.) with which they acquired experience and strengths as promoters of networks with protagonists and the environment's possibilities. Some of the competencies promoted in this way are: identification of problems in family and public spaces, acknowledgement of knowledge and resources, ability to solve problems, strengthening of decision making regarding their own income, promotion of negotiation competencies, empowerment, with its message that a subject has the right to choose and decide. This concept of Compensatory Strategies, which replaced subsidies, and as a didactic tool, was added to the Occupational Project methodology and interacts with the Articulation with the settings component in order to work with the possibilities it offers to solve the participants' needs and expectations: it enables a better focusing in the target population and in the personalization of the training process; it provides a clear message regarding the existence of employability dimensions which do not depend solely on the person, but which may be influenced by such person and by the institutions; it promotes changes in the role of training and its co-ordination with local development for creating proposals which are territorially feasible; it strengthens association capacities and personal institutional links; it improves the assignation and participation management of resources and financing; from the gender perspective, as well as facing up to economic and social inequalities, it is complemented with Occupational Guidance to revert segmentation and discrimination, consolidating a proactive policy for modifying stereotypes in the private and public labour context; it is applied not only to occupational emergency and struggle against poverty programs, but in equity promotion ones as well.

 

The Inter-American Centre for Knowledge Development in Vocational Training (ILO/Cinterfor)
Avda. Uruguay 1238 - Montevideo - Uruguay - Tel: (5982) 908 6023 - 902 0557 - 908 0545 - Fax: (5982) 902 1305
webmaster@cinterfor.org.uy

Copyright © 1996-2008 International Labour Organisation (ILO) - Disclaimer