In the third quarter of 2017, the RIPESS working group “Women&SSE – SSE with a Gender Perspective” launched and planned a series of webinars on diferent topics of interest that had been identified by the participants from different continents, aimed at promoting a multicultural exchange on these topics. See the agenda and get information here.

Each session aims to be translated into concrete actions, and the ongoing 2018-2020 RIPESS agenda provides a good opportunity for doing this. The idea is to propose concrete tools / approaches to RIPESS members, but also to all people / organizations interested in participating. This is on the basis that we believe that taking gender equality into account is an essential condition for the development of Social and Solidarity Economy.

There is a significant amount of work to be done, given that women make up 70% to 80% of the workforce in the Social and Solidarity Economy and play a leading role economically, socially and politically. Equality between women and men is is far from being realised, especially in terms of pay equity, diversity of career choices, recognition of women’s realities, or access to economic and political resources. We nevertheless hope that the action plan that is emerging will contribute to ensuring that everyone, at all levels, and in different countries and continents will move forward in that direction.

First session: Declaration of equality between women and men, September 12th, 2017

 

In May 2017, Le Chantier de l’Économie Sociale in Quebec adopted a “Declaration on Equality between Women and Men“. Béatrice Alain, Director of Partnerships and Development at Le Chantier, and one of the main architects of both the process and the Charter, shared the steps taken to adopt such a declaration. She mentionned that this dynamic is broadly based on the development of solidarity, equity and diversity. Since then, Chantier has shared this declaration with territorial networks and SE companies in the field. The aim is for actors to transform it into concrete commitments and practices.

To take action:

  • we strongly encourage all networks working in the Social and Solidarity Economy to adopt a declaration that promotes gender equity, such as that of the Chantier declaration. RIPESS, in its new action plan proposes to disseminate such initiatives, or even to support RIPESS members who would like to take this work further.

RIPESS proposes to support its members so that they can adopt a charter that promotes gender equality.

Second session: SSE training tools with a gender perspective, December 13th, 2017

 

Quartiers du monde and Femmes du monde – the network of solidarity women entrepreneurs have been involved for over four years in the construction of entrepreneurial resources that integrate the gender perspective at all stages of collective enterprise development. The fact is that there are many training and support resources but few or none that fully integrate the gender perspective.

Ada Bazan from Quartier du Monde and Ethel Coté from Femmes du monde shared the structure, the methodology and the “empowerment” approach of the practical guide that will be released in Spring (we are planning to promote it). Ethel and Ada had recently returned from a train-the-trainer session based on these tools that they delivered to the Mali SSE network (RENAPESS). Each tool has already been tested on 4 continents. They said: “We think outside the box because all this work is undertaken thanks to the contribution of the members of this young network of solidarity women entrepreneurs”.

To take action:

  • In addition to this new practical guide, the Women and SSE group is studying how to promote train-the-trainer for the RIPESS member networks once he guide has been released.
  • RIPESS and its partner, socioeco.org are working on compiling and making a directory of SSE training tools (see the our page Education to SSE, and the pedagogical tools from socioeco.org) , as well as SSE training with a gender perspective by the Women&SSE group.

Please send us any support that seems relevant to you.

– Join our next Webinar on February 13th –

 

We also invite you to join the next webinar on February 13th . It will focus on the gender perspective and the feminist economy, and we will have the pleasure of receiving several activists and experts from the RIPESS network on this topic, including: Julie Matthaei from US SEN (USA) and Maria Atienza de Andrés from REAS (Spain). Please register on the Facebook event.

 

Laure Jongejans