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Gender Mainstreaming in the City of Rome
The City Council of Rome passes the first "City time and timetable
plan" in 1997. It was an important step toward a new conception
of city life and gender balance in city management. the plan has four
main paths:
- Easy Rome. Simplification of the procedures to get public documents
and certificates, and setting up of an information system on city timetable
(public services, shops, emergency services and stores available during
summer time, etc.). These two goals have been achieved through three
instruments.
Internet, for those who have the access and facility to sail on the
www.
Information points in each district of Rome is available 12 hours a
day
Telephone, a special call centre, named "Call Rome 060606"
is open 24 hours a day in different language beside Italian.
- Open Rome: A big effort has been done to offer services
and opportunities at different levels also during the night or out of
their traditional timetable. Among the most important innovation
could be mentioned the call centre "Call Rome 060606" that
is open 24 hours a day and it's able to find and provide information
on different matters: services, phone numbers, social and health supply,
etc. Beside this, other three initiatives could be mentioned. Cultural
services in the evening (museums and archaeological sites); Drugstores
open 24 hours a day 365 days a year; registry offices opened until 10
p.m to get certificates also late in the afternoon or in the evening.
- Fluent Rome: Traffic is one of the most heavy trouble affecting
modern capital towns, and especially those, as Rome, that have a huge
historical area, destination of turistic flow and, in the main time,
seat of national, district and local Government. Although this issue
still remains the most challenging to face, some initiatives have been
appreciated in order to reduce the pressure of the traffic in daily
life. One of this, is Roma shuttle, a special net of urban transport
dedicated to employees, established in 1998 to facilitate their movement
from home to the office and back.
- Friendly Rome: Time banks which aims at exchanging hours
of personal time giving specific competences and services to someone
(child care, foreign language course, etc.) and receiving back something
else (daily food supply and/or queuing at post office for elderly persons,
etc.).
All of these goals produce a special added value for women, since
the social cost of an obsolete conception of time is mainly paid by women,
who are often forced to conciliate labour, family management, elderly
and child care.
As far as the internal administration is concerned, very few efforts
has been done in order to enhance women and their condition of work. Although
a special resolution establishes an internal Committee on Equal Opportunities,
it's still not functioning so far. Thus the Commission on Equal Opportunities
(which is in charge of the external interventions), together with the
Commission of elected women in the City Council, have carried out a survey
concerning "Facilitation factors and constraints affecting women
work within the local administration".
History of Gender Mainstreaming in Italy
Since 1995 - on the occasion of the International Summit on Women held
in Beijing - the gender mainstreaming issue was considered one of the
most important input to consider in setting up the public agenda as well
as in the definition of policies at all level.
In Italy, maybe because of political conjunction, this issue was introduced
in a certain delay. The most interesting resolution at national level
has been, in fact, the low n. 53 approved by the national Parliament on
March 8th of the year 2000.
In this resolution some significant point of the Beijing Platform, signed
in 1995, were introduced. Among these:
- sharing responsibilities between women and men, namely in the
management of family life and child care, by means of parental leaves
both for fathers and mothers;
- reconciliation between different sphere of life, through a
better organization of time and timetable also at city level;
- access to training and lifelong learning, also by means of
special training leaves for working women.
The resolution n. 53/00 represents a cornerstone for gender mainstreaming
policies at city level, mainly because the Mayor has the power to establish
a "City Time and Timetable Plan", calling up different
actors, such as representatives of trading workers, trade unions, municipal
police department, representatives of public services, etc.
Relationships between Local Projects and "Sister Cities Going
Gender"
Since the Municipality of Rome has chosen to focus its attention on the
issue of gender auditing in local policies, the project could be offer
the opportunity to monitor the organization of internal policies with
respect of three different items:
a) women personnel training both at high and low level, that is
identifying types of training courses, matters, competences, evaluation
processes and achievements of the training activities to be addressed
to women;
b) gender perspective in budgeting activity, that is collecting
up and analysing of some good experiences carried out by local administrations
and related to a gender perspective in budgeting activity (in terms of
definition of measures and rules aiming at strengthening women condition
in city life, for a best performance of the whole city);
c) advancement of women in decision-making position within the
municipal structure of power (at central and district level, as well as
in local companies of services), through different strategies and measures
implemented within local administration (establishment of an internal
Equal Opportunities Committee, experimentation of services addressed to
working mother, Observatory on women's career development, including facilitation
factors and obstacles facing women in leading position).
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