Each year, starting from 2020 funds are available from the EU to improve and increase gender equality in the EBU member organizations.
Up to three member organizations per year can apply for and participate in this project. In doing this you have to conduct activities in your organization to increase the awareness of extended gender in all decision-making bodies, train and promote members, most often women to participate to a greater extent and make their voices heard. A general outcome that EBU would like to see when the project is terminated in each country is that there are plans and actions decided on how the organizations shall continue to work with gender.
In 2021 GEAR was conducted in Germany, Iceland and Montenegro.
Reports of what has taken place in 2021 and 2020 are available upon request to Romain FERRETTI, EBU Project Manager, at ebuprojects@euroblind.org.
In this article we will quote information from Iceland. In spite of the late start of their activities they have managed to do a lot and they have a substantial number of insights useful for others.
We hope that this will inspire other EBU members to join this project!
Eva Nilsson, GEAR project leader, Eva.nilsson@srf.nu
Swedish association of the visually impaired, SRF
Iceland joined the GEAR project first in the middle of the year and started the activities in the autumn. Rhetoric training and coaching were the activities valued most. The self-confidence of the participants has grown and therefore they have formed a group of women in different ages who are eager to keep on working together in the future. They can support each other and inspire each other. This is important even though we already have a gender equality committee.
We managed to arrange all the activities face to face and asked the participants to take a rapid antigen test at home. In that way everybody felt safe.
The fact that men hardly participated in this project even though they were encouraged to do so shows that gender equality is women´s issue. It is a pity since it reveals the real situation in these matters: specially in the Nordic countries we have reached a lot – we have a good gender balance in the boards in our organizations – but that is not enough. We need to get both men and women involved in these matters to continue this work.