Tavola Rotonda Convegno 10 Dicembre 2009 Sintesi Degli Interventi

The unitary evaluation as key resource of the 2007-2013 programme. An opportunity to promote female employment

bySilvia Ciampi, Daniela Luisiand Katia Santomieri

FOREWORD

This report proposes the main results of the project “Women on the brink of revival. The evaluation and the 2007-2013 programming as a resource for the growth of female employment”, carried outunder the action lines of the ESF Evaluation Unit of ISFOL (Institute for the Development of the Vocational Training of Workers), a public research institute of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies, within the framework of the ESF evaluation activity plan[1].

The work proposes a reading of the 2007-2013 programme with thetwofold objectiveof:

-consideringthe role of the evaluation in encouraging the integrated approach to policies prompted by the new programming cycle;

-highlightingfemale employment issues, explaining how they can be tackled with an integrated approach.

The focus is on the unitary approach to the Community cohesion policy set forth in the 2007-2013 National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF)defining the Italian regional development guidelines. The unitary approachis one of the major innovations introduced by the new orientation of the structural funds. To define this approach, an important premise for tackling the complexity of the issue of female employment, the State and regions have been attempting to unify the “Community regional policy” (financed with the structural funds of the Community budget and by the national co-financing funds) with the “national regional policy” (financed by the Fund for Underutilized Areas - FUA). The new programme requires coordinated ratherthan separate financing sources, with interventions planned and implemented with an integrated and transversal approach.

The other innovative element of the new programme is the emphasis on the territorial dimension. This means taking into account the specific nature and features of the regionalcontexts as well as their impact on labour demand and supply. As the figures show, female employment indicators differ according to whether conditions are favourable or not to the presence of women in the labour market. The possibility of narrowing the gap between the Italian average for female employment and the Community target thus greatly depends onbasing policy choices forterritorial development on local problems and features (ranging from the socio-economic fabric to the provision of services for children or for the elderly).

The promotion of female employment and the unitary evaluation was studied in two stages:

1. Firstly, the analysisdesk (publishedas “Donne sull’orlo di un a possibile ripresa. La valutazione e la programmazione2007-2013 come risorsa per la crescita dell’occupazione femminile” - Women on the brink of revival. The evaluation and the 2007-2013 programme as a resource for the growth of female employment)[2],reconstructing the regional choices for allocatingfinancial resourcesand definingregional action strategiesandevaluation questionsrelative to the priority of promoting female employment in the new programming cycle.
2. Secondly, the public discussion[3]among researchers and representatives of the institutions as well asnational experts on equal opportunities and on evaluationsregarding the criticality of the participation of women in the labour market and female employment promotion policies. A key topic of this debate was the dimension of the evaluationand the support it can give when recomposing the co-financed policies.

ANAYSIS DESK

Goals

The analysis desk surveyed the instruments of the evaluation (Unitary Evaluation Plans)[4] and regional programming (ESF Regional Operational Plans and ERDF Regional Operational Plans)[5]. The aim was to analyse the space given to thedevelopment of strategies and actionsfor promoting female employment within the framework of the regional 2007-2013 structural fund programming. The quantitativeand qualitative improvement of women’s employment is a priority of the Lisbon strategy: and raising the female employment rate to 60% is a necessary step for increasing the overall employment rate (70%).All the documents defining and updating the Lisbon Strategy contain the invitation to strengthen the commitment to this target.

The main aim of the analysis was to initiate areflectionon theroleentrusted to the evaluationwithin the framework of the 2007-2013 programming. The evaluation of public policies seems the best place for launching a dialogue among the various institutional actors on the effects of the unitary regional policy and for guaranteeing abetter use of public resources. This is even more incisive in the case of human capital development policies because of their transversal nature. The evaluation in a unitary key requires coordinated perspectives and viewpoints, sharedcommitments and the involvement ofentrepreneurs, citizens and social partnership.

Method

The regional choices and strategies have been reconstructed around the priority of female employment in the new programming cycle. The Unitary Evaluation Plans (UEP), operational planning documents (ESF ROP, ERDF ROP) and the Services Objective Plans for the eight regions involved[6] have been collectively examined.

A first methodological step involved theregional choices for allocating financial resources made when defining the 2007-13 ROPs. The fundsearmarked for the promotion of female employment and their distributionare important for understanding, albeitwith the necessary limits[7], the focus of local policies on this objective. The analysis of financial data has enabled the different regions’ allocationchoices to be compared to the resources explicitly addressed to female employment (expenditure item 69[8]).

In a second stage, particular attention was paid to thereconstruction of regional action strategies. The regional interventions for promoting female employment were analysed on the basis of the parity targets fixed by the Roadmap for Equality between Women and Men[9]. TheRoadmap represents the European Commission’s commitment to drive the gender equality formula forward and mainly concerns the problems women encounter in the labour market, since it is strongly integrated with the European labour targets set forth in the Lisbon Strategy. To reconstruct the strategic lines for promoting female employment, all the elements of the regional strategywere placed under the threedimensions of the Roadmap (and relative sub-objectives) briefly listed below,mostlyaimed at promoting female employment:

-The achievement of equal economic independence for women and men through the following sub-objectives: attainingthe Lisbon targets, eliminatinggender pay gaps, supporting female entrepreneurs, accomplishingequality between women and men in social protection and in combating poverty, fighting against multiple discrimination.

-The reconciliation of private and professional lifethrough the following sub-objectives:better coordinated and more flexible working hours, improving the quantity and quality of childcare facilities and assistance for the elderly and disabled, defining better reconciliation policies.

-The elimination of gender stereotypes in society through the following sub-objectives: abolishing gender stereotypes in education, training and culture, in the labour market and in the media.

Theanalysis wasaimed at discoveringto what extent the actions defined during the regional programming helped to achieve these three Roadmap dimensions.

A further study stage paid special attention to the regional administrations’ capacity to devise, in the Unitary Evaluation Plans, evaluation questionson the promotion of female employment, seen as the essential starting point for developing an evaluation capacity at the various governance levels.

Results

The survey of the financial resources has revealed thatlittle attention is paid to female employment. The analysis of the financial allocation has highlighted a great variability in programming choices in the different territories (cf. table 1). Specifically, it is possible to distinguish:

-regional contexts in which balanced financial choices are made: resources have been allocated consistent with the solution of female employment issues and proportionatetotheirconsequence in the area;

-regions in which conspicuous financial resources are devoted to the promotion of female employment in a local context where working conditions for women are already good and the employment targets in line with European standards;

-regions in which minimalist choices prevail, which seem to underestimate female employmentissues and where the resources are not sufficient to fill the existing gaps.

Table 1 – Comparison between the resources scheduled for the ESF 2007-2013 expenditure item in direct support of female employment and the 2008 rate of female employment in the Italian regions

Source: ISFOL processing – Human Resources Policies Evaluation Area on2007-2013 ESF OP data, Regions/Autonomous Provinces and National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) 2008 data

When reconstructinglocal strategies on the basis of the Roadmap goals, a solid response to the promotion of female employment is found in the regional programming documents. All the regional contexts areup to speed on the first dimensionof theRoadmap,with numerous initiatives regarding the “achievement of equal economic independence”. However, moreattention is paid to the difficulties women encounter in the labour market – Lisbon goals, wage equality, female entrepreneurship – and less to those directly affecting the social dimension – combating discrimination of migrant women, fight against poverty. In the second dimension, the majority of actions for the “reconciliation of private and professional life” focus on care facilities. Innovative actions with regards to the previous programme can be found in these first two dimensions, but in the third dimension, “the elimination of gender stereotypes”, the regions need a greater commitment todedicated resources. The regions seem less interested in thisdimension and it has had little space devoted to it in the programmes. In some local contexts perhaps the time is not yet ripe;to combat gender stereotypes administrations need to become more aware of its importance and of the different actions to take.

The analysis has also shown that in some local contexts the structural funds are integrated and completed in further policy instruments – local pacts, plans, measure packages – which to varying degrees coordinate the actions directed at supporting women on the labour market. The definition of these policy instruments, here calledregional strategic plans, has the advantage of concentrating efforts. The strategic plans specifically devoted to the promotion of female employment foster an integrated strategy which, bylinking updifferent financial sources, manages to steer regional action towards this goal.

Finally, passing to the evaluation dimension, the analysis has shown that the regional administrations have not yet managed to insert the topic of women in employment in their evaluation questions. There is stillresistance to incorporating the innovations dictated by the unitary nature of the programming in the evaluation. The administrations are tending to replicatethe consolidated schemes of the previous programme and have not yet fully tapped the potentiality of the new one. This is mainly because ofthe delaysexisting in the 2007-2013 structural fund programme,although authorities are also finding it difficult to manage the greater margins of discretionary power offered by the unitary evaluation process.

EVALUATION AND FEMALE EMPLOYMENT: FRAGMENTS OF A PUBLIC DEBATE[10]

Goals

The evaluation of public policies is an important knowledge generatingprocess for improving public initiatives. It is thus an instrument for learning about the progress of policies, programmes and interventions prepared by public decision makers to improve the conditions of people and territories. The evaluation activity involves expressing a merit judgement on a determinate programme or intervention; it follows that, before evaluating any intervention, it is necessary to outline the cognitive context, that is it is necessary toidentify the subject matter of the evaluation. These assumptions are important if the evaluation is to produce a change in the policy cycle and to provide useful results for the decision makers. One way to define the subject of the evaluation is to restrict the evaluation questions,that is the relevant questions on which the evaluation is required to provide exhaustive indications.

The evaluation deals with various kinds of public policies (social, economic, environmental, educational, local, development, rural, mobility, health) within which the different specific or transversal aspects of the interventions emerge. The debate on the evaluation methodology focuses on thepenetration andtransversal nature of the policy/programme implementation, with a certain emphasis on thehidden connectionsof the programme revealed by the evaluation.

Besides being a stimulating background for the evaluation, reconstructing the effects of the policies regarding female employment poses some important questions, such as:

-How to view the evaluation asauseful activity rather than a mere “task”?

-What are we bringing with us from the 2000-2006 experience and what do we want to change?

-What aspects of the evaluation can be used by policies supporting female employment?

-How to insert the knowledge produced in the policy cycle?

Results

Because of their multidimensional composition and nature gender policies can be referred,for their analytical implications,to the crucial issues of development policies. In the reconstruction of the major female employment issues and the identification of jointmechanismsthe evaluation playsa key role which has little to do withEU technicalities. If we listen attentively to thebeneficiariesand theterritoryand, above all, exploit all the local resources in the evaluation activity, we can discover elementswhichimpact differently on the female population than those directlyattributable to a gender policy.

The evaluation is thus understood as a learning tool for administrations and, in the new European structural funds evaluation context, an opportunity for the managing authorities to develop and intercept evaluation topics and evaluation questions. In Italy, one of the limits of the evaluations carried outin the 2000-2006 structural funds programme was the little attention paid to the evaluation questions. For equal opportunities, this meant that concepts transmitted by the European Union (equal opportunities, precisely, or gender mainstreaming) were not translated into evaluation questionsapplicable and pertinent for the single regional areas.In Italy, thisdisregardof European indications on gender equality (mainly owing tothe historical and political background) meantthere was (and still is)no “clean” theoretical framework for gender topics, that is onefree of ideologies and politicallegacies. Moreover, an important stimulus to exploit in both the evaluation activity and in policy indications is that ofcare services (public and free market) and the target of theservice objectives (definedat central level).

For the topics directly involving the evaluation of gender policies, the debate revealed that:

-in the Italian context gender policies represent realsubversive objectives that cannot be identifiednor even less achieved withoutsolid theoretical tools;

-the evaluation activity needs to be guided by theory, since good evaluation questions can only be constructed on the basis of a good theory. A clear theoretical framework for the issue of female employment, its decisive factors and its obstacles, is a first step towards the construction of evaluation questions;

-if no evaluation questions have been constructedon female employment or the many aspects linked to it in the previous programme, it is necessary to use what the single local experiences have been able to produce on this issue;

-it is necessary to start by exploiting local situations - associations, militancies and networks - involved in the evaluation experiences of the previous programme;

-it is necessary to scale down the evaluation of the impactof training courses (the most popular evaluation subject) and contextualize it differently within broader objectives that take into account beneficiaries’ real needs.

To contextualize the evaluation in a gender key also means asking questions about the specific features of the environment in which the women (and the men) live, and on the ability of the policies to respond to the needs of the contexts and of the people. One could consider, for example, the gender impact of policies that are not typically female-oriented (e.g. training), such as transport, environment, urban time and mobility planning. In this sense the evaluation extends the evaluation subjects and manages to interpret and give voice to mainstreaming, that is to the introduction and emergence of gender issues in various policy contexts for the overall improvement of women’s (and men’s) wellbeing. Itis thus necessary to gobeyond the declared objectivesof the policies and interventions undertaken hitherto to discover the various driving forces such as businesses, services, quality of life or the role of women in development processes. Going beyond the priority targetsoffers a clearer idea of the beneficiaries.

If the evaluation is above all a cognitive tool and a learningprocess, what have we learnt from the evaluation of other policies and other policy instrumentsinvolving female employment? Unfortunately little, because there has been (and continues to be) great difficulty in imagining oriented and “open” evaluation pathways and questions. It could be helpful to launchpilot evaluations on important issues with the task of answering questions such as:

-How do women contribute to the development of local areas?

-How can the governance of gender policies be transferred to contexts that do not show particular sensitivity for these topics?

-How can common knowledge pathways be built inside the administrations?

Evaluation topics and questions have to be selected to activate connections between actors, contexts and territoriesand to give voice to the networks active in the area. Gender policies are like inoperative resources in weak areas. They have to be activated to change balances and thus become a "threat".

To insert the results and knowledge produced by the evaluation in the policy cycle you need questions and people who have to reflect on these questions. A further step towards the construction of good evaluation questions, besides the definition of the theoretical context, is tomovegender issues into a broader number of discussion areas, starting with the programming documents (ROPs).