The Department of Education, Languages, Interculture, Literatures and Psychology (identified with the acronym FORLILPSI) is an interdisciplinary department of the University of Florence (Italy) that embraces research areas ranging from educational science and psychology to languages, philology and literature.
Why did you join this programme?
Education to gender equity and equal leadership in political, economic and social life is a field of study for adult education. The Programme is giving the University of Florence-FORLILPSI Department the opportunity to debate on obstacles and barriers to reach gender equity with leaders and members of active movements and social society organisations.
Moreover we have been gaining knowledge on the goals achieved and how far we have come. This is also thanks to education that informally and in an organized way has been supporting by years men and women in creating the way to promote social changes in politics, productive and social sectors.
What is your assessment of the work done so far? What do you highlight?
The ProPEGE Community set up in Italy is actually made of around 50 leaders, CEOs, CFOs of businesses, movements, organisations that have been debating on current obstacles and discussing potential future actions for equal leadership. The issue differs from country to country, from business sectors and features of productive areas, from political territorial levels, as well as from other barriers under discussion in the Community.
In more than 20 months of active actions taken with the Community we may say that networking and organised actions are crucial in the field and supportive in reaching the goals. This is shown by data and sources collected by partners in the form of Literature Items and Good Practices. It is a rich source of knowledge that is worth continuing to circulate, use, nourish.
What are the expected outcomes? What conclusions have you drawn?
Research and civil actions on gender equity have been growing all over the globe. Nonetheless still there is a lot to do if we consider that, as from ongoing research (Global Gender Gap Report, 2024), “it will take 134 years to reach full parity – roughly five generations beyond the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target.” This is the reason why the University of Florence decided to devote more attention to gender equity issues and set up one transcontinental working session to go on working on ProPEGE issues within the event that it is promoting along with the IACE Hall of Fame of the University of Oklahoma (https://www.hoflorence.unifi.it/).
ProPEGE and similar initiatives are crucial to raise attention by researchers and civic society on the way to promote equal access to opportunities of any kind both for men and women (education, training, employment, culture, sport, etc.).
