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Regional Development-Programmes of Lower Austria from a Gender-sensitive Perspective: Discontinuiti

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Erstellt am Dienstag, 14. September 2004 13:00

Zuletzt aktualisiert am Donnerstag, 16. September 2004 18:08

Paper for the 15th FAO/ECA WPW Expert Meeting on Gender and Rural Development „Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation of Rural Development Programmes and Projects with a View to Integration of Gender and Participatory Dimensions“

10th – 14th June 2002 in Heimari/Mikkeli, Finland

 Theresia Oedl-Wieser

 Federal Institute for Less-Favoured and Mountainous Areas, Vienna

1. Introduction

In the last decade the Austrian regional policy was characterized by a great dynamic. On the one hand regional policy had to react to the globally intensified competition and on the other hand there were important new incentives for reorientation and redevelopment through Austria's accession to European Union and the implementation of EU-regional and structural policy. Many Austrian regions have a long tradition on endogenous regional development, where the local potential and the regional actors play an important role. Some very positive effects can be identified in the Austrian regional policy through the accession to the European Union. It can be stated that an upgrading of regional policy and regional subsidies in politics, economy and public opinion took place. Beyond that a professionalisation and a higher quality of regional policy due to the framework of EU-programme planning is observed. In addition to encouraging experiences the promotion and the implementation of equality between women and men in the EU-structural fund programmes - in the sense of gender mainstreaming - has become a great challenge and an important commitment for the Austrian regional policy. Regional actors are explicitly requested to contribute within their work to equality between women and men. To integrate questions of equality between women and men into regional policy requires a focus on women and men - their needs, abilities, potentials, their relation to each other, but also the discriminations they experience belonging to a gender-group. However it is not clear yet how equality between women and men can/should be implemented in the field of regional policy.

2. Positions of an "Equality-oriented Regional Development"

The different living conditions and situations and experiences of women and men can be seen in the different involvement in productive and reproductive work, in different possibilities with respect to mobility, in diversities of income-sources and different qualification-levels. These unequal realities of life chances of women and men hardly find the appropriate consideration in the central fields of action of regional policy and gender-specific effects of many regional measures are not perceived (Oedl-Wieser 1997). Therefore the primarily male actors at local and regional level do not see gender-equality-oriented measures as a priority of regional policy.

The most important criteria and requirements to be considered in an "equality-oriented regional development", which aims at improving the living conditions, the life of women and men and promotes the diversity of living models, can be summarized as follows (Aufhauser et al. 2002, 23ff; Meseke und Armstroff 2001, 20):

• Possibility of self-determination and choice of life models for women and men.
• Understanding the complex interweaving of discriminating structures for women - both at the individual and institutional level.
• Regional policy, strategies and measures have to refer to the living conditions and life quality of women and men in the region.
• Women specific efforts and requirements have to be integrated in all sectoral fields of regional policy.
• Deconstruction of traditional gender roles and of gender-hierarchical dichotomies, e.g. female private sphere and male public sphere, which is more influential in society.
• Creating and building of women specific spaces (centres for female entreprenneurs, service-institutions etc.).
• Raising the awareness for gender-inequalities and equality-relevance of regional policy.
• Integration of gender issues in the conception of regional planning.
• Regional policy should be developed to a gender-sensitive policy-field.
• Higher participation and decisive competence for women in the regional administration and institutions.
• Promotion of women as opinion leaders.
• In addition to the successful support instruments for women, an improved participation of women in the regional and structural funding should be achieved.
• Regional policy has to be an integrative approach, including economic, social and ecological aspects as leading concepts.

All these criteria and requirements of an "equality-oriented regional development" intend to reduce the patriarchal structures in our society and to enlarge the self-reliance and participation of women in the different spheres of living, in the family, in the job and the regional surrounding. It can be assumed that an increased participation of women and men in local and regional activities will lead to a strengthening of the creative potential of the region and an increase of regional identity and location quality.

3. Implementation of equality measures - in the case of Lower Austria

The Land Lower Austria implements since three decades a very offensive regional policy, starting with the self-reliant endogenous regional development in the 1970ies and 1980ies which was transformed and developed into the technology- and innovation-oriented endogenous regional development. In the mean time the consulting and service structure concerning regional development and regional policy is differentiated and well established in Lower Austria (regional innovation centres, regional managements, village- and-city-renewal). This was to a big extent initiated through subsidies of the EU structural funds.

3.1 Regional Plans and Programmes of Lower Austria

The technology- and innovation-orientation of regional policy in Lower Austria is seen as crucial for the economic development of Lower Austria - in both the plan of regional development and in the Objective 2-Programme of Lower Austria. To what extent are the criteria of an "equality-oriented regional development" considered and implemented in the rather economical oriented regional plans and programmes of Lower Austria?

The Plan for regional development of Lower Austria

The regional development plan of Lower Austria is conceived as an instrument of coordination and information for the spatial and regional planning. The text of the plan is rather general and women- or gender-specific statements can hardly be found, whether in the regional analysis e.g. on gender-specific labour markets in some regions nor in respect to human resources development. The improvement of the living conditions for women is only addressed by statements concerning better supplying structures and the reduction of traffic in settlements. Perspectives of the further development of society in direction of a gender-democracy are not written down and it seems that the awareness of gender-inequalities and the necessity of its reduction is not widespread among regional planners and actors.

The Single Programming Document of Objective 2 (SPD) (2000 - 2006)

The SPD of objective 2 of Lower Austria is the second structural fund programme in Lower Austria since the accession of Austria to the EU. In the current programme there are only funds by the ERDF available with a funding budget about € 875 777,000,- for the period 2000 - 2006. 2/3 of the budget is reserved for the branches trade, industry, innovation and technology (table 1).

Table 1: Priorities of the SPD of objective 2 Lower Austria and their funding

Source: SPD Objective 2 Lower Austria (2001)

Through the strategy of an explicit technology- and innovation-oriented regional policy Lower Austria should develop - in a long term perspective - to a "European technology region" with high life quality. As the ERDF is funding almost exclusively structures and investments - which are in most cases in male-dominated branches - and not persons, it can be questioned how women could profit from such an economical intervention system? The gender mainstreaming concept of EU follows the strategy, that equality between women and men has to be implemented in all policies and political concepts and measures - from planning, implementation, monitoring to evaluation. The following analysis should examine, to which extent these aspects find attention in the programming of the SPD objective 2 of Lower Austria.

In the planning process of the SPD objective 2 of Lower Austria many relevant partners were involved: (i) experts of regional planning of the regional and the national administration bodies, (ii) social partners, (iii) representatives of the authorities of environment and gender-equality. The programme was planned and prepared in eight sessions where the partners could discuss the draft and make suggestions. The representative of the department of women affairs of the government of Lower Austria organized a gender-training for the participants of the programming committee. Furthermore, this representative is also member of the monitoring committee and in the additional coordination body, acting as a steering committee.

Despite this progress in including women- and gender-specific expertise it has to be noted, that in the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the objective area only few statements concerning disparities between women and men appear. Gender-specific analysis was only carried out for the issue of education and professional training at regional level. But no analysis of gender-inequalities in respect to the labour market or branches, which could gain information about developments and requirements in the future, took place.

Table 2: Proposals for promoting women in the SPD objective 2 Lower Austria

1) In Austria there exist examples for such structures: Upper Austria - regional manager for social affairs and health; Salzbourg: regional manager for gender-equality in the Pinzgau and Lungau. Unfortunatly the personal and financial ressources are very low.
2) regional mentoring project

In the four priorities and in the 22 measures no direct indications about specific or positive actions for women can be found. Only for the selection of projects of the SPD objective 2 Lower Austria the following indicators to be used are relevant in this respect: (i) neutral in respect to gender-equality, (ii) gender-equality oriented and (iii) gender-equality project. From a women-specific point of view perhaps it would be better to examine the projects in respect to (i) reduction, (ii) reproduction and (iii) strengthening of the discrimination of women (Meseke und Armstroff 2001, 27).

Because of the explicit technology- and innovation-orientation of the priorities in SPD objective 2 Lower Austria it is at first sight rather difficult to identify, where women-specific and active promotion could take place and how women could participate more intensively on an equal basis on the ERDF funding. In general, technology and innovation are male occupied branches but technology- and innovation-policy is conceived and presented as gender-neutral. In reality it has extreme gender-specific effects (Döge 2001) with following main aspects: (i) access to jobs for women is limited, even if they have the same qualification as men have, (ii) atmosphere of the working places in technological centres is male dominated, (iii) supplying structure in the surrounding is not supporting sufficiently reproduction tasks, (iv) financing of projects is not oriented at women's needs - women need often specific consulting and financial services.

Experiences on EU- (Braithwaite 1999, 2000) and national level have shown that the implementation of equality between women and men in the fields of structural and regional policy, programmes and projects depends to a large extent on people, for whom gender-equality is important and who are willing to strengthen and spread it. The issue about the implementation of gender-equality is a high emotionalized debate, because it implicates changes in society which affect men in many spheres. Further problems for the implementation of gender-equality seem to be that the personal and financial ressources are very restricted for teaching gender-competence and there exist no sanctions when gender-equality is not implemented.

Despite these circumstances women- and gender-representatives and -experts are getting more and more involved in regional bodies and institutions. But they have to combat against a bulk of problems: (i) their female voice is often one under many male voices, (ii) their voice has to represent the big variety of women interests in the region and (iii) their voice has often less weight because in most cases they have no money to distribute (Aufhauser and Hafner 2002). For that it seems necessary to claim that the presence of women in the institutionell structures of regional policy have to develop to reach the critical mass. The following projects of regional networking of women in Lower Austria will exemplify how the first steps for initiating these efforts could be taken.