Final evaluation of WEGO2 to support women economic empowerment contrasting intimate partner violence

Title WeGo2- “Building economic independence: the way out of intimate partner violence (IPV)”

Location Italy, Bulgaria, Greece and Spain

Duration 2018 – 2020

Project leader Action Aid Italia

Partners Center for Sustainable Communities, Development (CSCD-BG), Institute for Social Research (IRS-IT), Rel.Azioni Positive Cooperative (IT), SURT Foundation (ES), Women’s Center of Karditsa (WCK, GR

Funding Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme of the European Union

 

Context

Violence against women is widespread in Europe and the scaling up of intimate partner violence (IPV) is alarming. According to the European Agency for Fundamental Rights, almost one in four women experience physical and/or sexual violence in a relationship with a man. Its causes are often interrelated with poverty, economic dependency and gender discrimination. The lack of economic independence is one of the main challenges women face when they try to leave their abusive partner. This issue is coupled with the fact that women are considerably under-represented in the labour market and in management roles, with the overall female employment rate still being lower than that of men. With respect to GBV, the economic empowerment is conceived as a key factor to disrupt a detrimental balance of power fomenting both personal and structural violence. Along this line, the economic empowerment is crucial to both overcome and prevent violence as well as to promote the consolidation of a more equal and inclusive social structures.

WEGO2 project is the continuation and scale up of WEGO!, a project implemented between 2016 and 2018 which was aimed at strengthening support services for women who escaped from IPV. To this regard, the project have  developed and promoted the dissemination of  a training toolkit aimed at strengthening shelters and anti-violence centres’ capacity to promote IPV survivors’ socio-economic empowerment.

In WEGO2, partners focused on the enhancement of women’s social networks and capacities to access the job market. To this regard, WeGo2 aimed at boosting the effectiveness of local support systems, mainly by supporting the skill-enhancement of AVCs and operators, promoting theformalization of multilateral local partnerships through the creation of  Territorial Protocols and engaging enterprises in awareness-oriented actions and job matching initiatives.

WeGo! and WeGo2 will be followed by a third edition, namely WeGo3. The project is expected to increaselocal multi-agency networks capacity to promote the socio-economic independence of women IPV survivors by designing and adopting gender-responsive labour policies.

General Objective

WeGo2, thus, aims at supporting the economic empowerment of women who survived domestic violence by strengthening local, national and European support systems and multi-disciplinary cooperation among private and public stakeholders.

ARCO carried out the final evaluation to assess how effectively the project has reached its targets and objectives, and the social impact generated by its activities. Particular attention as been devoted to the assessment of the positive changes triggered by the project, with reference to the recently designed framework developed by Action Aid Italia in order to evaluate women’s socio-economic empowerment.

 

Our Contribution

The evaluation was carried out through:

  • The desk analysis of the quantitative information collected throughout the project
  • The use of qualitative and participatory methodologies to include key stakeholders in the evaluation activities. These included individual and collective interviews and focus groups discussions.

Researchers applied a proper gender-sensitive lens to all evaluation activities.

Given the restrictions imposed by the global pandemic, the data collection process of the final evaluation has been carried out through web-conferencing platforms. During the whole process, Researchers explored and implemented new approaches to conduct participatory focus group discussions, developing innovative and effective tools that allowed to focus the evaluation process on the perceptions of beneficiaries and stakeholders.

empowerment economico donne ricerca approfondimento centro italia violenza di generePromoting the economic empowerment of women, an in-depth study

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