The Education to Employment (E2E) project challenges gender stereotypes in the workplace with the aim of empowering young women to pursue their career dreams
Empowering young women at the very start of their careers and providing them with adequate support in choosing the right career path is among the priorities of the “Education to Employment” (E2E) project, a multi-year partnership project of the governments of Switzerland and Serbia, intended to create the necessary preconditions to accelerate youth employment.
Confronted by various stereotypes and socially imposed choices, girls most often choose occupations that are exclusively in the domain of “womanly”. That also applies to young men that are usually seen as being right for some “hard-working-male-dominated” jobs. In order to avoid such conventionalised and ingrained career decisions, the E2E project is making various interventions.
The main E2E activities within the gender intervention strategy are:
– Providing tailor-made and gender- oriented career guidance and counselling activities;
– Facilitating work-based learning programmes (non-formal training organised in companies);
– Promoting gender-related success stories and activities through different forms: social media posts, videos and brochures.
Trained career practitioners working within the E2E project are organising group themed career workshops at both schools and Job info centres established within the scope of the project, placing a special emphasis on gender issues with tailored career guidance and counselling measures. These CGC workshops focus on the ways gender stereotypes influence the career decision of young girls and boys, how they can reflect those gender stereotypes and overcome them, identifying possibilities and encouraging stepping away from established gender-stereotypical patterns of behaviour and career decision- making. Over the course of this year, 860 young people participated in gender-related workshops.
With the aim of furthering the empowerment of women, the E2E project this year created a video campaign to increase the self-sufficiency of young people, particularly young women and girls who mostly face different gender stereotypes in their career planning and career decision-making processes. E2E created a video on success stories from a work-based learning programme, featuring a couple of great examples of female trainees in male-dominant occupations. E2E wanted to promote these not-so-usual career choices by filming their stories and creating strong video testimonials on how they are succeeding in working environments that are led and completely dominated by men.
This video introduces viewers to some of the women who have challenged gender stereotypes in the workplace as part of the training and employment that resulted from their participation in the E2E project – training for CNC operators, welders and assistant camera operators. The video, which forms part of the gender implementation intervention strategy within the E2E project, strongly promotes gender-related issues in order to support youngsters on their career paths and empower them in their interests (free choices). This video is available to watch on the project’s YouTube channel.