‘Business Life Balance’ is the training project aimed at female entrepreneurs in the Tuscan tertiary sector to help them better reconcile private life and work in the company. To achieve it, with the support of the Region which financed it as part of the public notice Pr Fse+ 2021-2027. Priority 1 ‘Employment’ will be Confcommercio Toscana through its provincial training agencies of Pistoia and Prato, Florence and Arezzo, Lucca and Massa Carrara, Pisa and Livorno, with the support of the regional Women’s Tertiary group.
In the territories involved, four 30-hour training courses will soon start for 70 women entrepreneurs who have started their business no more than 5 years ago. The initiative will help them acquire the scientific tools useful for innovating their management style, planning in detail the agenda, projects and management of their collaborators, in order to free up time for their lives, whether it concerns care duties towards family, study, hobbies or any other commitment or interest unrelated to work. Today the presentation at Palazzo Strozzi Sacrati.
According to president Eugenio Giani “this initiative is accompanied by other interventions that the Region has taken care of. In addition to facilitating childcare services with free nursery schools and quality nursery schools, we have activated an experimental process with the notice Welfare plans and other measures for work-life balance, aimed at businesses and more generally at all employers work, to promote balanced participation of women and men in the labor market, equal working conditions and a better balance between professional and private life, also through conciliation welfare measures in order to promote a better balance between working life and family care and supporting co-responsibility for care tasks and women’s participation in the world of work. In the coming months, a notice will be activated, with 2.5 million of ESF+ 2021-27, to promote conciliation measures to support independent workers (business owners, freelancers, self-employed workers)”. Finally he concludes by saying that “significant gender gaps still remain in the world of work, in terms of participation, employment methods, pervasiveness of female presence and career paths. To resolve the issue of female employment and work-family conciliation, the most important change remains the cultural one.”
“When projects and initiatives are adopted that have a positive impact or serve as a stimulus to gender policies – comments economics councilor Leonardo Marras -, the advantages are for the whole of society and not just for the women involved. We can no longer limit ourselves to stating this equality, we need concrete initiatives that allow those who want to undertake career paths to be able to do so. At a European level, our country is still significantly behind in this respect. Projects like this promoted by Confcommercio must be encouraged to train women who are aware of their rights and prerogatives towards a tangible balance between family and professional commitments”.
“Our goal is to encourage the professional and personal growth of women entrepreneurs and raise their quality of life, making them free to pursue their legitimate work ambition without having to give up on themselves and on an existence full of interests and emotional relationships,” she explains the president of Terziario Donna Confcommercio Toscana Donatella Moica. “Until gender equality becomes a value shared by all even in the distribution of family care loads, we must act by means of subtraction, removing at least the unnecessary burdens from women’s shoulders. For example, by increasing the propensity to delegate, improving planning, in short by acting on the levers that optimize time management at work. This frees up time for life.” “It is essential – he concludes – to make a pact between generations to found a new economic model that is more sustainable in every sense, including that of conciliation between life and work. With this we apply a concept that is particularly close to our hearts, that of ‘generative enterprise’, which deals with the context and people with a view to leaving a legacy, generating new strategies and new dialectics”.
“As long as the issue of work-life balance is considered only a women’s problem, we will be far from the equality of rights and duties to which we must aspire, also for the benefit of the economic and social development of our country”, underlines the director of Confcommercio Toscana Franco Marinoni, “but there is no doubt that projects like this can still have an impact on the reality of things by offering women practical solutions to overcome the problems that hinder their professional growth or relational and emotional life”.
The project involves the provision of a total of 2,100 hours of training through the use of particularly innovative methodologies. The experiences of other women will be systematized and some now established entrepreneurs will be involved in the role of mentor, with greater awareness and professional self-esteem.
Among the topics that will be covered during the lessons are female leadership, business organization, digital transition, time management, gender equality and marketing management. The objective is to help women develop transversal skills and abilities to optimize the management of their business and open up space for work-life balance.
