Event report

The webinar succeeded. The webinar started with the greetings of Grazia Rendo who gave the floor to Valentina Zoccali, who presented the Wise4challenges project, its aims, activities and partners. The project is coming to an end and the recommendations will be presented at the end of January 2022. Afterwards WEP was introduced by Grazia Rendo, explaining the reasons why this event: the presentation of the result of the final survey of WISE4Challlenges. Floriana Fanizza, president of Coldiretti Donna, underlined how the role of women in the context of agricultural entrepreneurship has changed. Over 30% of agricultural enterprises are led by women, particularly in South Italy. Women are more sensitive to the environment and come up with excellent projects, on the other hand COVID-19 has not helped women, who affected them the most. In this period however the Italian government and ISMEA have helped the sector, encouraging it with a soft loan. Today Women in agriculture must and want to face the Green Deal challenge: the role of women is very important especially to push politics to give entrepreneurs certain tools, for instance economic aid and facilities for ecological transition. Alessandra Ravaioli, president of Ortofrutta, talked about how the sector was in the front line as soon as the pandemic broke out, but then there was a sharp drop in the production. Women have a great concern for the environment. She mentioned the devastating effects of the bad weather in South Italy, that over the last 2 months, has caused an 80% drop in production. So we need to monitor our environment, the soil in terms of sustainability and understand how best to safeguard it. Eva Merloni, WeGate project manager, presented the WeGate platform and how it can be a support for women entrepreneurs, as a place to do business and to find the best practices, to find out formation courses and more. She confirmed that women have to be more supported in the Green Deal, but they have to be more present in agriculture with technical and scientific digital skills, in parallel with green skills. Later Azzurra Rinaldi, talked about women and sustainability, and their fundamental role in the Recovery Fund and Green Deal. She underlined the problem of the Italian market: Why has the work market increased by 35% just for men, compared to the 0% for women? It is recognised in all gender reports around the world, that women are the real human capital that drives the economy, but after maternity they either leave or prefer to work half-time, missing out on opportunities for career development that their male colleagues certainly do not miss. For this reason, women in Italy and in particular in South Italy, set up business and they had only contacted by 0.2%, as they have turned the pandemic into an opportunity for revenge by investing in new finance, innovation and training. Therefore, gender impact in the Next Generation EU can only be achieved with a real strategy as value producers, focusing on education, training and adequate income. Francesca Gironi, Copa Cogeca, thanked for the opportunity to make proposals with the survey carried out. She introduced Copa Cogeca and talked about the problems of gender gap women have to face in agriculture. She highlighted again the fact that, during the pandemic, women had to face the workload and take care of the family. She presented different realities of the agricultural sector in Europa, with the access to lands, the socio economic transformation, but she also spoke about the income streams needed for the empowerment of women in every business field. Maroun El Moujabber, CIHEAM Bari, talked about how the Green Deal can promote gender equality by integrating it into the Green Deal. His institute has promoted several equality campaigns with the Gender Smart project: a study on the effect of Covid on our lives, also from a psychological point of view. At the end of the event, there was a desire to meet again to do more networking, to keep up to date, interested in each other’s projects and to know how to promote themselves together.