At City of Women, we draw awareness to gender inequality and discrimination in the creative sector and within precarious forms of cultural work. To this end, we have created* the document Guidelines for Gender Equality in Culture. In it, we call for gender discrimination to be understood intersectionally to recognise the personal circumstances of cultural workers. We call on decision-makers to make systemic changes, such as raising awareness of the problem of gender inequality in the cultural sector, more training and active data collection in this area, improved working conditions for women and greater legal protection for precarious cultural workers. The document is the basis for the first survey on sexual harassment and violence in the cultural sector, launched by the Ministry of Culture in March this year. The results will inform the ground-breaking Action Plan for Equality in Culture.
City of Women also works as an advocate in various international projects. Within the Burnout Aid project, we focus on empowering NGO leaders to prevent burnout. We organise workshops, we have created a self-assessment questionnaire and a toolkit platform (developed in partnership with Common Zone in the framework of the Erasmus+ supported Burnout Aid project). Through this project we aim to contribute to creating safer and more supportive working conditions in the third sector, as well as to developing cooperation between different governmental organisations across Europe.
The Cultural Enterprise Certificate has highlighted the potential of arts and culture in building the capacity of economic operators and addressing health in the workplace. The certificate aims to reinforce the positive impact of culture on organisations in other sectors. In particular, we want to encourage companies to use cultural content as a mechanism to motivate employees, reinforce the values of tolerance and equality within the organisational culture, as an alternative to team building, to grow employer reputation, to strengthen the brand towards internal and external audiences. At the same time, we strive to transfer working methods from artistic practices that can contribute to innovative solutions in the company.
