Empowering Women and Mainstreaming Gender Equality in the Blue Economy

ended

The contribution of women in the blue economy is often overlooked and undervalued, especially in the roles where technical-scientific background is required. Women are still underrepresented in most of the blue economy sectors. The project WINBLUE intends to accelerate the empowerment of women in the blue economy through facilitating and promoting the inclusion of women in five different blue economy sectors revolving around the conser-vation and sustainable use of the aquatic resources: circular blue bioeconomy and biotechnology, aquaculture and fisheries, offshore renewable energy, sustainable coastal tourism, cutting-edge enabling technology for protecting and restoring marine ecosystems. WINBLUE takes a multi-actor, data-driven, trans-sectoral and practice-centred approach, which adopts both top-down and bottom-up activities, to help the blue economy actors effectively identify and address the gender equality challenges. For this purpose, the project launches five WINBLUE labs to involve a relevant community of stakeholders in the design and implementation of tailored gender equality plan models that address unconscious, gender-biased dynamics thwarting the participation of women in the blue economy and their representation in decision-making positions in public and private entities. This activity is supported by implementing coaching pro-grams that enhance those entrepreneurial good practices that engage female human capital, drive competitiveness and strengthen R&I undertakings. The project will accomplish the operational workflow in five steps: 1. data collection and monitoring strategy to benchmark and monitor the gender inclusiveness status in the blue economy sectors, 2. a comprehensive identification and assessment of highly replicable good practices which can be 3. adopted and transferred to different sectors and types of organisations, both within as well as the 4. replication of strategies outside the consortium. Finally, 5. a set of campaigns is designed to enable the sustainability of WINBLUE beyond the project’s duration.