Co-Responsibility Workshops

Good Practice

Equality

Workshops for co-responsibility in time use and caring in organisations and entities.

Barcelona Provincial Council

Spain

Local policy

POLICY OBJECTIVE

With Towards a New Public System of Care in the Community, Barcelona Provincial Council (Diputació de Barcelona) aims to promote discussion about the inequalities in the social organisation of care in the municipalities of Barcelona province. These workshops therefore aim to open the debate and provide tools to move towards greater co-responsibility in care, tackling gender and social inequalities and promoting life balance between care time and social participation.

CONTEXT

Women are primarily responsible for care, for both children and dependents. Half of the beneficiaries of dependency legislation in Barcelona province receive economic benefits for informal care. Family carers spend between 13 and 17 hours a day caring for dependent people and 42% of those carers have performed the work for more than 10 years. These long and intense periods spent providing care have effects on physical and emotional health, as well as on participation in employment and society. To facilitate women’s participation, it is therefore important that organisations and society promote a co-responsible distribution of care times.

POLICY DESCRIPTION

The policy is part of an effort to raise awareness about care and time use in municipalities. Distinct workshops seek to raise awareness and promote reflection and discussion about care and support for developing and deploying community initiatives and local networks so that society can work towards a new, democratised system of care. These workshops are intended for organisations and entities keen to approach the conceptual and practical framework of care within organisations. The workshop offers chances learn and reflect on care and time use as well as methodologies to spark transformation at organisation level to make care and time use more democratic, taking account of the principles of care within the organisation. Other workshops aim specifically to promote awareness about co-responsibility in care and encourage reflection about the role of men. Barcelona Provincial Council offers these workshops to municipalities, which in turn offer them to local organisations and citizens, so we can reach distinct corners of Barcelona province, the majority of them small and medium municipalities.

KEY ASPECTS

Workshops use participative methodologies which make it possible to convey a conceptual framework about care work and time use, as well as promote reflection and dialogue on actions and proposals to tackle inequalities.

The conceptual framework is based on the perspective of gender and feminist theory.

The extent of impact and capacity for transformation is linked with the ability of the professional team facilitating the sessions; they propose specific actions that are tuned to be applicable to the day-to-day realities of each group to reverse the inequalities detected

RESULTS

Two hundred thirty people took part in the project in 2021. Due to its success and participant feedback, workshop duration has been extended in 2022.

Policy's Website

Teresa

Llorens

Coordinator of the Equality and Social Sustainibility Area

ca.iss@diba.cat

Good Practice