The WINBLUE project aims to accelerate the empowerment of women in the blue economy by facilitating their participation in five sectors focused on the conservation and sustainable use of aquatic resources: Circular blue bioeconomy and biotechnology; Aquaculture and fisheries; Marine renewable energy; Sustainable coastal tourism; Cutting-edge enabling technology to protect and restore marine ecosystems.
The WINBLUE project is an EU co-funded project, PLOCAN is part of the consortium, composed of twelve organizations and led by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR).
The project promotes to increase the number of women in operational and decision-making positions in companies, research, educational and training entities through upskilling and coaching programmes. Also, it enhances the entrepreneurial good practices that engage female human capital, drive competitiveness and strengthen business undertakings.
WINBLUE will provide easily replicable solutions capitalising on the results of other projects or initiatives and sharing knowledge, information and practices. Finally, the project will promote mutual learning among partners and stakeholders coming from different sectors and countries and boost an uptake of good practices that already work in specific relevant environments.
The overall objectives of WINBLUE are to; increase participation and representation of women in the differet sectors of the sustainlable blue economy; Increase knowledge and collect data on women’s contribution to the sustainable blue economy and efficiently mainstream gender equality; Advance gender equality, e.g. countering gender stereotypes, conscious and unconscious biases, promoting equal pay and addressing poor working conditions; Promote women’s leadership, entrepreneurship and participation in governance structures and decision-making mechanisms of organizations.
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, addressing largely unsolved gender equality challenges.
For each one of the above blue economy subsectors, WINBLUE will launch sectoral stakeholder hubs, the ‘WINBLUE labs’. Each WINBLUE lab will engage a group of representative stakeholders per sector, among public authorities, development agencies, companies, trade organisations, VET institutes, researchers and civil society organisations. These labs and their members will be engaged throughout the project and its activities to provide input, feedback, information and data. This will ensure improved access to sectoral knowledge and good practices, feedback loops for policy recommendations and stakeholder engagement, and brokerage and networking activities. The members of the WINBLUE labs will be engaged in data gathering and surveys, as well as in localised training.
See more of WINBLUE labs’ work here
