Summary of the CETRA findings on “Gender Issues”

The epistemological premises of the CETRA project expressed a propensity towards innovativity, particularly sustaining the dimension of “ontological uncertainty” linked to the empirical aspects of the “Narrative theory of action”.

The epistemological model of reference has, therefore, placed at the centre of observation those dynamics according to which the decisions of individuals depend on the reflections that the subjects themselves apply each time to the possible consequences of their actions, making their choices in conditions of ontological uncertainty, and in any case relying on the meeting/match dynamic from among the characteristics of the actual context, and reflections based on individual biographies.

As has already been said, the challenge of the gender approach has represented a further element of complexity to the already complex thinking dedicated by the project group on three levels: mico-meso-macro (individual agents-agents interactions–market system).

The importance was underlined many times during the project phases to consider that the individuals taken into consideration for the activities to be developed were not just mere individuals, but that they were actually women and/or men. Many times it was suggested that attention should be placed on specific gender characterizations, even local, and on their consequent interactions, capitalizing to the utmost on specificities in the behaviour of women and/or men.

On the other hand it also has to be said that the immense e-learning container is heading the opposite way: up to now – with the proper exceptions of more advanced models – it has notoriously not been an environment which has tolerated well the factors of complexity which go beyond great attention to content: In fact, e-learning environments very often mostly tend to favour aims to reduce complexity in favour of usability.

For this series of reasons, the application of the “gender lens” to the CETRA project is to be interpreted both as a difficult task for the whole project group, linked with opposition to the tendency for uniformity with regard to decisions on processes and on products, and also as a possibility to see the courage of the challenge being recognised from the outside.

Certainly CETRA has proved a great testing ground in identifying a part of the elements in the array of forces impeding the implementation of many declared proposals. These are obstacles which are seen in more visible ways, but also less visible; more declarable but also tacit and non-declarable.

One example can be represented by thinking about all those situations in which the need for rapidity in actions and decisions taken by the project group has left no space for a more in-depth co-sharing of gender literature at different times of application, the observation of behaviour specificities and lastly an evaluation of respective setbacks and opportunities.

All this cannot exempt us from an evaluation of the experience of collective growth made by the project and in the project, above all in the perspective of placing it at the service of a growth in the level of attention for future practices. The direction lies with the application – always very delicate – of theoretical models in functioning applications of the gender approach, above all devoting greater space to the aspects of dialogue and narration for individual women and men in their many various expressions.

In each phase of the action it is thus possible to consult, decide, evaluate, perceive and to act to the tune of gender specifics. The foundations are simply provided by the subjects, women and/or mean, with their own personal baggage and potential for action and reflection, from the space-time coordinates (virtual and material) and from the contextual background.

From the outside this can all seem simple, and it is because of this that the road ahead is long and uphill, although the quantity and quality of applicative and conceptual applications is generous enough to be able to offer great opportunities to those conducting research and research-actions for experimentation with regard to equity, wellbeing, a straining towards improvement, growth in complexity at any level whatsoever; individual, social, local or global.