For decades, The Lausitz region (Lusatia) has been in a state of a far-reaching transformation process. The transformation process concerns economy, housing, social structures, administration, politics, culture and identity of its inhabitants. With the decision to end lignite-based electricity generation in 2038, this structural change and its design will be accelerated and additionally challenged.
Until today, gender and equality related topics have not been playing a significant role in the current dialogues and discussions, which mainly focus on male-dominatet occupational fields and labour market sectors (e. g. mining). Specific issues, perspectives and potentials of women are hardly addressed to date.
In many areas of agriculture, culture, creative industry, village development or political commitment, it is women who try out new forms of rural enterprises or cultural projects. In doing so, they often succeed in addressing the problem of otherwise neglected aspects of change, e.g. regional and sustainable economic activity, social relations of trust and community, exchange of knowledge within the region and beyond, articulation of converging interests and political and civil society alliances.
For us it is evident: In the regional structural change in Lusatia, women must be actively involved as decision-makers and bearers of responsibility*. Only in this way can the complex social, economic and cultural change in the industrial region be shaped successfully.
Our project, commissioned by Zukunftswerkstatt Lausitz, aims to initiate and support this process. We want to activate and connect women in order to make their problems, perspectives and potentials in the regional structural change of Lusatia visible, to promote the self-organisation of their interests and ideas and to involve them much more in the political and civil society decision-making processes.
An essential medium for the implementation of this objective is the platform "F for Kraft - Frauen.Leben.Lausitz". It addresses women in Lusatia: young and old, entrepreneurs and employees, women managers and volunteers, politically committed people, newcomers and established residents. In addition to the website (www.fwiekraft.de), the central activities of the platform are directed towards networking and the empowerment of women - in their professional experiences as well as in their everyday life and civil society activities.
In order to achieve our goal, we plan to implement various measures:
The research project is commissioned by Zukunftswerkstatt Lausitz (a project of the Wirtschaftsregion Lausitz GmbH).
Website www.fwiekkraft.de
