The territorial delegate for Employment, Enterprise and Self-Employment, Amós García Hueso, today held a meeting with beneficiaries of the project being developed by the Almanzora Association of Municipalities to promote the integration of 50 unemployed women from the municipalities that make up this association into the labour market. García Hueso stressed «the firm commitment of the Andalusian Government to full equality for women in the workplace, creating training and employment opportunities to facilitate their access to the labour market and their professional development in areas where it has been detected that they are lacking and with the conviction that greater labour integration in the region will also result in greater welfare and economic development».
This project, which is funded by the Ministry of Employment, Enterprise and Self-Employment with 110,750 euros, is one of the eight projects promoted by the Junta in the province with 1,160,230 euros and the collaboration of social entities, the Diputación de Almería and the Mancomunidad del Almanzora, within the framework of the Support Programme for Rural and Urban Women, whose objective is to facilitate the integration of 522 unemployed women from fifty municipalities in Almería. This programme is part of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the Regional Government of Andalusia with Next Generation Funds.
Amós García spoke with the participants in a workshop on basic digital skills given as part of theAssociation of Municipalities of Almanzora project at the Vuela Guadalinfo centre in Tíjola, accompanied by the president of the organisation, Antonio Ramón Salas, and the mayor of Tíjola, Juan José Martínez, whom he thanked for «their involvement and collaboration in achieving, and even exceeding, the objective of providing comprehensive care to 50 women in the region to achieve their integration into the labour market».
García Hueso explained that the Rural Women’s Support Programme benefits women «mainly from municipalities at risk of depopulation and who need training or retraining to open up opportunities for them to access the labour market, either as employees, as self-employed or by setting up a company, for example with the social economy formula». In this regard, she stressed that this initiative helps to stem the exodus from rural municipalities «by bringing useful resources to women in these areas». And he recalled the Junta’s new project ‘Andalusia Demographic Challenge’ which, among other measures, will bring together in a web portal the potential of municipalities to attract inhabitants, gathering information on public services, opportunities and lines of aid from the Junta.
«The ultimate goal is that the workshops, training and personalised advice that the women users are receiving will enable them to work in the region in tasks such as harvesting, processing and crafting of agri-food products, felling and pruning, or organic farming in green employment; and in the form of digital employment, they can put into practice their skills in the use of ICT in companies in the area, raising their level of digitisation and their competitiveness,» he said.
For his part, the president of the Mancomunidad de Municipios del Almanzora, Antonio Ramón Salas, stressed «the importance of the training being provided by the Regional Government of Andalusia for the development of rural women in rural areas, as is the case of the Almanzora Valley, because it gives them hope for finding a job» and pointed out that it is necessary to «continue to support programmes like this in a definitive and clear way».
On the eve of Women’s Day, García Hueso highlighted the advances in female employment in Andalusia in the last four years, such as the reduction of the wage gap by 12.7%, 3 points more than the Spanish average, and the increase in female employment by almost 11%, also above the national average. Between 2018 and 2022, the Andalusian female employment rate has grown by 2.85 points and the unemployment rate has fallen by 3.4 points. «However, we will continue to work tirelessly to achieve real equality and reduce the differences that still exist between female and male activity and unemployment rates», he added.
The delegate alluded to the gender gap in the field of ICT, in which 58% of Andalusian women have basic skills but the percentage is reduced to 35% in advanced skills and 22% in technological jobs. «It is important to incorporate women into the digital world so that we can respond to the changes that are taking place at a dizzying pace in our society and in the labour market,» she added.
She also encouraged users to get to know the Prepared programme, part of the Junta’s Digital Training Plan, in which 4,092 women from Almeria can receive training in digital skills for employment and entrepreneurship. She also explained that they can expand their qualifications in other areas with the Vocational Training for Employment actions programmed by the Junta in the province and those of the Escuela del Mármol de Fines, and has transferred them the support resources of the Consejería de Empleo if they decide to undertake, such as the zero quota for self-employed who are registered from 1 January this year, incentives for the start of activity and consolidation of self-employed or the incorporation of working partners in social economy enterprises.
Association of Municipalities of Almanzoraa Rural Women’s Project
The aim of the project is to provide complete attention through personalised insertion itineraries to 50 unemployed women from municipalities throughout the region. So far, 49 women have been beneficiaries of the programme, 43 of them are receiving personalised attention and new applicants continue to be incorporated. The Mancomunidad has funding of 110,750 euros to carry out this work, which includes grants of 515 euros that can be awarded to women who complete the personalised insertion itineraries.
To date, in addition to the actions of dissemination and recruitment of women interested in participating in this project, diagnostic interviews have been carried out with all interested women, individualised guidance sessions, design of personalised itineraries of labour insertion, with training actions and workshops on basic digital skills.
From mid-March onwards, work intermediation actions will begin with companies to facilitate the insertion of the users, as there is a target of 20% insertion. Training actions will also begin for the users, each lasting 120 hours and focusing on two specialities framed in digital employment and green employment, ‘Local agriculture and sustainable agri-food transformation’ and ‘Administration and digital commerce’. At the end of these trainings, the users will take workshops on transversal skills, such as waste management and advanced digital skills.
Rural Women Programme
The entities participating in this programme in the province are Asociación Verdiblanca (which plans to attend to 80 women), Acción Laboral (with 113 expected users), the Federación Almeriense de Asociaciones de Personas con Discapacidad, FAAM (which will attend to 40 beneficiaries), ATRAES Andalucía (with 113 beneficiaries), the Mancomunidad de Municipios del Valle del Almanzora (which will provide comprehensive care to 50 women), Asociación Protegidas (with 70 beneficiaries), Asociación Engloba (26 participating women) and the Diputación Provincial de Almería (which will provide care to 30 beneficiaries).
These projects offer comprehensive care to 522 women, with the aim of inserting at least 100 of them into the labour market for a minimum of three months. Of the total number of users, 183 participate in itineraries focused on green skills and jobs and another 183 in itineraries focused on digital skills and jobs, in line with the objectives set by the European funds and in response to changes in society and the labour market.
The projects will have a maximum duration of 18 months. The individualised itineraries will last up to 9 months and will combine employability diagnosis actions, job orientation and job search actions, counselling, training for professional qualification or requalification, transversal skills and abilities workshops, accompaniment in employment and incentives for participation or incorporation into the labour market.