The project “Girls can do it! Supporting nontraditional career choices of women with vocational education” launched in June 2016 responded to a current situation on the labour markets of 4 Visegrad countries (Poland, Czech, Slovakia and Hungary) which are highly segregated into female and male sectors. Women face the negative consequences – working in less privileged and less paid jobs. At the same time an urgent need for technically skilled professionals is highly recognized in those countries. The lack of technical workers and professionals negatively affects the economy of Central Europe. Education systems fail to adapt to the market demands and produce enough qualified people in those fields, for which there is greatest demand. Schools often resemble to a talent leaking pipeline.

The project lasted 1 year and within that time the project partners – Karat Coalition (Poland), Gender Studies (Czech), Budapest Institute for Policy Analysis (Hungary) and EsFem(Slovakia) – used a systemic approach to assess necessary changes in educational systems, including practical steps that can be adopted in order to attract girls to technical vocational education as they are great and unrevealed potential to fill missing technical positions. The policy paper for systemic changes to increase number of women in technical jobs and improve their situation on a labor market was presented to the public and decision-makers. On the national level each project partner made an entry analysis on the effects of gender horizontal segregation in the education system and labor market, and invited the stakeholders (decision-makers, representatives of schools, trade unions, craft associations, job offices, career advisors, chambers of commerce) to discuss the problem at the round table meeting.

The main activities of the project were:

• Entry analysis on the scope and consequences of gender horizontal segregation in each project country.  See the details HERE
• The national round table. See the details HERE
• The international meeting and the press conference in Prague. See the details HERE