Gender Equality No5
In this year’s Social issues, social innovation and corporate responsibility class, taught by Mrs. Betty Tsakarestou, we had the opportunity to learn about the sustainable developing goals of United Nations and develop a project regarding a goal we were interested in. This was the beginning of LAW and this is our story.
It all started when the members of the group met. Initially the group consisted of only two members, Anastasia Liakou and Arviola Skempi. They chose the fifth goal, which is focusing in Gender Equality. They made one presentation at the beginning of the semester describing the goal and providing some examples for gender equality. The next week two new members joined the team, Elina Zisi and Georgia Staikou. The following week was the moment to start building a larger group since we had a lot of Eramsus students. At that phase the group was completed with two Erasmus students from Spain, called Pablo Ruiz Martin and Sofía Atance Montero. On first place we all agreed to become a team in order to share experiences of gender equality matter from each of our countries. It was an issue that moved us a lot and made us curious about what things we could learn more. Each one had their own point of view about gender equality but everybody recognized it as an important and urgent problem to the current reality. Although both the Greek components and the Spanish shared common thoughts about gender inequality issues, each one had different priorities or perspective on how to face the problem, the most of them, obviously, came from our own experiences in each one of our cities. Despite of these differences, since the first moment we understood it was an advantage which could bring us a new ideas and at the end the best result possible.
The second step we had to do before starting working on the project was to select one of the three forms that our project could be. We had to choose between a NGO, a Start-up and collaborating with a big association. An issue such as gender equality originally has its roots in the foundations of social beliefs and we understood that the best way to cover more aspects was running a NGO. Even choosing this form of organization we couldn’t treat the entire gender equality axis, so we prioritise some of them. Among all the problems the women face, we focused on those of them which they experience in a more intensive way in their routines, for example domestic violence and labour spheres. We started by defining the difference between the various problems that women have in their lives, and in which of them we could provide help. To be more specific we are talking about problems in the following levels:
▪ Violence against women: physical, sexual and psychological violence happening within the family, the couple or simply in public places forced by unknown men. Of course it would involve several victims’ profile, but everyone with the common element to have been or being any type of machist violence.
▪ Work: Salary inequality, work harassment, unfair promotion options
▪ Life: Abortion rights, pressure about clothing, behavior, domestic violence, inequality roles inside the families, family consolation
▪ Religion: Prejudice about sexual preferences, stigma of preference to not believe
▪ Studies: stigma for girls to get “manly” jobs, exclusion from free education.
The way we decided to apply all that points to our NGO was to give a legal perspective. This means offering free legal support and advice to all the women who wanted to join us. For all these reasons we decided to name our NGO with the acronym L.A.W. (Like A Woman). After figuring out problem we started to create a solution to it.
Theoretically we had a good idea that just needed to be implemented. However the reality was different. Our mission was simple: provide legal support to women in need accompanied with psychological support and advice, seminars or self-defense classes and much collaboration. That will provide a different perspective in the matter of helping women even before suffering any type of discrimination.
In order to run the LAW NGO we needed a plan. Our workforce would consist of some lawyers that would provide the legal support and some psychologists offering their services to any woman who may need it. The lawyers working with us in a regular base would be paid a symbolic sum of money and as a result they would gain good publicity. But we knew that our lawyers and psychologists would not be able to handle all the cases so we needed the help of volunteers to create a stronger support system.
As an Ngo we will need funding and we are reaching to ESF (European Social Funding) in order to be approved. Other funding incomes would be from the companies and associations we will collaborate with such as municipalities in Athens.
The positioning: We tried to establish the position of our NGO in Greece.
Internal factors: Our NGO is based on the Greek culture because it provides us the tools to make possible our goals. The social situation provides us the possibility to do more about gender equality. This matter has been already on people’s minds so it gives us an advantage to start our goals.
In the future: This is a social problem that can’t be erased in a few years but our NGO can work in order to eliminate its extent. But the thing that we could achieve will set foundations for a more equal society.
External factors: We try to make difference with other organizations. One point that differentiates us from other NGOs is that we provide all kinds of services apart from legal support like seminars or self-defense classes. Also we´ll give a new perspective to the issue, we are young women who have a new perspective of feminism that could help and make a difference with more old NGOs.
In the future: It will be easy to access, you can reach to us thanks to our social media mainly or the call centre it is specific problem, also we could make more differences in the target group giving even more help related to their problems.
After doing this we start a research to find organizations similar to us to know if it possible or needed in Greek society. We found “Diotimia”, which worked with similar goals as owns and some techniques homologous too. I order to understand better our social and corporate environment we decided to create elaborate a framework research and compare Diotima and LAW, highlighting both the differences and the similarities.
Main goals
Diotima specializes in gender and equality issues. It gets information about social/employment, immigration and other policies and with that it has research programs, relevant studies and elaboration of manuals. Some of their services are interventions and counseling for support and empowerment of women as well as advocacy for women
Law supports women regarding their work, life, families, religion and studies by providing legal support and psychological support. We also offer feminism seminars and self-defense classes so as to create independent women. For that also provide sexual education to kids and parents. It is important give the parents an education because they are the main example that kids follow as daily base. Furthermore we help women to get a job they deserve and are qualified for after having lost their first one due to inequality issues by collaboration with companies about job offers.
Financing
Diotima gets its funding from European and national funds programs, international organizations and corporate social responsibility areas of private entities.
Law is funded mainly from the European social funding and some collaborating companies. We provide the legal cases as non-profit cases from legal firms. Huge help is coming from the volunteers: lawyers, psychologist, social workers, teacher or trainers. The teacher and trainers don’t have to have a continue participation because we’ll use their qualities in seminaries not like a continue activity.
About the legal aid
Diotima provides legal aid for low-income women (Greek citizens or migrants) survivors of gender-bases violence, without access to information and legal supports. Including legal support for appeals to justice, with all the expensed covered. Legal aid for (men and women) refugee survivors of gender-based violence, inhabiting urban spaces or refugee camps. Services provided include legal support for the asylum process. Psycho social support for survivors of gender-based violence, especially members of the refugee population inhabiting refugee camps or urban spaces, in Attica and Northern Greece. Last but not least career counseling services for employed and unemployed women
Law offers help to women who have suffered gender-based violence and must go to court, providing a full free service in these cases. Legal advice to women who need legal help for example in work matter, like their right and different obligations that they don’t know about.
We created different personas to mapping the people that we could be possible users and be helped by the NGO. We made three prototypes of women: First one is Tali. She is a 30 years old refugee. In the mornings she works in the kitchen of a restaurant and during the nights she goes to night high school. She is also atheist. So she is bullied by her classmates and her teachers because of her origins and her accent. Another possible client is Migena, who is 24 years old. She hasn’t children and she is Muslim. She works in a law firm. She is quite, she doesn’t trust easily, she is pleasant and active. There is mansplaining, her colleagues don’t talk to her properly and they don’t ask for her opinion cause she is a woman. Last but not least, Mary. She works in an insurance company for two years now. Mary is so good at her job that she had been offered a promotion. When her boss learned she was pregnant, the promotion went to her partner with lower amount of sales. She is also relegated to a lower position because she asks for a reduced working day to take care of her son. Her boss said when he got asked about it, that she is going to have less capacity to do the same work as before.
A critical point in the process of creating our Ngo was the moment that the users would use our services. This is why we had to do the user journey before reaching to the real world. The user journey is a detailed mapping of the actions the user will make in order to go through our services. This step is a great opportunity to spot if our NGO lacks anything. In the picture below is presented in a detailed way how Artemisia, our client is using our services, from the beginning to the end.
We were searching for partnerships, companies with similar goals and a closer scope of action in order to settle new and vigorous synergies. So we found Diotima and Women on Top and we communicate with them. They told us that our NGO is truly interesting and that they could help us with our next steps. Then we came into touch with people from events that already exist and promote the empowerment, some of them focuses in women empowerment. In other words, we had thought about suggesting well known people with impact to the society that cooperate with LAW or unknown people that their stories should be heard. The mainl events that we focused on were TEDxAthens, Live a Legacy and Plegde for Parity. In that way, they will have the chance to inspire other people that go through the same circumstances and encourage them to go on in an effective way.
Apart from theory and inspirational stories, we decided to find a practical way to help women. So, we concluded that self-defense classes are what a girl and a woman need. We contacted people from municipalities, and they informed us about some defense classes they already offer to the public. They agreed to support us with extra classes and even municipalities that don’t provide that kind of classes, they were willing to cooperate with us and add them to their program.
Afterwards we wanted opinions from experts in the field, people that could be honest with us and criticism our idea, our NGO. We addressed into lawyers, psychologists, human resources directors for their comments. In that way, we could have the chance to improve our model and to go further. Most of them shared with us their personal experiences and thrilled with the idea. Some others, said that it would be nice, but they personally couldn’t find time to volunteer or to offer in our NGO.
The last but no less important collaboration is not exactly a synergy, but probably it will be the core action to contact women who needs our services. There are some call-centers that women, who contact with the hotline asking for help and advice. It is easier and more productive if we collaborate with call-centers like “15900–24 hours telephone SOS line” and others.
Trying to give more influence and range among our targeted audience, we decided to introduce LAW in the social networks. Especially on Instagram, where, above the name of “@lawngo”, we wanted to publish and spread our labour mainly to take a place in an important part of the society, allowing us to be in the mind of those women who could need our services. It was one of our following goals to create new profiles in other social networks too, such as Facebook, etc.
Although we have done a lot of research and we have talked with many companies until then, we did not stop there. We understood that we could expand the NGOs road contemplating other targets for the future. We wanted to do further steps in a way that LAW could grow. We were working the whole semester, so our idea could be as much realistic as possible. We understand that gender equality is one of the sustainable goals that are always changing, due to technology, human rights, etc. Also, women do demand more rights and an equal treatment. So, we kept our research going on and we talked with more candidates for collaborations, volunteers etc. Also, we created an app for our NGO and a list with many more ideas and tasks to accomplish.
The last part of the work was to prepare a presentation for all the classmates during the last session of the lecture. Although we had so many things to say and information to share with our classmates, we had only five minutes to present our progress. So, we concluded the big presentation in to a five minutes sum up, in which we talked about the basic changes and the most important things about LAW, our NGO.
At the end of our presentation, we felt relieved and glad about our work results. We saw that our NGO was almost ready and the most important, competitive and specialized. We felt proud of ourselves that six people from all over the world, that haven’t worked again before, brought such an important project through. We had an excellent cooperation and we were always communicated in the best way, although each of us is different. After that class, our ways separated, some of the Greek girls left for Erasmus studies, the guys from Spain returned to their homes and the others stayed at Panteion university ready for the next semester and looking forward for their upcoming degree. So at that last lesson, we said goodbye and we wished one day to meet again somewhere..
Team: Sof Atance, Anastasia Liakou, pablo ruiz martin, Arviola Skempi, Georgia Staikou, Elina Zisi
Proffesor: Betty Tsakarestou
+PRESENTATION (link)
