Equal Opportunities for Older Women

Advice on Women and Work: among other things, through telephone advisory service, personal advisory talks, seminars on returning to work (changing track, a second start, individual lectures and seminars on the internet for women, communications training...-c. 250 advisory sessions annually)
Women's foundation: orientation courses, retraining or further training for unemployed women from the Steyr region according to individual objectives. Age groups 20 to 53 years, c. 100 participants annually
Lobbying: PR-work, lectures, collaboration on regional and national committees on themes related to "Women and Work", current focal point is the use of EU promotion programmes.

Already 600 women have been trained or retrained with positive results; follow-up project is scheduled for Kärnten, Wien and Steiermark aimed at advising 1500 women on returning to the labour market or retraining.
On the theme of "Developing Employment Fields", a successful model "Aurora" was conceived and implemented by way of 6 new enterprises, 10 newly created jobs, 16 more placements (transfer to other regions in progress)
Inclusion of women's issues and perspectives in regional planning and development, successful sensitising of the relevant actors, for example "Projekt égalité".

Access for women to innovative jobs is still very difficult, on the one hand due to the women's lack of qualificaitons (leaving certificate, academic training), and on the other due to a lack of flexibility on the part of employers as regards working and organisational forms. Strict objectives means restricting the scope of training courses to what can be directly marketed. In general, educational initiatives for adults are often too fragmentary to lead to genuine further qualification. Constantly changing exchange rates and changes in the governments' budgets make long-term work difficult.

-Content and tempo of the advice are in keeping with the client's wishes
-Orientation and further training to suit each individual case, so as to make optimum use of personal abilities and circumstances.
-The board of the association is largely made up of women (from works' councils etc.) who make use of their experience with colleagues in business and industry.

Since 1991, with the Upper Austrian Social Projects programme, with women's groups and projects in Upper Austria, in Steiermark (nowa) and Kärnten, international cooperation in the context of Employment NOW (very valuable)
Exchange of views and information, networking, joint project concepts

We are available for people interested in receiving more information on our initiative by phone, post or e-mail.

7 salaried employees at the supporting organisation.
5 volunteers/honorary members.

3 million Schillings annually for Overhead Women's Foundation (rent, staff, running costs)

Folder, annual reports, brochure "Selbst ist die Frau - Wegweiser für Frauen, die daran denken, sich selbstständig zu machen" (for women considering becoming self-employed)

Vocational planning is part of planning one's lfe, and is always chaning - it is important that a woman has a long-term horizon to work towards. Experience with honorary work and further training are very useful, also work done while rearing children. Relevant tips are gathered and documented by different networks.