Assuring equal opportunities for man and women alike, through affirmative action, and especially for man and women belonging to different ethnic and age groups is – alongside the formal recognition of rights to equal treatment and non-discrimination – one of the crucial elements of social inclusion. The latter is both a cultural and a social-economic process since requires the erasure of cultural stereotypes (that legitimize and sustain practices of discrimination and at the end social inequality), but also the transformation of structural conditions regarding lack of access to housing, labor, education, healthcare etc. Disadvantaged social categories exposed to the risk of social exclusion, such as Roma women and young persons (the major target-groups of our project) need equal opportunities, recognition and respect coming from their own communities as well as from the more privileged population. Equal opportunities, recognition, and respect are indispensable for self-affirmation on the labor market according to their needs, aspirations, and interests.

Our project contributes to the creation of a set of conditions in which equality does not mean assimilation and difference is not conducive to inequality. In other words: conditions that favor the effective realization of equality through difference, assuring the implementation of equal rights together with erasing the social structures and cultural knowledge that maintain vulnerable groups in conditions of inequality. We consider that these conditions should also be about the respect towards cultural differences rooted in traditions and in the process of socialization, but as well as towards individual’s (universal) human rights: the principle of promoting Roma women cannot go together with the sustenance of cultural traditions that maintain women in subordinated positions. In the same time the project focuses on the phenomenon of multiple and intersectional discrimination, e.g. unequal and unfair treatment based simultaneously on many criteria. That is why it is relevant compared to policies for Roma and to policies for Roma women. It combines the principle of gender integrative approach (gender mainstreaming) with specific actions addressed to women belonging to vulnerable groups, such as Roma.

The specific objectives of the project are the following: the promotion of social inclusion among Roma women and young individuals based on the identification and recognition of their particular needs and interests; raising occupational ratio among categories exposed to the risk of social exclusion; consolidating the motivational background for education and training taken into consideration differences within Roma communities; promoting an inclusive and cohesive society and a form of solidarity that transcends differences in terms of ethnicity, gender, age, and social status; eliminating discriminatory practices based on criteria such as ethnic origin, gender, age, especially in the context of unequal and unfair treatment practiced on many basis; reconciling professional life (career) with family life through affirmative actions that support the effort of Roma women to find a job; creating and consolidating cooperation and transnational solidarity among Roma women in Europe.