Closing the gender employment gap: simulating the effects in Italy, France, Romania and Sweden
Closing gender gaps in employment has been recognized as a critical driver of inclusive growth and fiscal and social sustainability in advanced and emerging economies. Within the context of the Eu Horizon project PATHS2INCLUDE, ARCO’s Researchers Federico Ciani and Arianna Vivoli studied and assessed the potential societal-level gains of reducing or closing the gender employment [...]
Small municipalities and the right to stay: a new European strategy
To promote the right to stay, that is, the right to live and/or return to live, in small municipalities in inland and rural areas, institution should provide for investment and services, but they also need to build trust, engage communities and recognise their own social, cultural and environmental value. Rural and remote municipalities are often [...]
Microsimulations for institutions and international cooperation: how can we anticipate the impacts of policies and projects through ex-ante analysis?
Microsimulations are a highly useful methodological tool: by modelling the behaviour of individuals, households or businesses across different policy scenarios, they enable the ex-ante simulation of the likely effects of regulatory interventions, fiscal reforms or economic shocks. Such analyses provide governments, public institutions and international organisations with a forward-looking tool. ARCO works alongside local institutions [...]
Care and Equality: Rethinking Measurement and Monitoring for Local Governance
Care must be understood as a structural principle for rethinking development, equality and democracy. Within this approach, care is conceived as a foundational dimension of social organisation rather than as a sector of economic activity or as an instrument for supporting labour market participation. This conceptual shift is the starting point of the paper “Care [...]
Distretto tessile pratese: contributo a fondo perduto per miglioramento della sostenibilità socio-ambientale della produzione delle imprese
Il distretto tessile pratese è composto da circa 2.000 imprese che producono tessuti e filati per l’industria dell’abbigliamento, dell’arredamento, per la maglieria e tessuti speciali per uso industriale. Il bando “Bando per investimenti finalizzati alla sostenibilità socio-ambientale della produzione e alla trasformazione digitale – 2026" promosso dalla Camera di Commercio di Pistoia-Prato mira a sostenere [...]
World’s 100 largest philanthropic foundations list
This list is the result of a research, carried out by ARCO's Social Economy & Sustainability Management Unit about the top 100 largest philanthropic foundations in the world by total assets; it is based on up to date financial data concerning the period 2016-2018. The sources mostly used, are the financial statements published by the [...]
The feminist evaluation: empowerment, intersectionality and social transformation
Feminist evaluation starts from the assumption that gender matters. Rather than merely measuring outcomes, it interrogates the extent to which an intervention contributes to social justice and gender equity, with particular attention to persons who are marginalised or at risk of marginalisation. For ARCO, feminist evaluation constitutes neither a methodological label nor a procedural framework, [...]
A gender lens: gender mainstreaming and evaluation strategies for development projects
When developing an evaluation strategy for a project or programme, regardless of the sector of intervention and the specific topics addressed, it is essential to ensure that phenomena are read through an inclusive "lens". Indeed, such an approach, which is also increasingly promoted by international development organisations (OECD DAC, 2019), makes it possible to distinguish [...]