On Monday, December 1, 2025, we had the pleasure of launching the #GROW project at the Department of Mathematics of Politecnico di Milano. Funded by Fondazione Cariplo through the "2024 Inequalities Research" call, this exciting three-year project aims to explore how inequalities in the availability of ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) services shape female employment. We’ll focus on Italian provinces, working together to identify clusters where ECEC services have similar impacts on women’s participation in the workforce. Thanks to the collaboration between Politecnico di Milano and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), the research will combine a social-policy approach with advanced Bayesian statistical techniques. The results produced will support the development of policies promoting gender equality through a data-driven approach.
We are grateful to the UAB team (Prof. Lara Maestripieri, Prof. Raquel Gallego Calderon, Dr. Alexandra Seehaus) and the Polimi team (Prof. Alessandra Guglielmi, Simone Colombara, Giulio Beltramin, and Luca Perego) for this productive first meeting!