The function of guidance with a view to valorising gender and ethnic-cultural differences

In recent decades, the topic of guidance has assumed an essential strategic function at the international and national
level (Council of Europe, 2018, 2022; MIUR, 2022), especially with a view to the reduction-elimination
of school dropouts, the increase of employment in the world of work, the reduction of educational and economic
poverty. In particular, schools are assigned a central role in preparing for the world of work (MIUR, 2022). This
aim, however, must not obscure another essential training aspect of guidance, namely that of facilitating the individual
in the construction of his or her own personal life project, which begins in childhood. All the initiatives
aimed at building guidance pathways should therefore be directed not primarily at economic purposes, but at
developing reflexive, metacognitive and critical skills that enable subjects to know how to face, with self-awareness,
the contemporary challenge of uncertainty and precariousness. The contribution will focus on the function of
guidance in conditions of social, economic and cultural inequality in order to guarantee everyone the possibility
to realise their life project (Nussbaum, 2012). Gender difference is a variable that can preclude and/or make
certain paths more difficult for girls and boys. A guidance pathway that is also attentive to this dimension, which
is implemented in the long term and not only at “junction moments” (Gugliemi, D’Angelo, 2011), contributes
to making gender difference a resource rather than a limitation.