Board
Dr. Marsha Scott (Convener) is a feminist activist, researcher and practitioner and has advocated, volunteered, researched, and worked in the violence against women sector in the United Kingdom, the United States and Europe for 20 years. Scott represents Engender (and Scotland) on the UK Joint Committee on Women, which sends UK representation to the European Women’s Lobby. Scott is the UK board member on the EWL and is also the UK Expert delegate to the EWL’s European Observatory on Violence Against Women. She is a member of the Scottish Parliament Cross-Party Group on Men's Violence Against Women and Children and sits on the Women's National Commission's Violence Against Women subgroup. Scott is Principal Officer for Health, Policy and Planning at West Lothian Council, where she manages the Policy and Equality team.
Lesley Sutherland (Treasurer) taught English as a foreign language in Italy for a few years, following which she has worked in education fields in both the public and not for profit sectors. She worked as a trade union official in Scotland for 13 years, with responsibility for education and equalities. Currently she is a senior manager in the public sector. Lesley has a long-standing commitment to and track record of activity in women's equality. She helped set up Women's Forum Scotland, which subsequently merged with Engender. She was a founder board member, serving for six years as the UK representative, of the European Women's Lobby, latterly as an Executive Committee member undertaking the role of Treasurer. She has been on Engender's Board for some years and currently is its finance convener. Lesley's particular interests are in women's participation in decision-making and Europe/international, as well as education. She is also a director of the Centre for Scottish Public Policy.
Kath Davies (Vice-convenor) lives in Edinburgh and spends time in North Wales, where she grew up. A freelance writer and book editor, she has written fiction and non-fiction and contributed to publications on women and media and women's organisations. Kath works on equality issues with women's organisations at Scottish and UK national levels. She has served on the Executive of the UK Women's National Commission, which advises government on issues of concern to women, chairing the WNC International Committee producing submissions to UN CSW and CEDAW Committees.
For several years she divided her time between Scotland and North Wales, caring for elderly parents, experiencing the personal and practical needs of carers and cared for.
She has been a member of the UNESCO UK National Commission (Culture Committee) and the external member on Girlguiding Scotland's Executive Committee, contributing to policy development.
Kath chaired the first meetings of the Scottish Women's Convention, an independent mechanism for consultation between government and women's groups. Wishing to see greater diversity in public appointments, she is an Assessor with the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments, Scotland.
She enjoys reading, hill walking, film and theatre, tending her allotment and cooking the produce.
(OBE, 2000, for services to women's issues)
Joan Bree is employed as National Communications and Campaigns Officer with YWCA Scotland. YWCA Scotland enable girls and young women under 30 to develop their full potential and participate at all levels of society. We take a leading position on issues that affect young women in Scotland. Campaigns include raising awareness of Violence Against Women and Promoting positive body image.
Co founder, previous convenor and current member of ENACT for Women. A grassroots Edinburgh based women’s organisation. ENACT co-ordinated Edinburgh’s International Women’s Day programme from 2000 – 2005 and runs its own conferences and awards ceremony celebrating the lives of ordinary women.
Tanveer Parnez is the Director of National Developments for BEMIS; representing the diverse ethnic minority communities who are under-represented and disadvantaged at various levels across Scotland. Her experience relates to housing and social welfare, sports and she has a PGD in Equalities and Discrimination,a BA in community regeneration and Diploma in ILM in leadership and Management. In addition, she holds a Diploma in Social Welfare, Diploma in interpreting in Urdu both in local government and Legal. In addition, she has taught swimming as an assistant teacher and life guard, coached net ball and was actively involved in sports. She has assisted in the research with VDS “Way of Life” volunteering amongst the ethnic minority communities in relation to focus groups, interviews, facilitation, transcripts and organising focus groups regionally across Scotland. She has also carried out some facilitation work with Community Scotland and has been involved in consultation work in relation to Race Equality Review and community planning and carrying out needs analysis with ethnic minority communities in the rural areas of Scotland. Core of her work is for capacity building among the ethnic minority voluntary sector and communities, it is not only providing training and bridging the skills gaps, but enabling and involving these communities in the wider decision making process on a local and a national level and encouraging them to lead on things. In addition, she is responsible for the rural dimension as part of the national scene across Scotland and managing staff and input into other strategic work on policies and consultations with the Scottish Government and Stakeholders. Tanveer also represent BEMIS on the UKREN (United Kingdom Race and Europe Network) committee.
Kirstein Rummery is a professor of social policy at the University of Stirling, having recently moved there from Manchester. She has published books and articles on gender, disability, age and citizenship, and is the co-editor of Women and New Labour: Engendering politics and policy? (Policy Press, Bristol, 2007). See http://www.dass.stir.ac.uk/staff/showstaff.php?id=54 for more details
Hazel Smith is the Director of Women Onto Work, a Lothian based voluntary organisation which provides a range of career and personal development programmes to help vulnerable women access education, employment and citizenship opportunities. She has been involved in working and volunteering with groups, organisations and communities throughout Edinburgh and Scotland for 20 years.
Most of her work has been on behalf of young people, homeless people and women. Over the last 10 years she has worked across Scotland with a range of voluntary and public sector services. She has undertaken social research and participatory evaluation work to support the development of good practice and assist the Scottish Government and others in developing better services for disadvantaged groups and communities. She has managed a range of national and area-based voluntary organizations working with vulnerable and disadvantaged children, young people and women and has been commissioned on a number of occasions to develop and implement change management processes within large voluntary organizations.
Carolynn Cruikshank-Gray is a manager with a Women's Aid organisation having recently left a post as an economic adviser in social enterprise. Over the last decade she has worked as a project manager in short-term projects mainly in the third sector but also in educational establishments. As well as being a Director with Engender she is also on the Board of Home Scotland one of the largest registered social landlords in Scotland. She represents the Edinburgh and Fife Area committee. She also has an advisory role with Dundee Women's Aid.
Carolynn is part of the Supported Lodgings scheme run by her local council social work department and young people between the ages of 16-21 come and live in her home and are supported to learn the skills needed to allow them to move to independent living.
She is a supporter of two embryonic Fife Development Trusts and a member of Dunfermline Heritage Trust
Wendy Davies jointly established OSDC in 1988 and since then the focus of her work has been training, consultancy and the production of training and good practice manuals in the areas of equal opportunities and empowerment.
She has written extensively in this area – including equality standards documents for small and medium sized enterprises, distance learning packs, trainers’ manuals and a managers’ guide to implementing equality policies.
Her clients have included the Irish Government, the Scottish Government, The British Red Cross, the Church of England, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and Huddersfield Giants Rugby Club.
Emma Ritch is the Manager of the Close the Gap project, which works across Scotland with employers and employees to encourage and enable action to address the gender pay gap.
Emma is interested in women’s experience of the labour market, violence against women, feminist economics and gendered policy development, and human rights approaches to tackling women’s inequality. She chairs the boards of Glasgow Rape Crisis and the Glasgow YWCA, and is an active member of the Scottish Women’s Budget Group. Emma is also involved with the equalities work of her union, the GMB, and is a member of the National Equality Forum, Regional Equality Forum and is Branch Equalities Officer for GMB Glasgow Apex.
