Equality Counting
This year, the Equality Counting project will be working in two new areas, Women and Asylum and Child Poverty with our Work around Transgender women, Disibility and Communication ongoing.
Find out about:
Women and Asylum
Women Thinking Trans Issues
Find out about our Equality Counting Case Studies here
Read our Equality Counting Case Studies - Women Thinking Trans Issues
Women Thinking Inclusive Communication
About Equality counting
Equality Counting is an Equality and Human Rights funded project to enable women disadvantaged by a public service provision to come together in communities-of-interest around specific issues of concern. Together they will develop and implement strategies to advocate and action change and hold public service providers to account using participatory action research and equality legislation as tools.
Engender will support these ‘communities’ to:
• organise and access appropriate information
• understand policy e.g. equality duties
• carry out participatory research
• develop and articulate gendered equalities analysis
• work out the opportunity in legislation and apply it to their situation
• take up or establish opportunities for dialogue with the service provider
• take action using their research and analysis e.g. advocating for change; establishing, and making public, community based indicators against which they will hold services to account.
Who is it for?
The main beneficiary group would come under the heading of gender – specifically women. Within this we work with a diversity of women including lesbian and bisexual women, older and young women, transgender people, disabled women, single mothers, young mothers, mothers of disabled children, black and minority ethnic women, women with mental health issues, gypsy traveller and rural women, mothers affected by substance misuse and their children, mothers returning to work, unemployed women and other socially disadvantaged women.
We are also increasingly liaising with a diversity of male and transgender people’s groups to address issues of sexism affecting them, such as parenting, flexible working, heterosexism and homophobia, and transphobia and binary gender identities.
It is our intention to invite the participation of women who have a particular issue they want to address through participatory action research, advocacy and action. We anticipate working with a mix of women across urban, semi-rural and rural/island areas.
Why are we doing it?
The learning from the project will benefit women across Scotland more widely, as the case studies and the reflections of Inspiring Women will inform our thinking and work to promote gendered policy, practice, budgets and monitoring.
We will advertise the project opportunity through equality networks in Scotland. At Engender our current networks include older women, disabled women, women carers, lesbian and bisexual women, transgender people, women living in areas of social deprivation, women who have experienced violence, women managing mental health problems, women from gypsy and traveller communities, women refugees and asylum seekers, homeless women and lone mothers. We are also seeking to establish links with women offenders.
Using participatory action research and participatory approaches Engender will engage with groups of women who have identified an issue which they wish to address and support them to organise themselves into a community-of-interest. The lifespan of the groups will depend on the issue, some may formalise, whilst others may be issue-specific and then disband. Either way the people involved will gain transferable skills in how to organise around an issue, research it, analyse it and articulate it in ways that use the opportunities, for changing and challenging policies and provision offered by equality legislation, and enable dialogue with the public service provider or policy makers to effect change. Engender will support the groups throughout the process, but the emphasis will be on enabling the groups rather than campaigning or doing on their behalf.
What will come out of it?
Throughout the process Engender will provide the information and tools that will enable local groups to lobby, initiate campaigns and take action. Different groups will acquire different skills according to need e.g. some may need more research skills; others, support in developing and articulating ideas; some may need support to design and plan the distribution of flyers for a campaign; others, to develop effective forum theatre or art processes to attract attention and provoke dialogue; others still may need support to engage in community planning forums, participate in consultation around equality impact assessment, or to develop indicators with a public service provider or policy maker against which they will hold them to account.
Beyond enabling communities of women to address their issues of concern, increased participatory research and support work with a diverse range of communities-of-interest will improve Engender’s own capacity to serve women in Scotland by grounding our policy work in the real experiences of women managing the consequences of their multiple/ intersecting identities. The participatory action research and ‘campaign’ process/progress will be written up as a series of case studies and used by Engender’s ‘Inspiring Women’ think tank to inform our analysis and our contributions to local, national, EU and UN policy discussions.
