Engender blog
All of Engender’s latest news. Reports, reviews, books, articles, and information from across Scotland’s women’s sector.
We would love to hear from other feminists around Scotland. Check out our guidelines for more information on how you can blog for us.
The cost of living crisis and women: read our new report
Today Engender has released a report setting out how the deepening cost of living crisis will have a devastating impact both on different groups of women in Scotland, and on women's equality as a whole. Covering issues including fuel costs, unpaid care, housing, women's safety, mental health and social security, the report details how marginalised women will be disproportionately affected by this latest cost of living crisis. We make recommendations for immediate action to ensure that Scottish Government policy and budgetary responses to the cost of living do not risk entrenching gender inequality even more deeply in Scotland.
Crisis after Crisis, women pay the price
Women, particularly those facing intersecting marginalisation, pay the price in times of crisis because there is very little safety net when the fault lines of deep inequality in the UK are exposed. This is largely due to of a gendered ‘crisis of incomes’ across the UK that ensures women do not have equal access to financial resources compared with men. The egregious impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has already placed women at greater risk of economic insecurity, and the current cost of living crisis will further exacerbate women’s existing economic inequality, pushing many into poverty.
Higher prices, lower income, less security
While many people across Scotland are experiencing hardship as a result of the cost of living increases, women are far more likely to take responsibility for spending on children and purchasing non-durable items like food and domestic products that are susceptible to price hikes during periods of inflation. Alongside these increased costs, the UK Government decision not to uprate Universal Credit in line with inflation mean that hundreds of thousands of people in Scotland will experience a real terms income cut of £570 per year. Households impacted by the benefits cap face even more severe losses. Women are the majority of those on Universal Credit and impacted by the benefit cap.
Women make up the majority of many groups with high energy needs, including older people, disabled people, unpaid carers, and those looking after children in the home, and are also the majority of those in temporary work and on zero-hours contacts in Scotland. Soaring energy bills for households and business will therefore have a disproportionate impact on women, both as the managers of increasingly tight household budgets, and as those first in line to face unemployment, underemployment or the negative mental health impacts associated with precarious work.
Delivering Equally Safe: The importance of primary prevention
Last year, Engender was awarded funding from the Delivering Equally Safe fund of the Scottish Government, for work on primary prevention of violence against women. We are now at the end of the first year of this funding and our Policy Officer for the Delivering Equally Safe project, Hannah Brisbane, shares an update about the project so far.
As you may know, Equally Safe is Scotland’s strategy to prevent and eradicate violence against women and girls. The strategy uses a feminist analysis of violence against women and girls (VAWG) by recognising it as a cause and consequence of gender inequality.
GUEST BLOG: Lockdown (maternity) leave
We've been working with the ALLIANCE and The Health and Social Care Academy to gather information about experiences of pregnancy and maternity services during Covid-19 from women across Scotland. Alongside our work, we're sharing a series of guest blogs reflecting on those experiences. Here, Eilidh shares her experience of post-partum support during the pandemic.
My eldest was born in early March 2020, meaning my pregnancy and birth happened back in the old normal, where facemasks were rare and social distancing wasn’t a phrase yet. We left hospital to the same kind of new normal that every new parent enters, where days merge together in a haze of sleepless nights, breastfeeding and nappies. We had visits from family and tried to find our feet, mostly unaware of the world changing outside.
Gendered online harassment – what’s law got to do with it?
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Claire Kish is currently in the second year of her PhD in Sociology and is based in the University of Glasgow’s Sociology department. Her PhD research explores the online harassment of women in journalism focusing on professional harms and organisational dimensions. Here she writes about a project she has been working on with Engender:
I recently completed a project for Engender which explores the legal responsibilities of employers with respect to the online harassment of workers. I specifically focused on women journalists because they face significant and severe abuse online, often as a result of performing key duties of the role. Yet the results have wider significance - especially as more work shifts online and employers increasingly utilise social media for business purposes. These changes have significant gendered and intersectional impacts as there are risks associated with being online which for women, especially minoritised women, are amplified. Given that women journalists are facing online harassment when carrying out work for their employers, we need to approach this as an employment and workers’ rights issue. So my project examined existing UK employment laws to identify and understand what legal duties employers have to uphold the rights of their women employees.
GUEST BLOG: Maternity and pregnancy services during Covid-19
We've been working with the ALLIANCE and The Health and Social Care Academy to gather information about experiences of pregnancy and maternity services during Covid-19 from women across Scotland. Alongside our work, we're sharing a series of guest blogs reflecting on those experiences. Here, Hannah Tweed reflects on her experience of pregnancy services in 2020.
This month the ALLIANCE and Engender launched a survey on people’s experiences of pregnancy (and everything after) during the Covid-19 pandemic.
To be frank, reading through early drafts of the survey was distinctly uncanny. I was pregnant with my daughter when the pandemic started, and she was a #LockdownBaby of 2020 – which, as a larval human with binary needs, probably did her no real harm. I’m not sure I’d say the same of my experiences as a new parent (and particularly one who spent my second and third trimesters immersed in public health policy).
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Engender Briefing: Pension Credit Entitlement Changes
From 15 May 2019, new changes will be introduced which will require couples where one partner has reached state pension age and one has not (‘mixed age couples’) to claim universal credit (UC) instead of Pension Credit.
Engender Parliamentary Briefing: Condemnation of Misogyny, Racism, Harassment and Sexism
Engender welcomes this Scottish Parliament Debate on Condemnation of Misogyny, Racism, Harassment and Sexism and the opportunity to raise awareness of the ways in which women in Scotland’s inequality contributes to gender-based violence.
Gender Matters in Social Security: Individual Payments of Universal Credit
A paper calling on the Scottish Government to automatically split payments of Universal Credit between couples, once this power is devolved to the Scottish Parliament.
Gender Matters Manifesto: Twenty for 2016
This manifesto sets out measures that, with political will, can be taken over the next parliamentary term in pursuit of these goals.
Scottish NGO Briefing for UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women
Joint briefing paper for the UN Rapporteur on Violence Against Women.
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