Engender blog

Abortion Rights Round-Up

What's been happening with reproductive rights over the past month? Engender members are kept up-to-date with this news through our weekly Friday Feminist Five newsletter, but in this post we've collated an update for non-members too. If you'd like to receive the weekly newsletter you can join Engender as a member here.

News from the US continues to cause alarm for defenders of women’s reproductive rights, as we wait for the decision on whether or not Roe v Wade will be effectively overturned by the Supreme Court. While it’s been heartening to see protests, rallies and other actions to defend the right to choose (we particularly liked the New York Magazine’s state-by-state guide to accessing abortions, and the creative legislation in Austin, Texas), the reality of what may happen across the US in a couple of months is really scary.

In the last 25 years, 50 countries have moved to amend their laws to improve access to abortion, and this would represent a significant step backwards.

Why the proposed Scottish Carer's Assistance must do more to value unpaid care

This week marks Carers Week, and it comes after two years which have shown, more clearly than ever, the vital role that unpaid carers play. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted what half of the population already knew – that women take on the vast majority of unpaid care work, and that without them our society and economy could not function.

The Scottish Government has been consulting on their proposals to replace Carer's Allowance with a Scottish Carer's Assistance, as part of the devolution of some social security payments to Scotland. The provision of unpaid care, and its interactions with social care, are closely interlinked with systemic and harmful gender roles that constrain women’s lives, with women’s access to paid work, leisure time and power remaining heavily constrained by the provision of care and gendered expectations around its value and delivery.

May 2022 - Policy Round Up

Each month we share a summary of the policy work Engender has been doing . You can find all of our latest briefings and publications here, or in the links below.

Our Bodies, Our Choice - standing up for abortion rights

News from the US this week about a possible major rollback of women’s reproductive rights is deeply alarming. Access to safe abortion is a human right and is fundamental to how women experience their economic, social and health-based rights and how they access employment, education, and resources. It’s crucial that lawmakers recognise and safeguard the reality of abortion as healthcare - that it is vital, safe and one of the most routinely used medical procedures by women across the world. In the last 25 years, 50 countries have moved to amend their laws to improve access to abortion. The US risks moving against the tide of history and science. We've included some timely writing on abortion in our round-up of articles below, including work from Mona Eltahaway and Jessica Valenti, as well as a republished piece from the 70s Italian feminist group Movimento di Lotta Femminile di Padova.

Here in Scotland, abortion remains within the criminal justice system and we are still awaiting a decision from Scottish Government on whether telemedical services introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic, which provided improved access and reduced waiting times, will remain available long-term. You can read our submission in support of retaining telemedical access online here. The news from the US has also prompted growing calls to implement buffer zones around clinics which provide abortion services in Scotland due to increasing levels of protest outside hospitals in Glasgow and Edinburgh. We've created a quick breakdown of the importance of abortion and work on women's reproductive rights over on our Instagram, which you can check out here.

Scottish Government commits to retaining early medical abortion at home

On Thursday, the Scottish Government confirmed that measures introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic allowing women to take both pills required for an early medical abortion at home will remain in place, bringing Scotland in line with England and Wales. When the Scottish Government consulted on access to remote abortion at the end of 2020, we joined with BPAS and Amnesty International to call for these measures to remain, enabling women in Scotland to make the right choice for them regardless of geographic, economic, or social constraints. Since then, we have joined with women's organisations across Scotland to write to Maree Todd MSP, Minister for Public Health, Women's Health and Sport to reinforce these calls, and so we're pleased to see this commitment from Scottish Government.

Also this week, following calls from Monica Lennon MSP and abortion rights campaigners, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon committed to hosting and chairing an emergency summit meeting on buffer zones and abortion healthcare. In the wake of news from the US last week about the potential rollback of women's reproductive rights proposed by the Supreme Court, concerns have been raised about protests and 'vigils' outside healthcare facilities in Scotland which provide abortion services. Abortion is safe, necessary healthcare accessed by 1 in 3 women at some point in their lives, and harassment of women seeking healthcare is a clear violation of women’s rights.

On The Engender: Misogyny - a Human Rights Issue, Pt. I

Today we've released the latest episode of On The Engender, Scotland's feminist policy podcast. In the new episode, hosts Alys Mumford and Amanda Aitken are joined by Engender's former Policy and Parliamentary Manager Eilidh Dickson, for the first part of a discussion on the final report of the Misogyny Working Group, which Engender sat on, and which was led by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC. When the report was released in March, Eilidh wrote for our blog on using the law to tackle misogyny in Scotland, which you can read online here.

[Content Note: This episode contains mentions of rape and online abuse]

You can listen to the new episode online here, and remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so that you don't miss Part II, which will be released soon. A transcript of Part I is available here. The final report, Misogyny - a Human Rights Issue, reflects much of our perspective on the deeply ingrained and normalised misogynistic attitudes and behaviours that are based on entitlement to women, their bodies, attention and capabilities and recommends a holistic approach. You can read the report online here.

Tackling sexual harassment in the workplace

Last month, we published our report Enough is Enough: Tackling Workplace Sexual Harassment in Scotland, which sets out the extent and nature of sexual and sexist workplace harassment and the impact it has on women in Scotland and highlights the need to reframe this as an issue of women’s equality that is rooted in sexism and sits within the spectrum of violence against women and girls. You can read the report online here.

We were pleased to be joined in parliament last month by a number of MSPs to talk about the report and the recommendations it makes for action on sexual and sexist harassment in the workplace for Scottish Government and other bodies. We're also grateful to Emma Roddick MSP who submitted a motion welcoming the publication of the report which you can see here, along with a list of MSPs who have supported the motion. Roddick also recently submitted a written question to the Scottish Government on on sexual harassment as a health and safety concern, and you can see it and the Government's response highlighting their work on Equally Safe online here.

GUEST POST: “Warning” versus “claiming”: the subtle misogyny in media discourse

Today we're publishing the next in a series of blogs from the current student placements Engender is hosting from the University of Strathclyde Applied Gender Studies and Research Methods course.

Kirsty Rorrison's final post continues research into gender bias in political news reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, she discusses how male and female politicians are quoted and referenced in the media, and how this language plays into wider patriarchal society. You can read Kirsty's first post here and the second post here.

For my third and final blog post, I want to discuss what my research found about female politicians and their news coverage relating to the pandemic. In my last post, I discussed my findings on journalism and COVID-19 in a more general sense; I showed that the topics reported on and who was writing about them seemed heavily linked with patriarchal gender norms. Now, I want to consider what I learned about women in politics based on their representations in news coverage of the pandemic.

Firstly, I found that male politicians received more mentions than women, and the same men were referenced multiple times. Women received fewer mentions overall and were less likely to be mentioned repeatedly. While I was conducting my research, I realised that it wasn’t sufficient only to employ a quantitative analysis of politicians mentioned according to gender, race, and so on; while this data was certainly helpful, it failed to capture the subtleties and nuance I noticed in the news coverage I was analysing. On the advice of my supervisors, I began to think about the ways in which politicians were being represented when they did appear in the news. Were they quoted directly, indirectly, or not at all? What terminology was used to describe them and their ideas? Just because a politician was mentioned does not mean that they have been mentioned the same way as others.

After consulting Carmen Coulthard’s work on direct and indirect quotations, I realised that men tended to be directly quoted - often extensively. On the other hand, women were directly quoted much less and tended to have their thoughts summarised and shortened by the journalist. For example, I only recorded two instances of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon being directly quoted, while male politicians were consistently given direct quotations. Coulthard argues that we can understand this trend through feminist theory - men’s voices are prioritised, and their opinions are granted respect and trust, and as such, they do not have their ideas rephrased or condensed. On the other hand, women rarely get to express their opinions directly and fully since their authority is not often accepted, and subconsciously it is believed that their ideas can be adequately communicated by others.

In terms of the words used when politicians were mentioned, I found that women were described via less definite terminology than men in politics. For instance, most of the time, men were “saying,” “asserting,” “warning,” and so on. Women, on the other hand, often “claimed,” “suggested,” or “argued.” When I first identified this difference, I didn’t think it was particularly noteworthy. However, as I furthered my reading list, I began to understand the nuances present in this difference. When women are described this way, they are subtly undermined and questioned; a term like “claim” does not indicate certainty but rather a degree of scepticism about what is being said.

On the other hand, language like “warning” suggests a level of trust in the speaker’s authority. When this is considered in the context of our patriarchal society, it becomes clear that gender accounts for these different portrayals of politicians. Women are described using more uncertain language because they are viewed as less competent and less authoritative as a result of their gender; the fact that I recorded these instances multiple times shows that it was a definite pattern rather than an isolated incident. Inversely, men are granted trust and authority to know because they are men - by virtue of their gender and its position within the patriarchy, they are seen to be knowledgeable in whatever they discuss.

With this blog post, I conclude my placement with Engender. It has been a privilege to work with each of my talented and knowledgeable supervisors, and I’ve gained so much from this experience. My research has shown that Scottish news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic is clearly gendered - this relates to what is written about, who is writing about it, and who is mentioned in news stories. In terms of politicians, I have found that men are mentioned more overall and that people of colour in politics are notably underrepresented. I have also seen that the ways in which male and female politicians appear in news coverage are different; while men tend to be directly quoted, women are often indirectly quoted. There were also differences in the language used when men and women in politics were mentioned; while men “warned,” “stated,” or “said” things, women “claimed” and “suggested.”

Overall, gender plays an undeniable part in the ways female politicians are represented (or not represented) in Scottish news coverage of the pandemic, but in order to understand the extent of this difference, I needed to delve deeper than a simple quantitative analysis of appearances. Further work must be done to explore these findings further, and in the future, an intersectional analysis should be employed to account for factors like race and sexuality.