Engender blog
Using the law to tackle misogyny
Engender’s Policy and Parliamentary Manager, Eilidh Dickson, has been a member of the Independent Working Group on Misogyny chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy. Here she reflects on the final report released today:
Misogyny constrains every aspect of women’s lives – from the decisions about what time or where we feel comfortable to go for walk in our own neighbourhoods, to the subjects we take at school because of peer pressure, teasing or worse if we break with gendered conventions. Women in Scotland need a wholesale culture shift towards a society which values equality and where misogyny is no longer acceptable. For a number of years Engender has been calling for a standalone criminal offence based on misogyny; using the law as one piece of the puzzle to making women safer in Scotland.
Delivering Equally Safe - how can we prevent violence against women?
Engender have been awarded funding from the Delivering Equally Safe fund of the Scottish Government, for work on primary prevention of violence against women. In this blog, we explain why this is so vital, and how those interested can complete our Invitation to Tender.
Women’s inequality is both a cause and consequence of violence against women, and therefore eradicating violence against women in Scotland will require us to tackle entrenched gender inequalities.
In the last twenty years of devolution, we have seen representatives from the violence against women movements making change happen in the Parliament, in Scottish Government, and in our public bodies. We have seen decision-makers who share our values, and our sense of outrage that so many women have their space for action reduced by men’s violence, advocating hard for violence against women prevention and services. But yet we still see endemic levels of violence against women in Scotland.
Equally Safe, Scotland’s violence against women strategy, entrenches a feminist analysis of men’s violence. It is one of few such strategies around the world to link women’s equality and violence against women, and along with Scotland's Domestic Abuse Act, has rightly been hailed as world-leading for its boldness of analysis. That boldness must now be matched with boldness of action, and that's one of the reasons we are so pleased to be undertaking this key research around primary prevention.
When Words Fail: The Way Institutions Talk about Sarah Everard Matters
[CN: violence against women, police violence]
In this blog post, Gender Equal Media Scotland's Development Officer, Dr. Miranda Barty-Taylor, discusses the language used by institutions in the wake of the Sarah Everard case and trial, and the epidemic of violence against women and girls in the UK. This blog entry largely refers to UK institutions.
I am grappling with my unproductivity, as my concentration veers from a report on gender equality in the media to the horrifying details emerging from the trial of Sarah Everard’s killer. I suppose it is little wonder; while half my brain analyses the discourses being reproduced in the inevitable public discussion of the trial, the other half is reeling from the fear she must have felt. Just as I deconstruct the ideologies behind the Met’s next statement, I feel again an incandescence of anger that is too bright to bear. The language coming from sites of political and police power is so very problematic, reinforcing misogynistic norms and neglecting to acknowledge the crisis of men’s violence against women.
F-words: Writing ourselves into existence
Raman Mundair is an Indian born, Queer, British Asian writer, artist, photographer and film maker. In this contribution to our F-words series, Raman explores the power that words can have in giving voice to experiences and identities so often ignored.
Follow Raman on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (@ramanmundair & @rmundair), and listen to her 'intersectional voices' work at Anchor.fm.
Content note: this article discusses racism, childhood abuse, and victim-blaming.
![Black and brown women's perspectives [are] ignored, spoken over, co-opted or drowned out. A whole lexicon of lived experience wilfully erased.](siteimages/Blog/F-words/resized/f-words-(14)-400.png)
I recently read an article by Professor Lena Karlsson - 'Towards a language of sexual gray zones: feminist collective knowledge building through autobiographical multimedia storytelling' - which led me to consider that beyond the infinite shades of grey lies a rainbow of Black and brown women's stories that never get to breathe and take up space, not even in the constant hum of social media. These are doubly marginalised voices from within the grey spaces women can inhabit or are pushed into - Black and brown women's perspectives which are ignored, spoken over, co-opted or drowned out. A whole lexicon of lived experience wilfully erased.
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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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