Engender blog
Joining Up Policymaking to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls
At Engender, one of our areas of focus is preventing violence against women and girls (VAWG) before it gets the chance to occur. This approach, known as primary prevention, focuses on tackling the root cause of violence, gender inequality, by embedding gender-sensitive thinking into every area of public policy.
Through our Delivering Equally Safe project, we explore how different areas of public policy can prevent violence from occurring. We believe that to truly move the needle on VAWG, we need more than good intentions. We need policy professionals across sectors to work together. That’s why, in 2024, we brought over 50 policy professionals from 30 different organisations together for our first Primary Prevention and Policymaking Conference.
Our first conference showed just how vital cross-sector collaboration amongst policy professionals is to embedding primary prevention. Fast forward one year, and we were delighted to be joined by policy professionals from across Scotland in Glasgow in March to reflect, share the findings of our recent research, and look ahead. It was a chance to share knowledge, build relationships, and spark real momentum.
Where We Are a Year On...
At this year’s event, Hannah Brisbane, our Delivering Eqaully Safe Policy Officer, kicked things off with a deep dive into the Delivering Equally Safe (DES) project. Her presentation unpacked what some of the key components of a primary prevention approach in policymaking, including:
- Equal representation across all levels
- Intersectional gender analysis
- Designing policies that actively promote women’s safety
Hannah also shared reflections from the previous year’s conference, noting that attendees had expressed a sense of pride in Scotland’s world-leading approach to addressing VAWG but were frustrated that budgets and capacity did not match the scale of the challenge we face.
Good Practice and Missed Opportunities
Following last year’s conference, we commissioned research to find out more about local primary prevention approaches in Scotland, and we’re delighted to share the report produced by independent research consultant Kathryn Ramsay with you now.
The report highlights several structural barriers to primary prevention work across local areas, including:
- a lack of authority for VAWPs,
- a lack of funding and resources for existing work and
- insufficient priority given to prevention work by leaders. Kathryn also shared other challenges beyond these, including
- the poor implementation of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), the
- lack of reliable measures of progress with prevention and
- the use of potentially confusing terms and jargon
In Kathryn’s research, numerous interviewees highlighted existing Equally Safe programmes (Equally Safe at School, Equally Safe at Work, and Equally Safe in Practice) as good practice happening locally on primary prevention. These initiatives are real-world examples of how prevention can be embedded into different areas, and it’s interesting to note that these good practice examples were designed and delivered by women’s sector organisations.
Reflections
We asked attendees at this year’s conference to reflect on what enables them to take a primary prevention approach, and what gets in the way. Not surprisingly, funding and capacity came up as one of the most common barriers to implementing primary prevention. However, many attendees also noted the potential for funding and capacity to be vital enablers when provided adequately and sustainably.
Other key enablers included:
- Gender expertise and competence
- Intersectional thinking
- Networks like the the National Violence Against Women Network, the Authentic Voices Network and the Safer, Sooner Domestic Abuse network
It’s clear to us that there is a strong appetite for cross-sector collaboration, and that people want to work together to build policies that prevent violence before it starts. While opportunities exist to facilitate this collaboration, Kathryn’s research shows that some of these are not reaching their full potential.
What’s Next?
We’ll be using the findings from Kathryn’s report and from the sessions throughout this year’s conference to push for meaningful change in relation to the implementation of primary prevention in Scotland. We’ve created a conference report that explores what was shared in workshop sessions on gender mainstreaming, VAW in politics and public life, a public health approach to preventing VAWG, and applying a primary prevention lens to public policy.
Read the conference report here.
Read Kathryn’s research report here.
GUEST POST: 'Text me when you're home!'
Today we're publishing the first in a series of blogs from the Spring student placements Engender hosted from the University of Strathclyde Applied Gender Studies and Research Methods course.
In this post, Marianne looks at how gender inequality and violence against women affect how women experience public spaces and public transport, and how and when these issues are recognised in the Scottish Parliament.
Keys between knuckles, hair down, earphones out. A routine all too familiar to a woman travelling home after sunset alone.
A male friend once told me that him and his flatmates had a ‘72-hour rule’; if one of them didn’t come home without telling the others where they were, they would wait 72 hours before ‘overthinking’ it and calling the police. I can’t speak for all women, but personally, if it was my female flatmate or friend, it would be at most 12 hours before the panic would set in and a further 12 before I would call the police. Women do not have the luxury of not taking precautions when commuting late at night. Travelling from A to B is necessary in many circumstances, and safety when doing so should be a given, but it is not.
Delivering Equally Safe: Challenging and eradicating violence against women
-400.png)
To mark the annual 16 Days of Activism campaign, our Policy Officer for Engender's Delivering Equally Safe project, Hannah Brisbane, shares some background on our briefing for MSPs on the importance of primary prevention in challenging and eradicating men's violence against women.
We are currently in the middle of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. This annual campaign runs from the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on the 25th of November until the 10th of December, which is Human Rights Day.
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.
RSSDownloads
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.
Newsletter
Sign up to receive our newsletter here:
Sign up to our mailing list
Receive key feminist updates direct to your inbox:
