Engender blog
January 2022 - Policy Round Up
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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.
Equal representation in politics
We all know that women are underrepresented at all levels of politics in Scotland, and that increased diversity in politics has a positive impact on all aspects of public life.
The current lack of robust, detailed and intersectional data on who our representatives are is a major barrier to progress in terms of gender parity in our political institutions at both local and national levels. As well as voluntary processes to gather this data, such as that done by Women 50:50 and other campaign groups, we’re pleased that Scottish Government have also revealed their plan to collect data on the protected characteristics of candidates standing for election.
Jessie Duncan, who runs our Equal Representation in Politics project, has responded to the Government’s plan – welcoming the intention, but making the case that such data collection should be mandatory in order to gather the most robust evidence. We hope that the introduction of a framework for collecting this data will be a crucial step in addressing the persistent inequalities which exist within political representation in Scotland. You can read the full response online here.
#ScrapTheCap: A campaign to end the benefit cap
Last month Engender joined the Poverty Alliance and over 45 civil society organisations to call on the UK Government to remove the benefit cap, which places a limit on the total amount of benefit payments a person or family can receive. As of May 2021, 190,000 households are affected by the cap, receiving on average £55 per week less in support than they would if the cap was not in place. There are a total of 6437 households currently capped in Scotland, and single parents with children (9/10 of whom are women) are disproportionally affected by the cap: 67.8% of capped households in Scotland are single parent households.
Women are twice as likely to be dependent on social security as men, and the way the benefit cap is designed means that those who require the highest level of support from the benefit system are the most likely to be affected. You can find out more about the campaign by reading the Scrap the Cap briefing online here, and get involved by sharing information about the campaign on social media and by contacting your local MP to encourage them to join in calling on the UK Government to remove the cap.
Equality and Rights in the Covid-19 Inquiry
Last week we co-ordinated a letter to John Swinney from 27 organisations working for equality and human rights in Scotland expressing our “dismay” and “deep concerns” following the publication of the Scottish Government’s Terms of Reference for a public inquiry into the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland.
You might remember that last year we responded to the Scottish Government's 'aims and principles' for the public inquiry (read it here), and we were therefore so disappointed to see that the Terms of Reference as published make no reference to equality or human rights impacts stemming from the pandemic. Throughout the document, there is no mention of women, Black and minority ethnic communities, disabled people, LGBT+ People, older people, young people persons subject to No Recourse to Public Funds, and other groups who experienced the brunt of the pandemic.
Since then, we're pleased to see that Pam Duncan-Glancy MSP, the Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice has echoed our call for a human rights and equalities based approach to the inquiry, and we have been invited to meet with Lady Poole, the Chair of the inquiry.
Response to the EHRC letter to the Scottish Government
At the end of last month, the UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission wrote to the Scottish Government suggesting that proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act be paused while more work is carried out. This is not a key area of policy work for Engender, but given our previous work on the proposed reforms and the Equality Act 2010, we felt we needed to respond.
You can see our response in a Twitter thread here, where we reiterate our support for the reforms, and ask the EHRC to urgently set out the legal basis underpinning the change in their own position (if this exists). We also link to the legal analysis independently commissioned and peer-reviewed, written for Engender by Professor Nicole Busby, and the recording of the webinar we held on the Equality Act just over a year ago
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.
Emma Ritch awarded lifetime achievement award
Last night Engender's late Executive Director, Emma Ritch, was posthumously awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Scottish Public Services Award 2021.
Nina Murray, the convener of Engender's board, accepted the award. Her speech honouring Emma is shared here.
CEDAW: how are the UK and Scottish Governments responding to the recommendations?
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During the 8th periodic review of the UK from the Committee of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the UN Bill of Rights for women, several recommendations were made to the UK Government to improve women's equality and rights (find out more about the CEDAW process here).
These recommendations included three specific areas that the UK is meant to feedback their progress on – incorporation of CEDAW, the impacts of Brexit, and an oversight mechanism for women’s participation in CEDAW at UK level. The UK Government has submitted its progress report on these areas, but it didn’t consult with any of the organisations who have been involved with the CEDAW process at UK level (Engender, the Women's Resource Centre, the Northern Ireland Women’s European Platform, and Women’s Equality Network Wales), and it’s fair to say they were wearing their rose-tinted glasses while writing their report.
Marking 10 years since the Christie Commission
A decade ago saw the report from the Christie Committee, a ground-breaking inquiry which aimed to usher in a new era in public sector delivery in Scotland. To mark 10 years since the release of the report, our Executive Director Emma Ritch joined sector leaders in a special edition of Third Force News magazine to reflect on the Commission and progress made on its recommendations.
Christie finished its work just after the public sector equality duty came into being, and its critical focus on prevention really aligns with the duty.
So much of the inequality that women experience comes from laws, policy, programmes, and institutions that have missed the opportunity to get it right for women in the first place. Everything from transport systems to parks to health services are designed around the preferences and needs of boys and men. The consequences are dire: women in Scotland have less say in their communities, less power, less safety, and fewer resources.
The Christie report didn’t mention women at all but it did recommend that equality be integrated into the National Performance Framework. It also called for the public sector equality duty to be tooled to establish partnership working on reducing discrimination and advancing equality, and for public bodies to gather sufficient equality data to inform service design. We see relatively little evidence that any of this has been realised. Only two of the 81 NPF indicators relate directly to women and girls. The public sector equality duty has been a damp squib in terms of making change happen.
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.
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