Engender blog

Tackling sexual and sexist harassment in the workplace

Engender is working to explore how we can prevent sexual and sexist harassment in the workplace and improve outcomes for victim-survivors as part of a project funded by grant-making charity Rosa. Here, our Policy Officer Mariah Kelly gives an overview of the scale of the issue and the work of the project:

Guest Post: Mainstreaming Spotlight - Close the Gap

To mark the release of Engender's new report, What Works for Women: Improving gender mainstreaming in Scotland, we're sharing how mainstreaming is important to the work of some of Scotland's equalities organisations. Here, Lindsey Millen from Close the Gap talks about how mainstreaming is essential for their work on women's labour market participation.

Why is gender mainstreaming important to your organisation?

Gender mainstreaming is critical to delivering women’s labour market equality and, in doing so, tackle wider gender inequality. Many of the causes of the gender pay gap are not unlawful, e.g. the lack of quality flexible working at senior levels and a lack of affordable wraparound childcare. In order to tackle these issues, gender must be at the heart of policymaking. Policy that responds to the specific experiences of women is also better quality and better value for money – put simply, it delivers for everyone. Gender mainstreaming is such a valuable tool for policymakers and we need to see it being used effectively.

What area(s) of mainstreaming are you focused on?

Close the Gap works on women’s labour market inequality, which includes policy advocacy and employer engagement. The Scottish-specific duties of the public sector equality duty (PSED) are a big focus for us as they require public bodies to mainstream gender across all of their functions. We are interested in how public bodies are using their gender pay gap, occupational segregation and employment data to do gender mainstreaming. This supports our work to advocate for a duty that delivers for women and has formed the basis for our employer guidance on PSED and the work we do to support individual public bodies to improve their compliance.

If you could snap your fingers and change one thing to make gender mainstreaming happen, what would it be?

It is difficult to pick just one thing and there are really three things that have to work in concert in order for gender mainstreaming to happen. Firstly, public bodies need support to develop their understanding of gender inequality and how this relates to the work they do. Without this it’s difficult to develop good quality solutions. Secondly, we need to see real accountability for public bodies to ensure gender mainstreaming is done – and done well. Thirdly, we need leadership at the most senior levels of public bodies that makes clear gender mainstreaming is a core part of their work as public service providers, employers, and in their other roles.

Where can people find out more about your work on mainstreaming?

A good place to start would be our assessments of public bodies’ performance of the duties – here and here. Public sector employers (and PSED geeks) will find our guidance helpful in developing their work on gender mainstreaming and the duties in general – this can be found here. Gender mainstreaming is woven throughout our work – there’s plenty of other content to be found on our website.

#MakingWorkVisible for International Women's Day 2020

Every International Women's Day, we ask women across Scotland to share their days with us, to highlight the unpaid, undervalued, and invisible work done by women in Scotland.

This includes the low-paid (and falsely-named 'unskilled') work which is dominated by women, the unpaid care work happening in houses across the country, household chores which are unevenly distributed (even if men think they are equally shared), and all of the mental labour which women are - say it with me now - "just naturally better at".

While the irony of asking women to live-tweet their days, thus adding to their to-do list, isn't lost on us, it's important to take the time to reflect on the gendered nature of what we see as 'work'. Not to call out partners who aren't pulling their weight (although that can be a pleasing side-effect), or to humblebrag about how much work we are doing, but because work which is vital to the wellbeing of all of us - volunteering, kinship care, marking celebrations, raising children - is still widely done by women.

This year, tweets highlighted the work that goes in to caring - the practical tasks and admin, the emotional cost of supporting a loved one, the additional strain which fears over coronavirus cause; the mental work which has to happen on a Sunday to make sure everyone goes to work or school with clean clothes, completed homework, and a packed lunch; the effort which goes into being social, into hosting friends, remembering birthdays, and keeping track of who's going where. Check out the #MakingWorkVisible hashtag to see more.

GUEST POST: New legislation puts gender equality at the heart of the Scottish National Investment Bank

Last week, the Scottish National Investment Bank Bill was passed at Holyrood, and we were delighted to see the culmination of work by ourselves and Close the Gap in securing amendments which integrate women's equality into the Bill. Today we have a guest blog from Ruth Boyle, Policy and Parliamentary Manager at Close the Gap, celebrating success in gendering the Bill and exploring the process of building gender equality into a piece of legislation.

Facilitating changes in policy can be a slow process, and it’s often very difficult to measure your impact and success. So, when your advocacy has a clear and tangible impact, we don’t think it should pass without note!

Over the past few months, Close the Gap has been working closely with Engender to promote the importance of building gender equality into the design of the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB).

Traditionally, economic development agencies have not incorporated women’s specific needs and have not prioritised women’s equality. Consequently, the gender pay gap remains at 13%, and if numbers of women-led businesses in Scotland increased to equal those of men, it would lead to a 5% increase in GDP, equivalent to £7.6bn. We thought the SNIB Bill was a chance to do things differently.