Engender blog
Making it Happen for 2027: Transforming Local Democracy for Women
Today Engender, Elect Her and Women 50:50 are launching a campaign to build a future where women’s equal representation in councils is realised. “Making it Happen for 2027: Transforming Local Democracy for Women” is a call to action aimed at all of those who have the power to shape this outcome – including councils, councillors, government, political parties and the news media.
At the May 2022 election, the number of women councillors increased from 29 per cent to 35 per cent, an increase of just 6 per cent. Women have long been excluded within Scotland’s local councils, and although we do not have the data we need to clearly understand the diversity of our representatives, what we do know tells us that Black and minority ethnic women, disabled women and LBTI women experience this exclusion on even greater scales. For instance, Scotland’s capital city has only one woman of colour councillor, despite being one of the most diverse areas of the country. And, despite the small increase in the number of women councillors nationally, Women 50:50 have found that if this rate of change is allowed to continue, we will not see gender equality in our local councils until 2037.
GUEST POST: Looking Deeper: Black and Minority Ethnic Women in the Scottish Parliament
Today we're publishing the next blog in a series from the current student placements Engender is hosting from the University of Strathclyde Applied Gender Studies and Research Methods course.
Mary Galloway concludes her blog series in this third post, which focuses more deeply on the discussions of Black and minority ethnic women in the Scottish Parliament, and the importance of Parliament understanding the distinct ways that racialised and gendered oppression take shape for different communities. You can read Mary's first post here and second post here.
In this final blog, I will carry out a more focused analysis of the results produced by my research into the representation of women facing multiple discriminations in the Scottish Parliament. I have so far talked about 'women with multiple protected characteristics' quite abstractly. It is important to think about who these women actually are and why it matters that the multiplicity of their marginalisation is acknowledged. Black and minority ethnic (BME) women face both gendered and racial oppression, providing them with experiences that are distinct from white women and Black men. For example, Black and minority ethnic women were some of the worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason, it is crucial that the Scottish Parliament is attentive to the specific needs of this group.
In my search of the content of Scottish Parliamentary business during its 5th session, I used search terms of 'Black women', 'Asian women', 'women of colour', 'BME women' and 'Black and minority ethnic women'. The search term that produced the majority of results for this category of women was the latter term of Black and minority ethnic women. Though this term is importantly inclusive of the diverse ethnicities of women in Scotland, its domination in the results also displays a degree of homogenisation. The needs of Asian women and Black women are not necessarily symmetrical; for example, forced marriage and 'honour’-based violence are forms of abuse that particularly affect Asian women. Consequently, although Black and minority ethnic women all face racialised and gendered oppression, it is important that the distinct way that these take shape for different communities is discussed and understood in Parliament.
A number of BME women's issues were covered in the various areas of parliamentary business. For example, there was recognition of the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on Black and minority ethnic women and the prevalence of workplace harassment and discrimination against them. Upon comparing the content of the remarks made by MSPs versus witnesses in the Official Report, there was a notable difference. Witnesses' mentions of Black and minority ethnic women tended to be highly detailed and substantive, whereas MSPs' references tended to go no further than a nod to the difficulty of BME women's lives and calls for more diverse representation generally. MSPs' discussions of BME women were largely quite shallow despite the richness of witnesses' evidence. Furthermore, often when BME women were mentioned by MSPs, they were listed alongside a number of other marginalised women. For example, in a Meeting of the Parliament on International Women's Day 2020, Alison Johnstone of the Scottish Greens said that Parliament should tackle the harassment of women of colour, LBT (lesbian, bisexual, transgender) women, disabled women and refugee women in the workplace. Although this is a very important problem facing women with multiple protected characteristics worthy of discussion, it does not pay attention to the specific discrimination of BME women that is both racialised and gendered. This illustrates a lack of engagement with the fundamental notion that underpins intersectionality, whereupon the needs of communities with multiple protected characteristics are specific and in need of concentrated attention. It is consequently important for MSPs to make the most of the information provided to them by witnesses and their constituents about the reality of BME women's lives in order to affect change in their favour.
This focused look at the case of BME women has provided an insight into the details behind the numbers provided in previous blogs. Such an examination is vital as it uncovers not just how often women with multiple protected characteristics are being mentioned but what is actually being said in these instances. The discussion of Black and minority ethnic women must not be a tick-box exercise, and neither should the discussion of any women facing multiple discriminations.
GUEST POST: Who are the conversation starters in the Scottish Parliament when it comes to marginalised women?
Today we're publishing the next blog in a series from the current student placements Engender is hosting from the University of Strathclyde Applied Gender Studies and Research Methods course.
In Mary Galloway's second post, she builds on her research into how often multiply marginalised women are mentioned in the Scottish Parliament. Here, she looks more closely at who is starting these conversations and why this further calls for more diverse representation in Parliament. You can read Mary's first post here and third post here.
GUEST POST: Which women are visible in the Scottish Parliament?
Today we're publishing the next blog in a series from the current student placements Engender is hosting from the University of Strathclyde Applied Gender Studies and Research Methods course.
Following the local elections last week, it is clear that diverse representation is needed at all levels. Mary Galloway's research focuses on representation in the Scottish Parliament, and for her first post Mary maps out her research into the visibility of women with multiple marginalised identities, as well as discussing gender audits, and why an intersectional approach is needed in order to fully assess the representation and participation of all women in the Scottish Parliament. You can read Mary's second post here and third post here.
In February 2022, it was announced that the Scottish Parliament will undergo a gender audit, something for which Engender, along with other organisations and campaigns, has long advocated. This audit will assess the extent to which women participate in and are represented by the Scottish Parliament, following the guide created by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. While a great start towards a gender-sensitive Parliament, there are clear limitations in what an audit can do to bring an intersectional lens to women’s representation. It is crucial that to truly explore gender equality, we need to uncover the experiences and positions of all women in Holyrood, including those of the most marginalised. The project I am carrying out here aims to provide a snapshot of the representation of the women in Scotland whose lives are structured and limited not just by their gender but by their race, physical and mental abilities, and sexuality too.
Intersectionality is a concept brought forth primarily by Black feminists. It seeks to illuminate the way in which marginalised communities may have their experiences shaped by numerous structures of oppression simultaneously. For example, gendered oppression cannot wholly account for the discrimination faced by a disabled Black woman. Instead, her experience is shaped by racism, sexism and ableism all at once. What this research project seeks to highlight then, is that women with multiple protected characteristics have needs and concerns that are specific to their identity. An intersectional approach which pays attention to this multiplicity of the gendered experience is needed to fully assess the representation and participation of all women in the Scottish Parliament. The gender audit of the Scottish Parliament should proceed with an understanding and utilisation of intersectionality as far as it can within the limitations of auditing an overwhelmingly male, white institution.
Over the course of three blogs, I will delineate the findings of my research into the representation of women in the Scottish Parliament using an intersectional lens to exemplify the value of such an approach. This research has involved using the Scottish Parliament’s website and search tools, looking specifically at the Official Report, Written questions and answers, and Motions in Session 5 (May 2016 - May 2021). These search tools have enabled me to gather data, firstly on how often discussions about women with multiple protected characteristics were being had, secondly on who in Parliament was initiating these conversations, and thirdly on the substantive content of these discussions.
How often are marginalised women talked about?
The frequency of discussions about marginalised women separately from the broad category of ‘women’ provides a good indication of their visibility in the Scottish Parliament. It was found that, in all three areas of parliamentary business, the Official Report, Motions and Written questions and answers (WQAs), mentions of women with multiple protected characteristics were uncommon. Firstly, in the Official Report, search terms that listed a protected group alongside women, such as ‘disabled women’, yielded only 46 relevant results in total. To contextualise this, Session 5 was five years long and had 438 Meetings of the Parliament and 2204 committee meetings. Search terms that included women alongside another protected characteristic brought up only 51 motions out of 2717 (1.9%) in total and only 33 written questions and answers out of 33,334 questions (0.01%) in total. In relative terms, therefore, discussions of women that can be said to have had an intersectional approach in the Scottish Parliament were extremely rare. The presence of some references to women facing multiple discriminations indicates that there is an awareness of their need for focused attention separate from that of women in general. The concerns of multiply marginalised women are evidently being brought to the attention of people in parliament then; however, this has yet to translate into representation proportionate to their vulnerability.
Clearly, women facing multiple discriminations need greater representation in the Scottish Parliament; however, it is useful to look at where they are being discussed at present, who is initiating the conversations and what they are saying. The next blog in this series will do the former, uncovering whose participation in the Scottish Parliament is resulting in the discussion of marginalised women separately from women generally. The third blog will take a focused look at Black and minority ethnic women in order to exemplify the extent to which the specific needs of a community of vulnerable women are understood and represented by the Scottish Parliament.
Why we need data to achieve equal representation in politics
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Today we’re publishing the last in a recent series of blogs from the Equal Representation Coalition looking at the state of equality in our politics at the moment, discussing their work in tackling barriers to participation, and exploring the crucial role that accurate data plays in achieving equal representation in our councils and parliaments and why we need more of it.
Here, Engender’s Equal Representation Development Officer Jessie Duncan has a round-up of what key issues we’ve covered in the series and why gathering data is vital to achieving equal representation.
In the run-up to the local elections taking place today, we’ve been publishing blogs from members of the Equal Representation Coalition, which Engender is part of and which brings together organisations from across the equalities sector in Scotland with shared goals around improving access to politics for people from underrepresented groups in order to achieve equal representation in our councils and parliaments They’ve been writing about the pressing need for more diversity within our councils and beyond; their work tackling barriers to participation in politics; and the importance of transparency in representation in order to understand whose voices are being heard – and crucially, whose aren’t.
We know that diversity of representation – that is, representation which actually reflects the communities we live in – leads to richer policy development, more informed decision-making and contributes to a healthy democracy in which people know they are valued. It’s something we should all be striving for.
However, this version of representative democracy is far from our current reality, particularly when it comes to councils.
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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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