Engender blog

16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence

Amplifying Marginalised Perspectives Through Journalism and Storytelling

Migrant Women Press have launched a powerful new initiative dedicated to raising awareness about the specific and often overlooked challenges faced by migrant and ethnically diverse women victims/survivors of gender-based violence.

We are sponsoring this campaign, held within “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence” from the 25th of November to the 10th of December. The project will amplify voices and stories too often left out of mainstream narratives, aiming to foster greater understanding, empathy, and change.

16 stories will be shared—one each day during the 16 Days of Activism—authored by migrant and ethnically diverse women journalists and authors from diverse backgrounds and countries. Each piece will explore how factors like class, race, gender, immigration status, disability, and nationality intersect to increase these women’s vulnerability to violence. Additionally, stories will highlight prevention strategies and propose solutions for combating gender-based violence.

Vital pieces released so far include:

• East and/or Southeast Asian women survivors remain excluded and unsupported in the UK
• From Newsroom to Exile: The Hidden Costs of Being an Indian Woman Journalist 
• The impact of the UK’s housing crisis on black and minoritised survivors of gender-based violence
• Why Won’t The UK News Media Call Femicide A Public Health Crisis?

Follow along with all posts from Migrant Women Press on their website here.

3 Steps to Achieving Primary Prevention in Public Transport

We’ve launched our new series of mini-briefings shining a spotlight on how to achieve a primary prevention approach in different areas of public policy with this new briefing highlighting why safe and accessible public transport is key to gender equality and preventing violence against women.

Public transport isn’t just a matter of convenience; for many women, it’s a lifeline that opens doors to education, employment, and essential services, all of which impact gender equality.

However, Scotland’s public transport system fails to serve women’s distinct travel needs, limiting their access to these opportunities and reinforcing gender inequality. Without changes, these limitations keep women from fully participating in society, impacting everything from their financial independence to safety and personal well-being.

When we talk about primary prevention of VAWG, we’re talking about preventing this violence from happening in the first place. Evidence shows the best way to do this is to tackle the root cause of this violence: gender inequality.  Therefore, creating a safe, sustainable and accessible public transport system for everyone is essential for advancing women’s equality and preventing VAWG once and for all.

Without safe and accessible transport options, women’s access to critical economic and social opportunities is limited, reinforcing gender inequality, which ultimately enables VAWG. Women’s safety on public transport remains a significant concern and barrier to women’s mobility, due to things like lack of regular and reliable services, design of vehicles and transit points, and insufficient staffing levels.

Our new briefing highlights Three Steps Towards Achieving a Primary Prevention Approach in transport Policy

1. Women are equally and fairly represented in policy-making roles

• Improve pathways for women, particularly minoritised women, into the transport sector and career progression opportunities
• Ensure inclusive working environments in the transport sector by implementing flexible working procedures, anti-discrimination and harassment policies and women’s leadership initiatives

2. Policymakers consistently apply intersectional gender analysis in their work

• Collect intersectional gender-sensitive sex-disaggregated data on women’s travel patterns, safety and satisfaction
• Conduct Equality Impact Assessments at the outset of transport policy development to ensure this informs policy and planning decisions at all stages

3. Policymakers mainstream primary prevention in all areas of their work

• Increase opportunities for co-designing transport strategies with women, especially those with lived experience of VAWG on public transport
• Embed women’s safety considerations into transport planning, including in decisions on service provision, the design of infrastructure and staffing levels

Find out more in our new briefing here and follow us on social media to get the latest news on other briefings in the series on housing and planning, coming soon!

Broken and biased: new report shows impact of housing emergency on women

A new report published today by Shelter Scotland and Engender shines a light on the disproportionate impact of the housing emergency on women, and the additional barriers they face in accessing safe, secure, affordable, housing.

The report, released on Challenge Poverty Week’s Housing Day, shows that the higher rates of poverty among women and their greater reliance on social security benefits restricts their access to housing, with barriers being particularly pronounced for minoritised women.

It also sets out that homelessness services in Scotland are often unequipped to respond to women’s specific needs, particularly those fleeing domestic abuse. Women’s caring responsibilities and concerns over safety also create additional requirements for the type of temporary homeless accommodation that they need to access, which local services too often fail to meet.

Calling for action to address the housing emergency from a gendered perspective, the report makes a series of recommendations, including:

• Improve women’s access to safe, secure, and affordable homes by increasing the supply of social housing.
• Changes to social security to tackle women’s economic inequality, including the establishment of a ‘fund to leave’ for women experiencing domestic abuse.
• Adopting a gendered approach to the allocation and supply of temporary accommodation, taking particular account of women’s needs with regards to gender-based violence and childcare responsibilities.
• Investment in research and improved data collection to ensure women’s homelessness, including those with no recourse to public funds, is better understood and not ‘hidden’ from official monitoring.

The report argues that decades of underinvestment in social homes combined with years of austerity has created a housing system which is not only broken but biased as well.

Shelter Scotland Director, Alison Watson, said:

“This report sets out in the clearest terms the specific and disproportionate harm done to women by the housing emergency.

“Following on from the devastating homelessness figures published recently, the report is a timely reminder that Scotland’s housing system is not only utterly broken, but also biased as well.

“We know that when it comes to housing councils are breaking the law on an industrial scale, denying support to those who need it and are entitled to it; for a woman fleeing domestic violence the consequences of being turned away could be utterly catastrophic.

“Childcaring responsibilities are also far more likely to fall to women, so growing child homelessness will of course have a hugely disproportionate impact on women in Scotland.

“Scotland’s housing emergency is devastating the lives of women every day; every level of government has a responsibility to act and to heed the recommendations in this report.”

Engender’s Executive Director, Catherine Murphy, said:

“Our report with Shelter Scotland demonstrates the multiple barriers that our current housing system stacks in front of women, and the shocking ways it ignores their specific needs, pushing women into cycles of poverty and instability.

“The situation is even worse for women dealing with multiple layers of inequality. BME, disabled, and refugee women, lone parents, and those with caring responsibilities, often face relentless difficulty in securing stable housing.

“The official homelessness statistics tell us only a fraction of the story, as they fail to capture the complexity of women’s experiences, leaving them ‘hidden’ from our understanding of the problem.

“The recent pilot fund for women experiencing domestic abuse is a positive step, but it barely scratches the surface of what’s needed to address the housing emergency women face.

“Any serious response to Scotland’s housing crisis must start with acknowledging the deep gender bias in the system and taking targeted action to improve women’s access to safe, secure, and affordable homes.”

You can read the full report here, and come along to our joint webinar on 31st October to find out more about the action required to address the housing emergency from a gendered perspective. Book your free place here.

8 Steps Towards Women’s Equality in Scotland

Ahead of the next Programme for Government for 2024-25, we have outlined several important actions we want the Scottish Government to take to protect women’s rights and promote gender equality in Scotland.

Engender advocates for a Scotland where women are involved in all political and economic decisions, both as decision-makers and individuals affected by these decisions. This means recognising the diverse experiences of all women, including those facing multiple forms of discrimination, such as Black and minority ethnic women, younger and older women, disabled women, lesbian, bisexual, and trans women, women from rural areas, and those who are mothers, women who have experienced domestic abuse or men’s violence, and those experiencing poverty.

We have identified eight key actions in three main areas that need change:

EMBED GENDER EQUALITY ACROSS ALL SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT POLICY 

To achieve the Scottish Government’s main goals—eliminating child poverty, boosting the economy, addressing climate change, and improving public services—it’s crucial to improve how gender equality is considered across policymaking. These goals affect women and men differently, especially for women facing additional marginalisation. If policies don’t account for structural inequalities, their benefits for Scotland’s most disadvantaged people will be limited.

ADDRESS WOMEN’S POVERTY AND FINANCIAL INEQUALITY 

Eliminating child poverty is the First Minister’s top priority. To succeed, the Programme for Government must connect women’s poverty with children’s poverty. There’s an urgent need to get financial support to the most vulnerable families in Scotland, and focusing on women’s economic inequality is often the most effective approach. This must include targeted actions which tackle the disproportionately negative impacts that the cost of living crisis is having on women’s lives, especially for women who experience other forms of marginalisation. 

TACKLE WOMEN’S HEALTH INEQUALITIES AND PROTECT REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS 

Women and girls still face inequalities in health and wellbeing and access to services compared to men and boys, mainly due to gender inequality and “medical misogyny.” Marginalised women, including women of colour, disabled women, unpaid carers, LGBTI+ women, younger and older women, and migrant women, experience even wider disparities in health outcomes. We urgently need updated abortion laws that uphold women’s rights and action to advance Scotland’s Women’s Health Plan.

Read more about all our asks here.