Engender blog

Common Weal: Eradicating gender inequality and violence against women

This paper was written by Lesley Orr, Emma Ritch, Marsha Scott, and Nel Whiting in May 2014. An edited version appears as part of the text of the Common Weal book. An expanded version will be published as a Common Weal paper later in the year.

Let us imagine a Scotland that begins from the hope of its citizens. It is a small but spacious country, and in our imagining, we see a society nurturing the common good of every girl, boy, woman and man. It offers that secure space for living in which each and all of us are supported to grow and flourish, developing our unique potential in safe environments that cultivate interdependence but also enable freedom to explore what makes us gloriously diverse and complex human beings. This spacious Scotland exercises a politics of dignity, justice, and care, in which all are invited to participate. All of us first, for our hoped-for commonweal is animated by the spirit and practice of equality. Such a Scotland cannot tolerate gender-based violation, exploitation, or abuse.

This section of the Commonweal manifesto describes how the current gendered nature of Scottish society creates a conducive context for ongoing gender violations. These are manifest in interpersonal relations, distribution of resources, institutional operations, and cultural norms. To tackle the systemic nature of gender inequality, we make recommendations for radical transformation that will truly enable “all of us first” to become a reality.