Engender blog
CEDAW: How the UN Women’s Bill of Rights creates possibilities for women and girls in Scotland.
Engender members and other people who stay in touch with our work will know that we have been enabling organisations that care about women’s and girls’ equality to shadow the UN CEDAW process. The International Bill of Rights for Women is a key global human rights instrument for gender equality. The UK Government has just been examined by its dedicated UN CEDAW Committee to see how well the rights it provides for are being realised across the four nations of the UK.
We’ve written about the process, what happened during the examination, and annotated the concluding observations (or recommendations) that the Committee makes to UK Government. Here we’re going to summarise four of our reflections from the experience of working on CEDAW over the past two years.
Celebrating Scotland's Gender Pay Gap Action Plan
Our Executive Director Emma Ritch reflects on the feminist journey to Scotland's first action plan to tackle the pay gap, and welcomes a substantial step towards women’s and girls’ economic justice.
Feminist policy advocacy requires determination, grit, and the willingness to work towards sometimes infinitesimal change in pursuit of a different world for women & girls. When we do see what amounts to a leap forward in a long-term, shared advocacy project it’s vital to pause, appreciate the moment, and recognise the women who collaborated over years to see it happen.
Gender Matters and #GenerationEqual: Shifting the needle on equality for women and girls
Eighteen months after our Scotland's Feminist Future conference and the launch of our Gender Matters Roadmap, our Executive Director Emma Ritch considers positive progress alongside the recently released first set of recommendations from the First Minister's National Advisory Council on Women & Girls.
Amid the weekly grind of Scottish Parliament committee sessions, working group meetings, consultations launching and closing, and streams of papers flowing in and out of the office, it’s a challenge for a policy and advocacy organisation like Engender to keep our focus on what lies over the horizon: a better world for women and girls.
What's in it for women? Scottish Government Budget 2019-2020
Our Policy and Parliamentary Manager Eilidh Dickson has collated a gender edit of the Scottish Government Budget for 2019-2020, released at the end of 2018. You can read the gender edit here, and in this blog she breaks down the implementation of new budget processes and the potential impact of Brexit:
This year’s Scottish Budget is a little different. For one thing, it’s the Budget that’s come at the Brexit crunch point, where constitutional and economic uncertainty is at its peak. The Finance Minister, Derek Mackay, has been clear that in the event of ‘no deal’ he’ll have to take another look at the spending plans to respond to contingency costs and possibly deliver a supplementary budget.
GUEST POST Feminism: Still a taboo?
-400.png)
This post comes from Azita Jabbari-Arabzadeh.
Azita is originally from Iran and has lived in the UK for over 20 years. Her recent background is in human rights and she has worked in various sectors including education, charities and telecoms. Writing is one of her passions, where she feels she can reach out and connect.
In this post, she explores the links between religion and patriarchy, and reflects on her own experiences as a BAME woman in Scotland.
Downloads
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.

Newsletter
Sign up to receive our newsletter here:
Sign up to our mailing list
Receive key feminist updates direct to your inbox: