Engender blog

GUEST POST: Women and decision-making in local authorities

Today we're publishing the first in a series of blogs from two student placements Engender is hosting from the University of Strathclyde Applied Gender Studies and Research Methods course. These blogs explore women's representation and decision-making around women's equality in local authorities across Scotland. You can see other blogs in the series here.

Katie Young graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in English Literature in Summer 2020, and is now studying a Master’s degree in Applied Gender Studies and Research Methods at the University of Strathclyde. She is passionate about women’s fiction and empowering girls and young women to fight for gender equality in Scotland through volunteering with Girlguiding, and tweets under @katieeey.

Building on Engender’s most recent Sex and Power report, which found that women made up only 23% of local councillors despite accounting for 52% of Scotland’s population, my project focuses on the work of local authorities, how we can best achieve gender equality, and what might need to change to ensure that we get there. When some local authorities have very few women elected as councillors, or even no women at all, it is important to consider whether local authorities consider the impact of gender in their work, how this is done, and the difference that this can make to the community.

In undertaking this project, I chose to focus in two neighbouring local authorities, West Dunbartonshire and Argyll and Bute, due to their difference in size and population spread. As one of the smallest local authorities in Scotland, West Dunbartonshire covers Clydebank and Dumbarton, and its council is lead by a coalition of SNP and Independent councillors. Both council leaders are men and there is at least one woman holding a seat on all but one of the individual wards, with women making up six of the twenty two positions, which is 27% of elected councillors overall. The SNP has the most women of all parties represented on the council, with four of its six members. This is followed by Scottish Labour, where there is one woman and seven men represented on the council, and the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, the only party to have a balanced representation, which has one man and one woman holding elected roles. The other groups represented on the council, the West Dunbartonshire Community Party and Independent officials, are both only represented by men.

Argyll and Bute is the second-largest local authority in Scotland by geographical area, and covers areas in mainland Scotland and some islands including Bute, the Isle of Mull and Iona, and Islay. The council is lead by a coalition of Independent, Liberal Democrat, and Scottish Conservative and Unionist party councillors, and like West Dunbartonshire, both council leaders are men. Women hold ten of the thirty six elected positions on the council, 29% overall, and three of the eleven individual wards do not have any women elected. Similarly, the SNP have the most women represented on the council, with four women holding their eleven elected seats, followed by the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, which has two women and seven men on the council, and the Liberal Democrats, with one woman and four men having been elected. Women account for three of the eight Independent councillors and the Independence for Scotland party only have one man represented on the council.

Both councils are slightly above the average in the Sex and Power research, although have some way to go in ensuring gender equality. Here, women still holding comparatively fewer seats on the council than men, and only the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party in West Dunbartonshire having equal representation in their elected representatives.

More broadly, I’m interested in researching the way that both councils carry out Equality Impact Assessments, which considers the impacts that decisions may have on the lives of women and people with other protected characteristics. This supports the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s toolkit for creating a ‘gender sensitive parliament’, which is one that creates a that responds to the needs of men and women equally in its structures both internally and externally as well as in its work on a day to day basis, as it works on embedding and mainstreaming gender equality throughout its work. Both West Dunbartonshire and Argyll and Bute publish some information on how this relates to specific policies and areas of the council’s work, but this is not consistent. I’m interested in exploring the common areas that both local authorities identify, and where differences may exist. For example, this may be that one local authority publishes its guidance for carrying out these assessments, but one does not. By including women at all stages of the decision making process and considering the impact that these decisions may have, we are one step closer to ensuring gender equality in the future.

Engender launches Vision for A Feminist Recovery Manifesto for Holyrood 2021

Today Engender has launched Vision for a Feminist Recovery, our manifesto for the 2021 Scottish Parliament election.

We advocate for a Scotland where women are part of every political and economic decision, both as decision-makers and as citizens who share equally their consequences.

This includes understanding the complexities of all women’s lives and impacts of multiple and intersecting discrimination for Black and minority ethnic women, younger and older women, disabled women, lesbian, bisexual and trans women and women from rural communities as well as women who are mothers, women who have experienced domestic abuse or men’s violence, and women who experience poverty among other nuanced and multifaceted realities.

In 2017 Engender published our Gender Matters Roadmap, created in consultation with women from across Scotland.

It sets out a series of measures that, with political will, can be taken by the Scottish Government and other bodies in order to move towards women’s equality in Scotland by 2030. It describes a Scotland with the following features:

• Women’s rights are realised regardless of ability, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, age or background;
• Women and their children are safe and secure from harm;
• Women have equal access to resources and opportunities;
• Women have equal influence in political and economic life;
• Women are able to participate fully in society and culture;
• Women and women’s unpaid and paid work are valued;
• Diverse groups of women are at the forefront of the women’s movement.

This manifesto describes the steps we believe necessary to take us closer to that 2030 vision over the next parliament.

However, the 2021 elections come at an extraordinary point in our collective history. The tragedies seen over the past months as Scotland and the world responded to the

Covid-19 pandemic have, and continue to have, significant impacts for women’s wellbeing. Lockdown and an as-yet-unknown scale of economic recession have disrupted women’s support networks, such as childcare, and made their livelihoods more precarious. This crisis will inevitably extend its reach across the next parliament.

Reaching our 2030 vision for a gender equal Scotland is not impossible, despite Covid-19. Deliberate and urgent action is required now. We call on Scotland’s political parties to stop women’s equality being set back and support these ambitions to realise a more equal Scotland within this decade.

Read the full Vision for a Feminist Recovery manifesto online here.

Our Bodies Our Rights in Lockdown

In this blog, Engender's Policy and Parliamentary Manager Eilidh Dickson, discusses the Our Bodies Our Rights report, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on disabled women, and our new survey developed with People First Scotland.

This month represents an anniversary nobody could have previously imagined as we mark a year since the first Covid-19 cases in Scotland and the transition into the first national lockdown on the 23rd March 2020. Even in those early weeks, Engender highlighted how Covid-19 and the public health measures necessary to save lives would impact on women, from access to decision-making to mental health of unpaid carers and frontline workers in health and social care and to increased childcare and home-schooling making it even harder for women to combine paid and reproductive work.

Women have shared their diverse but often deeply distressing stories with us through our Women Covid Scot page, all too often describing the risks of working on the frontlines; fear of careers disrupted or derailed and the toll of balancing paid work, mounting domestic work and home-schooling with limited support from employers or partners, cut off from their external support networks. UN Women has estimated that the pandemic could set back global progress on women’s rights back by 25 years.

In March 2020 Engender was also preparing to host an event at the Scottish Parliament reflecting on a year since the launch of our Our Bodies Our Rights Report which examined the barriers to disabled women's reproductive rights in Scotland. This project saw us speak with disabled women across Scotland to hear about their experiences of puberty, sex education, relationships, family planning, maternity services, parenting support and the menopause. Policy and practice across healthcare, education, justice and social care, among many other public services, was found to ignore disabled women’s needs.

Engender recommends 2020

Over the past years we've had to privilege of chatting to some brilliant women for our On the Engender podcast. This year, we asked guests to leave us with a recommendation - from further policy reading, to must-follow twitter accounts.

Here's what's been recommended in 2020: