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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.

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