Engender
I welcome Fiona Forsyth and Irene Graham, who will give evidence to the committee on the budget process, which will be helpful for our consideration of the process under agenda item 4. Fiona, will you start?
Fiona Forsyth (Engender):
Thank you for the invitation to give evidence on gender issues and the budget. I am speaking on behalf of Engender and the Scottish women's budget group, which we are in the process of setting up. Engender is an information, research and networking organisation for women in Scotland.
We are best known for our annual publication of the gender audit, which documents and comments on the position of women in Scotland. We have been publishing the audit since 1993. In the introduction to the most recent copy, "Gender Audit 2000", Wendy Alexander said:
"Since 1993 the annual Gender Audit has helped to persuade commentators and policy makers that women in Scotland in general still suffer disadvantage and inequalities compared to men in general, in contrast to the common perception that women had already achieved a substantial degree of equality with men."
Engender's other main activity is the engendering change project, which provides capacity building for women's organisations to empower them to represent issues affecting women more effectively.
Building on the gender audit and engendering change, we are setting up a women's budget group which, like the gender audit, will draw on the experience of a number of individuals and organisations to comment on the impact of Government spending plans and policies. Activities to date include a submission to the consultation on Government spending plans in "Spending Plans for Scotland", organising two seminars on gender proofing of budgets—one with the Westminster women's budget group and one with the Canadian high commission—and a recent meeting with Jack McConnell.
Our work compliments the work of the Westminster women's budget group, which is mainly concerned with the impact of tax and benefits policies. It has been consulted regularly by HM Treasury on the introduction of new policies, such as the working families tax credit. We are agreed that there could be a useful link between a gender impact analysis process in the Scottish Parliament, which would focus on Scottish Executive department spending plans, and the Westminster group's focus on tax and benefits policies that affect women and men in Scotland as well.
The methodology for gender impact analysis, including that relating to spending plans, has already been developed and applied by women's organisations and Governments in South Africa, Canada, various other Commonwealth countries and Sweden, and there are opportunities to apply those lessons at the beginning of the process in Scotland. That is the case that we are making.
The aim of gender impact analysis is to examine the effectiveness of policies. By focusing on the results, we can ask whether money has been invested well. The easiest way to illustrate that is to take an example, such as women in poverty. Women are much more likely to find themselves in poverty than are men and much more likely to remain in poverty for a longer time. Poverty is a burden for all who experience it; we must stress that we are not promoting the well-being of one group at the expense of another that is also facing discrimination and poverty.
The purpose of the gender analysis of poverty would be to establish whether answers to questions about the likelihood of falling into poverty, the duration of poverty, the consequences of poverty, and policies that are designed to combat poverty, are the same for men as they are for women. Indeed, it would establish whether there are different answers for distinct groups of men and women. For example, black and ethnic minority women's needs are often overlooked and misunderstood because assumptions are made about their needs.
We welcome the budgetary consultation process that has been started by the Scottish Executive and the move away from old departments towards issue-based departments. The next step would be to get financial assistance to catch up with cross-cutting political priorities, especially equality and social inclusion. Gender impact analysis would be an effective way of achieving that.
We have not had much time to look at the report, "Investing in You", but I want to make a few brief points to illustrate the kinds of issues that might arise if a detailed gender impact analysis were carried out. I want to look briefly at four areas: children and education; communities; enterprise and lifelong learning; and transport. On children and education, we welcome the increased resources for child care and pre-school education, but we are concerned about the cost of the child-care strategy in terms of low wages for child-care workers, the overwhelming majority of whom are women.
On communities, we have a number of issues. We welcome the increase in resources for social inclusion, but we are concerned that the voluntary sector, which provides many essential services to women and children, remains relatively poorly resourced and, according to "Investing in You" is due to have its allocation reduced in 2001-02. As we know, the reality is that many voluntary organisations that provide targeted services for women are facing insecure funding and increased competition among themselves for resources. We are concerned that the social inclusion partnership monitoring guidelines issued by the Scottish Executive contain virtually no references to gender. Safeguards are needed to ensure that social inclusion partnerships take account of the needs of the whole community if they are to be effective in tackling the causes of social exclusion.
On enterprise and lifelong learning, we recommend that targets for further and higher education include the development of part-time programmes and the provision of child care to ensure wider access, particularly for women with caring responsibilities. We are concerned by the low proportion of women in business in Scotland and the gender stereotyping of Government-funded training. We recommend monitoring the gender pay gap, in other words women's full-time earnings as a percentage of men's, mainstreaming all Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise programmes and allocating funding for positive action initiatives that address gender segregation in enterprise training in the labour market. Policies and programmes need to address the needs of part-time and low-paid workers and their carers.
On transport, the Scottish Executive recently commissioned research and consultation on issues affecting women's use of various forms of transport. It found that women have much less access to cars and are more frequent users of public transport. Looking at "Investing in You", we are concerned that the proposed reduction in allocation to Strathclyde Passenger Transport Executive in 2001-02 will adversely impact on women.
In conclusion, we would like to say that gender impact assessment is a useful way of assessing the effectiveness of policies and that there is an opportunity for the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament to introduce those processes at the beginning, based on methods that have been developed in countries such as South Africa. In particular, we strongly urge the Scottish Parliament and the Executive to take over the work of the gender audit. We will not be able to produce the gender audit in future due to a lack of resources—we have been doing this in a voluntary capacity for seven years—but it is the sort of audit that is a necessary first step for a gender impact assessment.
In the meeting with Jack McConnell, we suggested that the Scottish Executive second an adviser to work with finance department officers on adapting a gender impact analysis toolkit, which has been developed in Canada, for use in Scotland, because we recognise that the necessary expertise is not available at the moment. While we collectively can offer a lot of experience and expertise from the women's budget group and Engender, we are constrained by our lack of resources. We are already finding it difficult to meet the number of requests that we have had, although we welcome the fact that people are beginning to look at these issues in more detail.
Thank you Fiona. Irene Graham, do you wish to add anything at this stage?
No.
Fiona, could you explain the gender analysis toolkit?
We recently had a seminar with the Canadian high commission at which we learned a lot about how Canada, which has 25 years' experience of this issue, has approached gender analysis. A lot of work has also been done by the Commonwealth gender budget initiative. Some processes have been developed and there is a fair amount of agreement on how gender analysis should be done, but the starting point is good gender-disaggregated data. From that, an analysis can be done on what policies are trying to achieve.
The data must be available in order to monitor whether policies are meeting targets. The example of transport is good, because the Scottish Executive research is thorough and produces a lot of information about the different forms of male and female use of transport, including public transport. With that starting point, it would be possible to look at whether public transport policies are meeting the needs of all. When I refer to women, obviously different groups of women have different needs. The research has looked at that in a lot of detail. The starting point must be good gender disaggregated data.
I open this discussion to questions from committee members.
I was interested to hear what you said about social inclusion partnerships. Can you expand on that? I have experience of my local social inclusion partnership. SIPs for geographical areas are based on the idea that local communities determine priorities. How do you develop a gender perspective when you have tried to devolve decision making down to that level? Has any work been done to look at whether the SIP agenda has properly addressed the needs of women?
On the last point, research has been commissioned to look at the impact of social inclusion partnerships on women in four areas. That research is currently with the Scottish Executive and is not yet published, but early indications show that in some areas the result of SIPs has been that money has been taken away from what you might call women's projects and projects that were set up to serve women. You will have the details of the research at some point during this Parliament.
The second question is how you develop a gender perspective. Fiona's presentation mentioned monitoring and analysis tools. One way to ensure that resources are going to women is for monitoring analysis to look at that. The danger with SIPs is that if everything is devolved to a local level and it is not within a policy context and a strongly driven policy framework, you will get very localised solutions. It is about getting a balance and giving more guidance and direction to SIPs to say that they should be meeting certain key priorities. If one of those key priorities concerned gender and gender disaggregated data on the impacts of decisions, you might get some results.
Is part of the problem that we currently think of social inclusion partnership decisions and budgeting decisions as being gender neutral? How do we win the political argument that if we do not intervene it is not neutral but operates against women? Given the role of women as carers and people who are managing budgets in excluded communities they are a key part of the social inclusion agenda, yet that is not acknowledged. How will we win the political argument that we do not currently have gender-neutral budgets?
There is not an easy answer to that. In her introduction to "Gender Audit 2000" Wendy Alexander says that a common assumption is that women have reached equality so there is no longer any need to target women specifically. That is a myth. We have only to examine who is disadvantaged and where discrimination lies to find that women are high up in those league tables. It is difficult to put the arguments on that issue, as it is not popular.
Women's organisations are concerned, as there is an assumption that, for example, as the domestic abuse development fund has been set up, we have taken care of women's issues. How can we change that? If something as important as the Scottish Parliament or the Scottish Executive were to make it one of its priorities, that might alter that perception.
It would be helpful if monitoring and evaluation of social inclusion partnerships included consideration of who is benefiting. The way to do that might be to focus not only on women. The telling factor in all social inclusion partnerships investment is who benefits. Those statistics could be disaggregated to show which men benefit, what ages they are, how long they have been unemployed, how long women have been unemployed, what is their social responsibility and where black and ethnic minority communities fit in. If the statistics were disaggregated along all of those lines, we would see clearly who is benefiting. That would be the way to evaluate social inclusion partnerships without creating antagonism.
You make a number of recommendations in your report, which you have repeated in your evidence today. For example, you recommend that Scottish spending plans incorporate a gender impact assessment and that there be a mechanism to assess their impact on women better. You said that you have met the Minister for Finance to discuss those issues and you recommended that there be an adviser to take them forward. How were those recommendations received? How amenable was he to your suggestions?
Our meeting with the minister was only two weeks ago, so the Scottish Executive is still discussing our recommendations. It was acknowledged that there is a lack of expertise in the finance department: while it accepts that considering cross-cutting issues such as equality and social inclusion is a good idea, it recognises that in practice it will be difficult for it to do so. There appeared to be some willingness to consider those issues, but the report "Investing in You", which has just been published, has no gender impact analysis at all, which is disappointing. We have recommended that someone should be seconded to work especially with finance department officials to improve understanding in the department by adapting methodology that has already been developed elsewhere, for example in Canada and South Africa.
The Treasury is in discussion with the women's budget group in London, so there is a precedent. There is a willingness on the department's part to consider those issues, but Engender is disappointed that "Investing in You" is gender blind.
Is finding the correct and most effective mechanisms to take this forward the main issue?
We want to ensure that the process is better for next year. We are talking about developing a framework and embedding processes so that in the future we should not have the problem of gender-blind policies that cannot analyse the current or future situation.
You have mentioned the different tools that can be used to make a gender impact assessment and the Canadian model. Engender must have come to a conclusion as to what it thinks would be the best way forward for the gender impact assessment that would fit best with the Scottish Parliament model. Will you say more about that?
You have both used the terms Scottish Executive and Scottish Parliament as interchangeable. Are you talking about a mechanism that the Scottish Executive will use or are you talking about the Scottish Parliament using a similar mechanism in addition to that, or adopting a different model? The Executive and Parliament have distinct roles. Where do you think the Equal Opportunities Committee fits into the process, as it seems to have an obvious role?
In relation to the gender impact assessment mechanisms that the Scottish Executive should use, a fairly technical methodology has been developed, which is why we want an adviser to work closely with finance department officials.
You are right to point out that the Scottish Parliament would have a different process. The Equal Opportunities Committee has an overview, so its role would be to ask the right questions of the other committees and to help members of other committees to ask the right questions. It might not have to get so involved in the various processes that the Scottish Executive officials would have to be involved in but it must ask the right questions to bring clarity.
The point to bear in mind is the end purpose of the policy that is being discussed and who it benefits. The question to keep asking is—is it benefiting all the people it sets out to benefit? When you ask those questions, you often rapidly come to the conclusion that you do not have the information to answer them, so it may be necessary to direct research to consider specific issues in detail. The Parliament and the Equal Opportunities Committee must ensure that those questions are asked repeatedly.
Engender is concerned about the lack of overlap between the Equal Opportunities Committee and the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee. I believe that there is no overlap. We are concerned about that as they are the two committees that most directly impact on social inclusion and poverty and, as Irene Graham said, women are more likely to experience poverty. We would like the Equal Opportunities Committee to ask questions and assist members of the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee to ask questions about the gender impact of policies.
Shona Robison asked about what we might see as the difference between the role of the Scottish Executive and that of the Scottish Parliament. What came clearly out of the seminar with the Canadian high commission was that over 25 years Canada has developed fairly elaborate and continually developing systems to disaggregate the statistics and consider who is benefiting from budgets and in which way. This is the start of a new political system and a new system, through the Scottish Executive, to deliver the policies. We are saying that, at this early stage, it must build in gender disaggregation through the bureaucratic system. Economists, the finance department and other departments should consider building in a gender analysis to the process in whichever way is appropriate.
What came out clearly at the seminar was that different Government departments in Canada operate in different ways. Some departments have specifically allocated people to monitor, record and develop their gender analysis while others have taken a mainstreaming approach.
In relation to the Scottish Parliament, I will go back to the question asked by Johann Lamont. It is about taking the political lead, through whichever mechanism is possible. A scrutinising committee might well be the way to do that. If a committee such as this one were to ask for a gender analysis from every department, that would begin to kick in to the other structures. You must decide which approach is appropriate, but we would welcome the Scottish Parliament giving a political lead.
You spoke about your disappointment that "Investing in You" does not include a gender impact assessment. You recommend that an adviser be attached to the finance department. I am curious about the role of the Scottish Executive equality unit that was set up last November. I would have expected it to have had an input to those processes. I would certainly have expected it to have had input into "Investing in You". From your discussion with Jack McConnell, do you know whether any of this was run past the equality unit?
The equality unit is a small part of the Scottish Executive and it is not very well resourced. As Irene Graham said, we would ideally want all the departments in the Scottish Executive to consider the gender impact assessment of their work.
The finance department is responsible for taking a lead on the consultation about the spending plans, which is why we suggested that it should be the starting point for considering gender impact assessment. We suggested seconding an adviser to work with appropriate officials, which would include working with somebody from the equality unit. The responsibility for, and the need for technical expertise in designing, the budget and the spending plans lies with the finance department, which is why we suggest that the adviser should be seconded to it.
If the equality unit copies the Canadian model, it will try to improve understanding of equality throughout the Scottish Executive. I understand that that is what the unit is considering, but that would include a range of issues such as spending plans and other matters.
Is there a danger in suggesting that there should be advisers when there might already be a mechanism for doing this in the unit, which is, in your words, under resourced? Perhaps more resources should be given to the unit so that it can consider the impact of gender issues throughout the Scottish Executive.
Yvonne Strachan, of the equality unit, was at the seminar. She gave an account of how the equality unit is working.
A concern from Engender's perspective is that the equality unit is in its infancy and is currently consulting on "Towards an Equality Strategy". It is still working out how it should make progress. Its emphasis is on mainstreaming. The question is how we ensure mainstreaming takes effect and is properly embedded in the processes from the start. We are concerned that the equality unit is perhaps not best geared to do that at the moment. An adviser, with a specific remit to examine budgets and target key issues, might be the way forward; it might not be the way forward for evermore, but at this stage it would add to the early work being done in the equality unit.
It is as if every door we open leads to another—it is such a big process. Where do you think that we should start? Presumably, each committee should be examining its own budget, but do you think that we should be targeting one or two areas? Your presentation suggested that there are many areas that are critical but that are not often considered in the Scottish budget. A good example of that is wages. People think that good progress has been made on child care but no budget lines show what is happening to the wages of child care workers. The Scottish Executive has done much that has had an effect on women's wages, including child care training, although that impact has never really been examined.
The other thing that strikes me is that so many decisions are made at local level. How do you get into the Scottish Enterprise budget, for example? A few years ago I was involved in an organisation called Training 2000. How do you get a grip on things like that? How do you ensure that such organisations are giving priority to positive action initiatives? How do you think that we should proceed?
It is a huge area. However, we can draw on the experience of other countries. We are at the beginning of a process, which should help. We can draw on the expertise in Scotland gained through the gender audit, and on the work of the women's budget group in London. When we asked the Canadian experts last month, they said that a good place to begin was where there was political will. It helps to begin where there is a minister who is interested in the subject. It may be sensible to begin in areas where there is already a lot of political support, data or concern about the adverse impact of policies on a certain group.
Enterprise and lifelong learning is a large area and much of the decision making is devolved. However, as we said earlier, if there is a strong political message that this is important, parameters are set for Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the targets are not gender blind, as they are at the moment, that will begin to make a difference. The enterprise network may be a very good starting point, because it has a large budget.
There is a lot of evidence to show that enterprise policies have not taken into account the fact that women's business start-up patterns are different from those of men. Enterprise programmes that target businesses with high growth potential and a turnover of about £100,000 per year in the first two years exclude women, because most women's businesses operate below that level. A positive action measure, such as the microcredit programme that was given £1 million on International Women's Day, is a starting point. However, that does not answer the mainstreaming question. We need to set parameters and for the committee and the minister to send out a strong message about the importance of gender awareness in policy and budgets.
Scottish Enterprise could consider what is happening in Europe. The Equal Opportunities Commission has developed a toolkit for mainstreaming equality, which was launched by Jack McConnell two months ago. Increasingly, European social fund money is demanding that all the various partners and players demonstrate where resources are going to women. Many of the projects that are supported by SIPs have matched funding from Europe. If we were to follow that through, so that the projects had to demonstrate how women are impacted by the various training projects, business development projects and so on, we would be able to see results.
We must start by looking for the opportunities. Political will can often be created when there are resources to back it up—in the case of enterprise, there would be.
A review of the local enterprise companies is currently under way and I do not know whether that has taken gender on board. That is one of the problems for the Equal Opportunities Committee. We have to keep our eye on every other committee.
In the Health and Community Care Committee, we have found that the biggest block of money goes to the health boards and that makes it difficult to track the budget. There is a tension between local and central; the centre must provide some strategic direction.
As you will know, Glasgow puts money into women's health projects, but that is very unusual and does not happen elsewhere in Scotland. How do we drive such things forward when we do not have control of budgets at a local level? Similarly, local authorities make most of the decisions relating to voluntary organisations.
Local authorities take some, but not all, of the decisions about the voluntary sector. The lottery plays an increasingly significant role in funding the voluntary sector, as do voluntary contributions from various fundraising activities. A recent report from Glasgow shows that 100 projects have closed in the past four years. We must begin to ask everyone to carry out gender disaggregation. We must also look for particular political sympathy and commitment. If we could demonstrate the results that would accrue from that exercise—the way in which people would benefit—and begin to disaggregate everything on a gender basis, coupled with targets, the way forward would become clear.
The Canadian discussions told us that, after 25 years, they still have not got it right. We are not going to achieve anything overnight, but we need to start the process. We must start by asking the question and then focus on one or two areas to show how targeting money towards women gives results that benefit women and others. The evidence shows that if one targets women to bring them out of poverty, it has a spiral effect on families.
The examples of what is happening in other countries are very helpful. I know that you have visited South Africa, Irene, to find out about the fairly radical things that they are doing there. Will you say something about that?
What was striking about South Africa was that they are gender proofing their budgets. They are examining the impact of all their budgets on women. That is happening right down to local government level. Given that local government in South Africa is much more varied than in Scotland, that shows us that it can be done here.
At the community meetings that I attended, I was told that men were the head and women were the neck: the women were supporting the social fabric. Having come from a position where they had no status in the political framework, women were guaranteed places in Parliament. Those women ensure that the limited resources available have an impact on women's lives. I cannot give specific examples, but gender mainstreaming has made a difference.
We have to take action at all sorts of different levels, from outside lobbying from the voluntary sector to politicians taking a lead when it might not be popular. There may be a populist backlash against such a lead, but that is what is needed.
You have demonstrated that the issues are complex and broad and that we still have a long way to go. As you said, our Canadian colleagues have been doing it for 25 years and are still not clear about the way ahead.
You mentioned transport issues. What aspect of transport were you referring to? Public transport is quite a topical issue. Were you referring to the inconvenience of public transport, the need for increased frequency or better access and a more family-friendly cost? What issues did you want to highlight?
The Scottish Parliament is not able to influence much public transport, because the remit would include airports, Caledonian MacBrayne and trunk roads. The research that has just been completed by the Scottish Executive shows a clear difference in the use of public transport by men and women. That includes whether people have access to a car, hold a driving licence and so on. It shows that women are more likely to use public transport and that they make shorter, more complicated journeys, mixing different types of transport and are often encumbered by children and shopping. Safety issues are also important to women. Those issues are compounded for rural people who use public transport.
A gender impact analysis would influence decisions about priorities for financial allocation. One could consider the impact of deciding to prioritise roads over public transport, which might mean that better-off men would benefit more than women and those groups who use public transport and who are much more likely to be socially excluded. The fact that the Scottish Parliament does not have overall responsibility for transport makes it difficult to follow that through.
In my introduction I cited the example of the Strathclyde Passenger Transport Executive, which is a good public service that extends throughout the west of Scotland. It is unfortunate that under the current plans set out in "Investing in You" its allocation would be reduced in the year 2001-02. A gender impact assessment would make clear that we should not do that, even if it were not possible to do anything about other forms of public transport.
I think that this research provides the committee with a good starting point, as it contains information broken down by age and region and sets out the reasons why people use different forms of transport. It shows how worries about safety prevent different age groups using certain forms of transport. It would be useful in the first instance to consider relationships with local authorities and the SPTE.
I was concerned by the suggestion in your paper that less money should be directed towards new road systems and that resources should be concentrated more on improving the current infrastructure and the transport system that operates on it.
We are saying that a gender impact analysis would allow the Parliament to ask questions and to make decisions, knowing clearly what impact those are having on different groups of people and how they fit in with other priorities such as social inclusion.
I ask members to speak up and to speak right into the microphones, as the signer is having difficulty hearing what some people are saying.
I want to return to the question of resources. Any Government or Administration will always argue that it is investing more money. Should the focus of this committee be on trying to find more resources or on getting the policies right so that what is available is spent and targeted better? What does the experience of other countries suggest is the best way of tackling this issue?
A gender impact assessment will allow the Parliament to test whether policies are achieving what they are intended to achieve. It is designed to clarify the result that is aimed at—to establish whom we are trying to benefit and whether we are benefiting those people. It is not about more resources so much as testing effectiveness of policies.
There are no further questions or comments. Thank you for giving evidence to the committee today.