Engendering Economics: Inspiration from Scotland

Scottish Women’s Budget Group
Economics for Equality
Close the Gap
•Tools for Analysis and Challenge
•Feminist Economics
•Alternative Economic Thinking
•Gender Budget Analysis
•Bringing women into the policy and decision-making process
•Campaigning – equal pay, occupational segregation
•Scottish Women’s Budget Group
•Campaigning for over ten years
•Entirely voluntary – broad group of women; core ‘active’ group
•Making the budget process political
•Challenging budget process to become more gender aware and improve gender analysis
•Engaged with government, parliament, civil society in Scotland and internationally
•Economics for Equality: A Feminist Perspective

‘The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists’

Joan Robinson (1903 – 1983)
•Aims & Objectives.
•provide a supportive learning environment for participants to increase their knowledge and understanding of the budget process and its effects on our everyday lives, including that of poverty
•improve the confidence of participants in questioning and lobbying on public spending priorities and plans – in both local and national context – and increase participation locally on public spending proposals
•improve understanding of the budgetary process and its links with equality, poverty and social justice in policy and practice
•Expected Impacts
•evidence a way of working that has enabled policy makers to be more aware of the implications in gendered terms specifically of their decisions.
•increased confidence and capacity within local women activists to influence local decision-making on budgets and wider economic development issues.
•Longer Term Outcomes
•integration of gendered considerations into local budget setting and decision-making, with the gendered poverty implications understood
•better participation of local women and men in the processes by which local budgets are agreed and allocated
•an increased role for, and capacity of, local women in economic development.
•Close the Gap
•Partnership initiative between Scottish Government, Scottish economic development and skills agencies, the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the Scottish Trades Union Congress.
•Works with policy makers, employers across the private and public sector, trade unions and women’s organisations.
•Context
•Equal pay law has not changed since the mid-1980s, although there is now a positive duty on the public sector.
•Public sector pay modernisation programmes have given rise to equalising work in health, local government, and higher education, and mass litigation and destabilising finances.
•Inaccurate UK-wide perception of over-regulation, so dependence on the business case for action.
•Acting within the margins
•Builds capacity within economic sectors, and with key employers within those sectors to tackle the causes of the gender pay gap:
–Occupational segregation
–Lack of work-life balance measures
–Discrimination with pay systems, structures and processes
•Provides data and analysis to policy makers and partner agencies and initiatives.
•Challenges
•Economic downturn undermines the business case for equality activity at the business level, as labour markets are no longer tight.
•Projectised work on equality is destabilising, and lacks sustainability.
•Political will for the broad gender equality project is at a low not seen for 15 years, and the UK Government is even less positive about regulating for equality outcomes.