SWBG blog

Why women's voices need to be part of the budget process

Each year the budgetary process starts in a mooted fashion with the process of pre-budget scrutiny. Just before the Scottish Parliament went into recess the newly formed Finance and Public Administration Committee launched its consultation seeking your views on Scotland’s public finances in 2022-23, how they have been affected by COVID-19 and how the next Scottish Budget should address the need for a fair and equal recovery.

When the group of eight men and two women, who make up the Finance Committee, return to Parliament it’s important that they hear a diversity of experience in responses to this consultation. To hear the different economic experiences of people across our society. Often there is an assumption that budgets are gender neutral and effect everyone similarly, but we just need to look at the spotlight that COVID-19 shone on inequalities to know that is not true.

The pandemic has affected us all but it’s not affected us equally. Women, those belonging to minority ethnic communities and disabled people are economically the hardest hit by the Covid-19 crisis and the risk of deepening existing inequalities is high. Women have been on the frontline of the Covid-19 crisis, making up the majority of health and care workers and the majority of workers at high risk of exposure to Covid-19. Other sectors which have a predominantly female workforce, such as hospitality, have been harder hit by the impact of lockdown and ongoing restrictions of social distancing, with risk of unemployment or reducing working hours remaining high.

This is on top of the fact that women are more likely to live in poverty at any stage of their life than men, Scotland has a 13.3% Gender Pay Gap and 85% of those who are deemed ‘inactive’ in the labour market due to caring responsibilities are women (Statistics take from Scottish Government 2020 Scotland’s Gender Equality Index).

The next budget has a lot of work to do to turn the tide on inequalities so it’s not surprising that at the Scottish Women’s Budget Group we want to make sure women’s voices and concerns are part of that process. National budget’s affect our lives everyday, having the potential to make things easier or more difficult depending on the spending decisions. A budget process that is open, transparent and gives space for participation makes way for a fairer process.

Join us in sharing your views with the Committee

Individuals can response to the Committee consultation the consultation is open until 13 August.

Join us for a policy dialogue event to inform the SWBG response alongside members of SWBG to the consultation on Monday 9 August.

Producing the Living Gender History Podcast

Members of SWBG took part in the Living Gender History Podcast episode The Politics of Care in Scotland – listen to the episode

Guest blog by Eliska Bujokova

When the idea of producing a podcast was first brought up at one of our Centre for Gender History virtual meetings during the pandemic, I was immediately intrigued. I think more then ever, a lot of us historians felt disillusioned with our work. Archives were closed and we simply couldn’t do what we do best, that is get stuck in our sources and forget about the passage of time. In fact, the passage of time became a source of existential dread, second only to the one caused by our inability to comprehend, analyse and historicise the events we lived through. The podcast served us all as a much-needed project, as well as a way to contribute to a discourse that is current, as living in and for the past seemed more irrelevant than ever. It became a medium of making our own work, interests and expertise speak to a broader audience than is generally the case for early career academics. The composition of our collective has changed a number of times and so have some of our ideas about the message we intended the podcast to convey, but I personally think that what we have produced in the end is an enthralling series of insightful dialogues as well as a great start of an on-going collaboration between the project’s producers.

The two episodes produced by Anna McEwan and myself focus on care, which is a rather interesting subject to be studying in a time like this. Habitually, I research care in the eighteenth century. When I started my research two years ago, care debates were still on the margins of the mainstream, mostly featuring in texts of feminist economics, care ethics and the study of global labour markets. As a result of the pandemic, this has changed beyond recognition. Care has become largely debated by mainstream commentators, policy makers and the general public, with the notion of a caring economy gaining momentum. Though, as many have pointed out, the idea of putting care and dependency at the centre of social and economic analysis has in many instances been co-opted by empty performative gestures, and the much needed conversations about what a caring economy actually means were often obfuscated by the much louder clapping for the NHS. The first of our two episodes on care hopes to look past the calls for a feminist new deal and think about what care in Scotland really looks like in the here and now, and what the plans for reforming the care regime currently in place will be able to deliver. In the second episode, we go back to the beginning of the pandemic and talk to a number of carers as partners, parents and teachers and think together about what caring really means in the everyday and how the pandemic has made us rethink and reconceptualise the nature of responsibility for care.

My own takeaways from this project are manifold. I have thoroughly enjoyed the conversations with our guest speakers, including the members of the Scottish Women’s Budget Group, who have been so generous with their time, insights and personal experiences. I have worked through and in spite of my fear of all things technical and learned a thing or two about the practicalities of research impact. I have also been able to find a new route for utilising my research that feels current and conversational, qualities often lacking in academic work for someone as exceedingly verbal as myself. I hope this rather personal account of the podcast production may offer an interesting behind-the-scenes of what I hope to be a long-lasting project, as well as an invitation for our listeners to raise questions, comments and subjects of interest they may wish to hear us engage with in the future. I hope that you enjoy the podcast as much as I enjoyed taking part in its making, and that the message of the series, that is, that gender history can be a living subject bringing together the academy, community, activism, politics and personal lived experiences, is made manifest in each of our episodes.

Listen to the Living Gender History podcast – members of SWBG took part in the latest episode - The Politics of Care in Scotland.

6 challenges to embrace in building a caring, green recovery

Last month we launched a paper ‘Challenges for 2021 and beyond’ ahead of the Scottish elections. We called on Scotland’s political parties to respond to the challenges and to commit to invest in an economy that cares. Here we share the six key challenges the politicians must grasp if our recovery is to tackle existing inequality and the climate crisis, while working towards a gender equal economy.

Build a feminist green recovery – so that responding to climate change can tackle existing inequalities in Scotland

This year Glasgow will host the COP 26 climate talks. The recovery from Covid must also set us on a greener path but this path must recognise the need to tackle inequalities as we reduce our carbon emissions.

Core to tackling climate destruction is valuing life-sustaining livelihoods, including the care economy. This means a new deal for care workers whether in social care, unpaid care, childcare, teaching, or health care. It’s time that care jobs are recognised as green jobs.

Invest in care – to build a system that puts wellbeing at the centre and invests in the people who are supported by it and the care workforce

Care work is overwhelmingly carried out by women and is a key sector in our economy. Yet it is undervalued and has suffered from chronic underinvestment. This lack of investment must be recognised as both a cause and consequence of an unequal society.

Perceptions of care work have changed through the course of this pandemic and now is the time for significant investment in our care services and those who work in them. Building services with the participation of those who use them, with local flexibility underpinned by a human rights approach and a clear gender analysis.

Transform the worlds of paid and unpaid work – to provide time for both women and men to care

During the Covid-19 crisis the reliance on unpaid care work has increased, with social care and support packages cut, reductions in respite care and a closure of childcare and schools. Each one of these changes and closures has impacted women most – women who were already undertaking the majority of unpaid care work pre-pandemic, and who undertook even more throughout 2020-21.

It's time for ambitious change that seeks to redistribute caring and unpaid work responsibilities between women and men, and between the family and the state.

Create a caring social security system – that provides people with a dignified safety net when they need it

Social security should provide everyone in society with a safety net and support when needed. Yet the Covid-19 has highlighted how inadequate the provisions are and this hits women hardest as women have a greater reliance on social security.

The challenge for Scotland in the next parliamentary term is creating a caring social security system and using the powers available in Scotland to increase incomes and lift people out of poverty.

Develop the tax system to promote fairness and equality – using revenue raising powers to tackle inequality

How government generates income through taxes has an important role to play in tackling inequality. Decisions about how best to raise public funds through tax can affect women and men differently. In Scotland, as across the UK, the unequal taxation of income from wealth and income from work represents a tax break for wealthy men.

As we recover from Covid-19 we need to see Government decisions that build fairness into our tax system, and that work together with public spending decisions to tackle inequality.

Deliver gender mainstreaming in policy development – putting theory into practice

In order to deliver on each of the challenges outlined above those making budget decisions in Government must ensure that in each decision recognises the different needs and experiences faced by different groups of women and men.

There are tools that should be used in government to make sure this happens, ensuring Equality Impact Assessments are completed in budgeting and policy decision making processes is a vital piece of this challenge.

These are our six key challenges to policy makers and politicians, and they are challenges that will remain after the election. We need to hear far more from all of the candidates in this election on how they would respond to these challenges. We would encourage everyone to raise them with their candidates at hustings or directly.

Click here to read our full Challenges Paper

Contact us if you’d like to get more involved

Time to up the ambition for a green care led recovery

Today the Scottish Budget will go through stage 3 and, barring the unexpected, will pass into law.

The budget is one of the most significant pieces of legislation the Government passes each year. It provides funds to policy initiatives and political commitments. As we live through the Covid pandemic and its economic consequences it also sets the tone for recovery. Decisions within the budget affect all our lives, everyday.

These decisions can have profound effects. From austerity measures brought in by Westminster in response to the 2008 financial crash, which evidence shows has most significantly affected women on lower incomes, to construction investment which focuses job creation in male-dominated sectors. Budget decisions make real Government priorities and for too long these have not taken into account the different economic realities of women and men.

The budget represents investment in what we value through our economy, and in turn what can be seen as valued in society. Whose work we value. The value placed on paid and unpaid work. The value placed on equality and fairness.

Important additional announcements in the lead up to today’s vote demonstrate how public money can be used to tackle inequalities, from the introduction of free school meals to all primary aged children to free bus travel for all under-22s. But this budget is taking place in extraordinary times and calls for extraordinary measures and there is an opportunity to use the recovery process to tackle structural inequalities in our society.

What’s been disappointing in both the Scottish and UK Budgets has been the lack of ambition in putting care at the forefront of recovery planning. Instead there’s been a focus on ‘hard hat’ projects for major investment. The Scottish Budget has allocated £6billion to capital investment projects with a focus on physical infrastructure. Thankfully there is recognition for this capital investment to look towards our next great challenge, that of tackling climate change. But there’s been no investment approaching this scale of ambition for our social infrastructure, such as care services. Without money to back the warm words to carers, the danger is that value in our care sector is only recognised by clapping with our neighbours.

There is still opportunity for Scotland to build a more ambitious recovery, with more funds coming to Scotland through Barnett consequentials as a result of last week’s UK Budget. This is an opportunity to start investing in a green, care led recovery.

Core to tackling climate destruction is valuing life-sustaining livelihoods, including the care economy. This means a new deal for care workers whether in social care, unpaid care, childcare, teaching, or health care. These are low carbon jobs that have positive multiplier effects when accompanied with sufficient investment. They are also roles that are disproportionately carried out by women, showing that a green and just stimulus centred on care can be a strong lever for tackling inequality.

This is a challenge not only for the current budget but also as political parties in Scotland prepare their manifestos for the forthcoming election.

It’s a challenge the Scottish Women’s Budget Group and our members will be raising and it’s an opportunity for political commitment to build ambition for a transformative recovery, that builds a green, caring economy.