SWBG blog

Women's Survey 2023 Launch

We have just launched our Women’s Survey 2023!

Following on from our first survey last year, we are asking women across Scotland about their spending priorities during the cost-of-living crisis. This year we are also interested in hearing about women’s experiences of transport and housing. We ask questions related to cost, energy efficiency, and safety. As well as providing a space for women to share other priorities they think need to be considered by decision makers across Scotland.

This survey is crucial to us at SWBG as our work is driven by women’s economic experiences in Scotland. Information provided in the survey will be used in developing campaigns, highlight issues affecting women in the media, inform government consultation responses, and as part of our training. Last year’s survey provided crucial feedback to support our work through the year.

How can you help us?

We’d like to hear different views from women across Scotland as this is pivotal to reflecting the intersectional and diverse realities of women in all local authorities. We are particularly interested in hearing from more ethnic minority women, women that are carers, and women who are single parents.

We are also offering a £25 voucher to 10 people who complete the survey, this will be selected at random. 

If you haven’t done so already, we’d like your support to share this survey to help us reach a diverse range of women across Scotland. You can do this by: 

The question should not be “what is the cost of creating transformation?” but rather “what is the cost of not doing so?”

Guest blog by Fiona Collie, Carers Scotland

What do we want to see for ourselves and loved ones? To be nurtured, to have friendships and connections, to enjoy our lives and the ability to fulfil aspirations.

Too often these things are unattainable, especially for people with disabilities, older people, and unpaid carers. Not because they cannot be reached but because they are simply seen as too costly. The lives, hopes and dreams of people who use or need social care, and their carers, are not seen as of sufficient value. Carers are a resource to be drawn upon; disabled and older people: a cost to be borne.

The Independent Review of Adult Social Care talked of a need to think of social care differently – “to stop seeing funding social care support as this burden but rather as an investment in the economy and our society”. To truly transform we need to be far more ambitious about investing in social care than currently proposed for the National Care Service.

The proposals are, however, positive. They offer a much-needed shift in how we view social care. The principles underpinning the legislation; focused on early intervention, ensuring human rights, enabling people to thrive and co-producing solutions are, if delivered, transformational. However, all of this relies on ambitious investment.

Fundamental change is critical to enabling carers and the person they care for to thrive. There remains, however, a huge gap between warm words and effective support for this to happen.

One example is hospital discharge, often dehumanizingly characterised as “bed blocking” to grab political headlines. When Carers Scotland asked[1] carers about their experiences of hospital discharge; nearly two thirds were neither involved nor consulted, and only 15% were given any choice about providing care. Few got the support they needed to care safely with less than a fifth (18%) saying they received sufficient services. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, over a third (37%) said they felt pressurised to take time off work to care, creating or exacerbating financial insecurity. Some even had to leave work altogether. This is despite the Carers Act 2016 enshrining carers’ right to be involved and placing duty on the NHS to involve them.

Too often carers are seen as the easiest, and certainly the cheapest, option while insufficient thought is given to their health, finances or employment, nor the wider economic impact, when considering the impact of caring. But this lack of support is not simply a symptom of current pressures. Research on the lives of carers, over several decades, finds that they and the person they care for cannot get the level of support they need and the impacts of this are significant.

Poverty is consistently higher for carers than non-carers[2] and the cost-of-living crisis has been devastating. More than a quarter of carers have had to cut back on food or heating, and more than 10% have had to use foodbanks.

Nearly 7% of carers are forced to give up work to care with a further 5% reducing their working hours[3]. A similar proportion cannot take up paid employment because of caring4].

This comes with both economic and personal costs. In 20175] estimated found 345,000 working age carers in England left work and remain out of employment costing £2.9 billion in taxes on lost earnings and replacement social security payments. Employers are losing talented people after investing significant resources.

Those at the peak age of caring (45-66 years) lose on average £6,300 a year because they must stop/reduce their hours[6] creating a financial penalty for carers.

Carers are also more likely have a long-term poor health condition than non-carers[7] and 16% more likely than non-carers to live with two or more long-term conditions[8.

Two thirds of us will be carers at some point and most of us will feel this impact. We must be more ambitious – for current and future carers. More carers are being lost into chasms, emerging with their financial security in tatters and health so poor that they need immediate and more expensive crisis support.

The SWBG transformative approach can change this picture. The question should not be “what is the cost of creating this transformation?” but rather “what is the cost of not doing so?”.

Fiona Collie is Head of Policy and Public Affairs at Carers Scotland

Read the SWBG research – Towards a transformative universal adult social care support service for Scotland

Scottish Government must double investment in adult social care support to drive transformative change and create up to 75,000 new jobs

Today the Scottish Women’s Budget Group launched new research calling for the Scottish Government to significantly ramp up its investment in the nation’s adult social care support services.

The new report – Towards a Transformative Universal Adult Social Care Support Service for Scotland – provides analysis that says the Scottish Government must double its current investment in the adult social care sector to create a truly universal, quality system for all. This would mean investing £6.8bn per year, almost double the current level.

This investment would not only address the long-term lack of investment in the sector, but also provide fairer pay to those working in it, create up to 75,000 new jobs, and reduce the pressures on unpaid carers created by unmet needs.

Investing in social care brings returns to society and the economy, and its call comes as the Scottish Government continues to develop the new National Care Service.

Sara Cowan, the Coordinator of the Scottish Women’s Budget Group, said: “Scotland’s social care sector is in a critical state and needs urgent investment.

“For too long care has been underfunded and undervalued and, with women undertaking the majority of paid and unpaid care work, this undervaluation has both caused – and continues to drive – significant levels of gender inequality across our society.

“But there is an opportunity for change.

“We urge the Scottish Government to make significant extra investment in Scotland’s social care sector as a matter of urgency and we hope the numbers published in today’s research offer some benchmark as to what is needed to drive transformative change.”

SWBG calculates that to expand the reach of care services to those with more moderate care needs, eliminate unmet need in the system and increase the wages of paid care workers to a fairer £15.21 per hour, would cost £6.8 bn per year, up from about £3.5bn currently.

The research, which was part-funded by Oxfam Scotland, also provides a less ambitious scenario, requiring investment of £5.1bn per year – roughly 50% above current investment levels, as a step towards transformative change. This scenario covers current care needs, but expands coverage by about 20% to reduce unmet need, while extending free provisional to all types of care, and increasing pay rates to £12.50 an hour.

Organisations across the care sector have been pointing towards undervaluation of care and a lack of sufficient investment as the root causes of the current care crisis. Whilst plans to develop a new National Care Service are underway, SWBG’s report illustrates that significant extra funding is needed to create change for people accessing social care support, those paid to work in care services, and unpaid carers who shoulder much of the much of the pressure created by gaps within the current system.

The modelling also shows that doubling investment to £6.8bn per year could see 43,000 new care sector jobs created, as well as 8,000 new jobs in industries supplying the care sector, and over 24,000 new jobs through induced employment as a result of newly employed workers spending in the Scottish economy. Better paying care jobs would also see some return of investment through tax, as well as additional spending within local economies.

Dr Jerome De Henau, Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Open University, who conducted the analysis for the SWBG, said: “In Scotland, as across the UK, Government investment in care falls short despite ambitious political objectives of improving working conditions and access to care support.

“This modelling builds on experiences from other countries, particularly the Nordic countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, where greater public investment is made in care based on universal access to care support by a professionalised and well-paid workforce.

“Rather than starting from current social care budgets, the modelling aims at costing care needs from the bottom up to show the extent of the additional investment required over the next ten years that would match those political ambitions. The modelling shows that a truly transformative system of adult social care should see public spending rise to between 3.5% and 4% of GDP, from the current 2%, a level on par with those Nordic countries.”

The Scottish Government has previously recognised the need to view care as an investment in our society and economy. The Scottish Women’s Budget Group is calling on them to consider the findings, and place adult social care support services on a pathway towards the funding levels required to ensure more people can access the care they need, while paying workers more fairly.

For more information about the research please contact: info@swbg.org.uk

Women, Work and Wealth in Scotland's changing economy 2022 - Guest blog by Carmen Martinez

Last month, the Scottish Women’s Budget Group launched its latest analysis of women, work, and wealth in Scotland.

This piece of research was commissioned back in the summer of 2022 to understand the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cost-of-living crisis have so far had on women’s participation in Scotland’s labour market.

The report’s findings paint a bittersweet picture of current labour trends. On the one hand, data shows that as of August 2022 female employment rate was at 74.9%, the highest on record. Furthermore, the report highlights that women now make up 50.5% of the workforce in Scotland. Based on these stats, one could argue that women have made significant gains in the labour market despite of the pandemic, and that Scotland is well within track of achieving its gender equality goals by 2030 in line with the United Nations’ Agenda for Sustainable Development. On the other hand, further evidence reveals the gendered nature of Scotland’s economy. For example, the report shows that women continue to make up the vast majority of part-time workers (74%), and that 80% of all inactive people with caring responsibilities are women. In addition to this, the employment rate of black and minority ethnic women is 22% below that of white women, a figure that exposes the layers of inequality that still characterise Scotland’s society.

Following on from the evaluation of employment rates, the report delves into women’s earnings compared to men’s, the gender pay gap and women’s levels of wealth. The findings here are hardly surprising as we learn that real median earnings for women in full-time work are still £73 lower than those for their male counterparts. As of the gender pay gap, despite having narrowed between 2014-2020, it has increased in the last two years, rising to 11.6% and 12.2% in 2021 and 2022 respectively. Regarding wealth, median inflation-adjusted individual figures show that between 2016 and 2018 men were £14,000 better off than women, with an estimated 34% of women not saving towards their retirement as opposed to 29% of men.

Overall, the report adds to the body of evidence that exposes the extent of gender inequality in Scotland. Some of the data provided can hardly be considered new or even unexpected, though some of the latest statistics reveal the magnitude of the effects that the pandemic and subsequent lockdown measures have had on female earnings and employment rates. What’s more, the evidence collected in this piece of research uncovers women’s vulnerability in the face of the current cost-of-living crisis. On a more positive note, however, this research includes a set of recommendations for policy changes intended for the Scottish Government. These are designed to tackle the issues of gender equality examined, and thus emphasise the need to expand childcare and to deliver a ‘just approach’ for both care workers and care beneficiaries. Most importantly, these recommendations take into account other Scottish Government commitments such as the Net Zero Industrial Strategy and advocate for including care jobs as part of a green industrial strategy for Scotland to achieve its net zero targets by 2045.

These policy proposals would require a new funding approach and appropriate budget allocations to ensure implementation. In times of tight budgets, however, they would also demand strong political commitment to drive action. The Scottish Government should focus on the long-term benefits that the realisation of these policies would yield in the delivery of a fairer and more resilient economy in Scotland for all women and men.