Women’s Economic Empowerment Project

In its first year the Women’s Economic Empowerment Project was a joint project between SWBG, the WISE Centre for Economic Justice, Glasgow Disability Alliance and the Women in Multiple Low-Paid Employment project (University of Glasgow).

Building on this initial pilot SWBG has worked with a different group of women from across Scotland on a yearly basis to follow the Scottish budget process at a national and local level. 

Background

Women’s experience of financial insecurity due to the cost of living crisis, energy fuel costs escalating, wage stagnation, and multiple other economic factors, many of them highly gendered, have been well documented. The intersectional and multiple factors that increase women’s poverty in paid work, and in relation to other forms of income, has also consistently been highlighted.

This project aims to build on the evidence shared by many women in the surveys, research projects, by increasing participants knowledge of the ‘economy’ and economic policy and public finance processes in Scotland.

Project Aims

We aim to work with women to understand their perceptions of the Scottish Budget and economic policymaking processes and the role they can play in these.  We build women’s knowledge and direct experience of the Scottish Budget process asking the question Do you see yourself and your needs reflected in the process?

What We Do

As part of this project we support women to understand the Scottish Budget process by holding a number of online and in-person workshops to explain the different stages of the budget cycle and the role of gender budgeting. This includes watch alongs of the different stages of the budget, playing budget bingo (picking out the key phrases/lines used by Ministers and MSPs) and exploring key questions including:

• Do you feel that women and issues affecting women (more likely to have caring responsibilities, gender pay gap, gender- and sex-based discrimination, different infrastructure needs, etc.) are reflected sufficiently in the current Scottish budget? Why? Why not?
• What were your impressions of the budget process, including the autumn statement, pre-budget scrutiny, the introduction of the budget in the Scottish Parliament, Stage 2 and  the Stage 3 reading in the Scottish Parliament and how this is then reflected at a local level?
• How do you feel you can/can’t influence economic decision-making in Scotland?
• What barriers are there to economic and political participation for women in Scotland? How could these barriers be reduced?

What we do with the information from the group

As we review each stage of the budget process we work with participants to inform our responses to consultations at a national and local level, we reflect the views of participants in blog posts and share these with policy makers