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CHAPTER 3 - CONSULTATION
Background
3.1 Effective consultation is vital to developing policies and practices that meet the needs of people in Scotland and in helping to identify and address the inequalities that continue to exist between men and women in Scottish society.
3.2 Our Equality Strategy highlighted the need to support the development of dialogue with equalities groups in Government policy and decision making.
3.3 Since 2000 the Government has worked hard to develop its networks and dialogue with equality groups as well as supporting individual departments, and now directorates, to engage directly by, amongst other things, producing Good Practice Guidance - Consultation with Equalities Groups to ensure that engaging with equalities groups in the policy making process is mainstreamed across the Government.
3.4 This chapter sets out our approach to consultation on gender equality issues and more specifically our consultation on the development of our first gender equality scheme. As this was published in March 2007, we have used the results of this wider consultation on gender equality and our specific engagement around the scheme to inform the gender equality objectives (see chapter 4 for more detail) for this revised scheme including Directorates' individual action plans.
Our approach to consultation on gender equality
3.5 Our approach to consultation on gender equality has developed over a number of years and has aimed to foster ongoing dialogue and engagement around gender equality with a particular focus on directly engaging with women in Scotland.
Our key initiatives to facilitate consultation on gender equality include:
- the establishment of a Strategic Group on Women that reported in 2003;
- establishment of the Scottish Women's Convention;
- financial support for women's organisations;
- the development of a Women in Scotland Database;
- supporting the Scottish Transgender Alliance; and
- engagement with organisations on specific policy areas such as the National Group on Violence Against Women and the Forced Marriage Network.
Strategic Group on Women
3.6 In 2003 the Government established a short life Strategic Group on Women to take a strategic look at the issues facing women in Scotland and to suggest an agenda for action. Their report Improving the Position of Women in Scotland: An Agenda for Action considered the current position of women in Scotland and provided 77 recommendations for the Government on addressing inequality and improving their position in Scotland.
3.7 The report highlighted recommendations in six key areas to ensure equality between women and men including employment; childcare; caring and personal assistance; poverty and exclusion; violence and safety; and influencing and decision-making. A detailed Government response was published on 18 March 2004 and set out how the Government intended to take forward the Group's recommendations. An update on our action to implement the recommendations was published on 30 March 2006.
Scottish Women's Convention
3.8 The Government, in partnership with women's organisations, established the Scottish Women's Convention in 2003 to take forward, in a more strategic way, the consultation work that had been done previously by the Women in Scotland Consultative Forum and through local events.
3.9 The Convention is an independent body that provides opportunities through policy groups, events, roundtable discussions and consultations for women's voices to be included in policy development work. It aims to:
- engage with the Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament and other institutions;
- ensure that issues important to women are considered throughout the policy process;
- make a real contribution to policy development in Scotland; and
- include as many women as possible from all groups in Scotland.
Support for women's organisations
3.10 We are providing funding to Engender to facilitate strong and effective consultation between organisations working on women's issues and relevant Scottish Government Directorates and Agencies, the Scottish Parliament and non-governmental organisations, and disseminate information on Government policies affecting women.
3.11 We are also continuing to provide support for a number of organisations including: Women onto Work, Women@Work and Amina: The Muslim Women's Resource Centre. These organisations work with women to develop their skills and confidence through education and training and through the provision of high quality information to help them to improve their lives and address the barriers they face.
Consultation in the development of the gender equality scheme
3.12 Along with these existing consultation mechanisms we have also held a number of specific events and discussions to consider our approach to our gender equality duty and our scheme including:
- specific roundtable discussions with women in preparation for the gender duty;
- discussions with key organisations on issues around men's equality
- discussions with the Scottish Transgender Alliance around transgender equality;
- meetings with STUC and trade union representatives including the Council of Scottish Government Unions who represent Scottish Government and some Agency staff;
- seeking the views of our staff through our Part-time, Carers, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender ( LGBT) and Senior Women's staff networks.
Roundtable discussions with women
3.12 As part of our consultation on taking forward our gender duties and to help us to consider our key priorities for promoting equality between men and women we organised five roundtable events, three with the support of the Scottish Women's Convention, to identify and consider particular issues for older women, minority ethnic women, disabled women, lesbian, bisexual and transgender women and women from different faiths.
3.14 In addition we held a further roundtable discussion considering how to take forward the women's agenda in Scotland, which identified six priorities for action:
- gender stereotyping in education;
- occupational segregation;
- equal pay;
- childcare;
- women's participation in decision-making; and
- violence against women.
3.15 The views and information gathered from these events has been considered and reflected in our directorate action plans and in our overarching objectives. Reports of these events can be found on the Scottish Government website under our gender equality section.
Discussions with key organisations on issues around men's equality
3.16 We were conscious when considering the development of our equality scheme that much of our work in the past has necessarily focussed on developing mechanisms to engage and listen to the views of women. However, we also recognise that there are areas where men experience particular disadvantage such as the high suicide rates amongst young men, higher level of deaths from preventable and treatable cancers and higher levels of alcohol and substance misuse. We therefore need to ensure that we also listen to the views of men in understanding and addressing the disadvantages that they face.
3.17 As part of our work to consult men in the development of our scheme we approached Men's Health Forum Scotland ( MHFS) and Children in Scotland's Fathers in Scotland Project ( FSP) to hear their thoughts on the key gender equality issues for men in Scotland. The key issues to emerge included:
- impact of gender stereotyping and perceptions of masculinity;
- occupational segregation;
- collection, analysis and use of data;
- access to services;
- flexible working and childcare; and
- training.
3.18 In addition both MHFS and FSP indicated the importance of developing appropriate mechanisms for consulting more widely with men to involve them in identifying and finding solutions to the particular equality issues that affect them.
Scottish Transgender Alliance
3.19 We recognise that we have not engaged fully with transgender women and men and that the capacity within the community to respond to requests for dialogue has, in the past, been limited. We have therefore agreed to provide funding to support the Scottish Transgender Alliance ( STA) to help the Government engage with and understand the issues for transgender men and women in Scotland to ensure their particular needs are considered in the development of our policy and practices. In February 2007 we funded an Equal Opportunities Commission ( EOC) conference on transgender issues and employment which was very successful. The proceedings of that conference and the input from transgender women and men on that day has been incorporated into this scheme.
3.20 We also met with STA to specifically discuss the development and content of our scheme. STA highlighted a number of areas where transgender men and women experience discrimination and prejudice and made some suggestions about how our scheme should address these areas including:
- access to and experience of services, particularly single sex services;
- attitudes towards transgender men and women;
- training; and
- lack of research on Scottish transgender issues, particularly qualitative research.
Talks with trade unions
3.21 We met with representatives from the STUC and trade unions including the Council of Scottish Government Unions who represent many of the Scottish Government and Agency staff covered by our scheme to help identify our priority objectives for improving gender equality. The highlighted a number of areas, which they thought the Government as an employer needed to address, including:
- issues identified in the Government's Equal Pay Reviews;
- occupational segregation;
- improved internal monitoring;
- workplace practices/culture; and
- staff training.
Seeking the views of staff
3.22 To seek the views of Scottish Government staff on promoting equality of opportunity between women and men we sent out a questionnaire to our Carers, Part-time, LGBT and Senior Women's staff networks asking for their opinion on what the key gender equality priorities for the Government should be.
3.23 Responses from staff showed there was a general consensus about the key issues for the Government. Issues highlighted for action fell into a number of areas including:
- recruitment and promotion - staff raised concerns around the potential impact of the current devolved recruitment and promotion procedures, including the use of temporary promotion on equality between men and women in the Government. (Since this engagement, recruitment and promotion procedures have changed. We will monitor all aspects of our resourcing policy to ensure that there is no inherent bias or discrimination and that all staff and applicants are able to join and progress through the organisation on an equal basis.)
- flexible and alternative working patterns - the Government should do more to encourage men and women to take advantage of flexible and alternative working patterns and facilities like the Government's job-share bank.
- childcare - the availability and affordability of childcare was seen as an important factor for both women and men in being able to assist those with childcare responsibilities access opportunities and progress in the organisation.
- attitudes - responses highlighted the need for the organisation, and particularly senior managers, to challenge sexism and discriminatory attitudes and to prevent and tackle discrimination across the Government.
- training - training was raised in a number of contexts both as a way to address discriminatory attitudes and to raise awareness of people's rights and responsibilities and that more should be done to ensure that training opportunities are more readily available open to staff working part-time or flexibly
- leave and performance policies - there was some concern that the current maternity and paternity leave policy might contribute to reinforcing gender roles around caring responsibilities and that the Government should review its policy with a view to introducing a more flexible paternal leave.
3.24 These issues were considered by Human Resources in the development of their action plan (see chapter 6 and the Change and Corporate Services Directorate Action Plan).
Consultation over the life of the scheme
3.25 We recognise that consultation is not a "one off" exercise; real consultation is an ongoing process throughout the development, implementation and the monitoring and evaluation of policies and practices. This scheme should therefore be seen as a working document, the contents of which are open to review.
3.26 To effectively implement the gender duty we know that we must continue to develop and support appropriate ways to engage with women and men from different backgrounds and experiences throughout the life of the scheme.
3.27 We recognise this will also mean developing better ways to engage and listen to the views of men to help us to understand the positive and negative impact of current and future policies and practices and to listen to their views of how to address key areas of inequality for men in areas such as health and education. To do this we will identify relevant organisations and individuals to work with us to consider the most appropriate way of taking this forward.
Involving other equality groups
3.28 We recognise that whilst we had the discussions above, that we need to do more to understand the often complex issues that men and women experience due to multiple discrimination because of their race, disability, age, sexual orientation or their religion/belief.
3.29 We will ensure that as part of our engagement with equality groups we also consider how we can use these mechanisms to better understand gender issues across the other equality strands and use this information to inform policy development across Government.
What you told us
3.30 Our discussions on implementation of the gender equality duty were very productive and showed clear areas where you think the Government should focus to produce real improvements for women and men (including specific issues for transgender women and men) in Scotland. The key issues that came out of our consultation are reflected in the objectives outlined in chapter 4.
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