Hansard

Okay. What I have to say will take about five minutes. The Scottish women's budget group would like to thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to speak to members at this stage of the budget process. For those who do not know us, we are a group that was set up in 2000 to promote the value of bringing a gender perspective to the budget process. The group is made up of women academics and women from the voluntary and statutory sectors, as well as individual women with a specific interest in the field. From the start, we have tried both to influence the budgetary process in the Scottish policy context and to look at international experience for models and inspiration. Our achievements to date in influencing the Scottish budgetary process have been recognised at international level and developments in Scotland have been presented in various publications focused on best practice and country case studies. Two members of our group recently participated in Oxfam-led delegations to South Africa and Yemen, and we held a successful pan-island seminar in April, which attracted leading international thinkers in the field. We are asked to speak about our work at a range of UK and international conferences, and individual members are recognised as experts. From an international perspective, there is a great deal of interest in developments in Scotland, with a view to people identifying lessons to be learned and what works in any attempt to introduce gender-sensitive budgeting. The Scottish women's budget group also works closely with our sister organisation, the women's budget group, which operates at the UK level. In fact, two members of the Scottish women's budget group worked alongside women's budget group members in an expert advisory capacity on a recent Treasury-supported gender-analysis project. The Scottish women's budget group thus feels that both the Parliament and the Executive have a key role to play in ensuring that Scotland remains a focus for attention in this area and that the Scottish experience serves to promote gender-responsive budgeting across the globe by providing practical evidence of an on-going, successful and sustainable initiative. That said, we are concerned about recent developments—or, to be more accurate, about what we see as non-developments. As our written evidence states, it would appear that a gender-sensitive approach to the resource-allocation process in Scotland is still a long way off. Despite earlier commitments, the draft budget contains little evidence of consistent progress and little practical evidence of a more gender-aware approach, at least with reference to the budget process itself.We believe that a gender-sensitive approach to budgeting is crucial in delivering on the Executive's overall strategy of growing Scotland's economy. Adopting a gender-aware approach to the practice of allocating public moneys across the Executive's devolved responsibilities would enhance the effectiveness of policy, thus securing the desired efficiency gains. Gender-sensitive budgeting allows for actual beneficiaries, as opposed to target groups, to be clearly identified, and would show up where gender-blind targets and initiatives were missing the mark. Let us take the example of policies on child care. We welcome the target in the communities budget that reads "by March 2008, increase by 15,000 the number of parents from disadvantaged areas and groups entering or moving towards employment", which is to be achieved "by removing childcare barriers". If a gender perspective were applied to that, it would show not just who would be likely to benefit but whether the initiative would shift the fundamental economic imbalance that exists between men and women. The strategy will require more child care workers, and traditionally child care workers are women and the pay in the sector, as we all know, is very low. Therefore, the women who get those low-paid jobs will not necessarily be better off than they are at present. Who will enter employment once the child care has been provided? Traditionally, women have been prevented from entering the workplace because of a lack of child care, so it is safe to assume that women will be major beneficiaries, but without a gender analysis and gender-disaggregated statistics, we will not actually know. That seems to us an inefficient way of planning. An additional example of the inefficiencies created by gender-blind approaches to policy design and delivery can be seen in the operation of the modern apprenticeship scheme. As an entry-level labour market initiative, the modern apprenticeship programme is key to delivering the overall objective of improving skill levels and promoting greater rates of productivity. However, evidence indicates that the actual operation of the modern apprenticeship programme may be contributing to and sustaining the existing gender pay and productivity gaps. The modern apprenticeship scheme is characterised by gender-based segregation that mirrors patterns of segregation found in the wider labour market. Women dominate the frameworks associated with lower-paid and lower-skill level occupations. If that continues unchecked, gender inequalities in the Scottish labour market will persist. A gender-aware approach to budgeting would serve to make such outcomes more transparent and in turn would facilitate the development of policy initiatives to redress any unacceptable inequalities. We believe that the Finance Committee has a key role to play in taking the lead on gender budgeting—a lead that will result in greater effectiveness and efficiency. The committee could, for example, ask for reports from the equality proofing budget and policy advisory group, with specific reference to the proposed pilots in health and sport. The committee could issue guidance to the subject committees, recommending that they scrutinise the relationship between spending plans and gender inequality within their remits. The committee could also recommend that subject committees develop capacity with respect to understanding the nature of gender inequalities that exist within their area of scrutiny.