Kirstein Rummery: The key step we must take to bring women equality

First paragraph: My 13-year-old daughter and her friend got their first unsolicited dick pic this week. She also had a disagreement with a boy who then slammed her against the wall. It felt like a rite of passage that no girl should have to go through, but all girls do. I did my Outraged Feminist Tiger Mum thing, insisted we report it, gave her the whole spiel about how she doesn’t have to put up with that. My daughter is, of course, a much cooler feminist than me. She’d already reported it and spoken to the boys in person in No Uncertain Terms. As she does taekwondo and can kick a hole in a wall, I am fairly sure neither of them will do it again. But what emerged that was shocking to me was that the dick pic sender – who was also only 13 – did this because he genuinely thought this was how, in the online text-savvy age, you flirted with girls you liked. The violent boy thought it was OK to slam my daughter into a wall because he was “angry”.https://www.thenational.scot/news/17724195.we-need-to-teach-girls-and-boys-to-become-feminists-to-end-discrimination

Scotland can help the UK fix its disastrous system of benefits for disabled people

First paragraph: The new powers that look set to be devolved to Scotland include major changes for disability policy. Until now, Holyrood’s involvement in this area has been restricted to the NHS and social care – and the latter only indirectly through local government funding, since Scotland’s 32 local authorities make their own decisions about exactly what social care they will offer to disabled people.  Access this article on The Conversation website: https://theconversation.com/scotland-can-help-the-uk-fix-its-disastrous-system-of-benefits-for-disabled-people-3686

Once again, Britons are mostly being asked to vote for men

First paragraph: It is nearly 100 years since the first woman was elected to the UK parliament. Constance Marckievicz, a suffragette and socialist, won the seat of Dublin St Patrick’s for Sinn Fein in December 1918. She later became one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position as minister for labour in the newly seceded Irish Republic between 1919 and 1922.https://theconversation.com/once-again-britons-are-mostly-being-asked-to-vote-for-men-3952

Ignoring disabled people and carers could cost parties thousands of votes

First paragraph: There are 11m disabled adults eligible to vote in the UK. So given that the Conservatives only won 2.1m more votes than Labour in 2010, but ended up as the party of government, it’s curious to see the main parties failing to reach out to this group. If either of the main parties attracted disabled voters with the right promises, it could take them a long way to gaining an overall majority.https://theconversation.com/ignoring-disabled-people-and-carers-could-cost-parties-thousands-of-votes-4005

Ofcom got it wrong: it's time to listen and learn from fringe parties

First paragraph: The UK’s broadcast regulator Ofcom recently released a draft ruling that the Green party lacks sufficient support to qualify as a major party. This could give mainstream media the excuse they were searching for to overlook the Greens in much of their coverage of the 2015 UK election. Yet given that the contest is likely to yield another coalition government, it is now more important than ever to create a space for fringe parties in our nation’s political discourse. Access this article on The Conversation website: https://theconversation.com/ofcom-got-it-wrong-its-time-to-listen-and-learn-from-fringe-parties-3603

Campaigning for the female vote in the Scottish independence referendum: Comparing women for independence and women together

The 2014 Scottish independence referendum campaign saw a surge of campaigning activity from groups on both sides of the debate. The mainstream elements of the campaign were criticised for not bringing enough attention to women's issues, and so Women For Independence (WFI) and Women Together (WT) were created in order to try and alleviate these concerns. This paper aims to compare the two organisations to ascertain whether or not they can be classified as part of wider social movements. Utilising data from the Scottish Political Archive at the University of Stirling, as well as face-to-face interviews and email conversations with activists from both groups, this paper explores the organisational structures and framing strategies of the two groups, as well as the opportunities and constraints they faced when it came to achieving their goals. Whilst WFI can be classified as a Social Movement Organisation operating within both the pro-independence and women's movements, WT cannot be classified in this way and simply existed as a useful campaigning label during the independence referendum. WFI still continues to exist as a healthy, autonomous entity that, should a second independence referendum be called, will be in a strong position to campaign for the female vote and overturn the persistent gender gap that exists in support for Scottish independence

The Theory and Practice of Welfare Partnerships: The Case of the Cultural Sector

Partnership working in the welfare state has moved from the margins to the mainstream in terms of achieving policy objectives. Drawing on interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical developments in the field, this article presents a framework for analyzing welfare partnerships that give precedence to the issues of trust and interdependence. This article presents findings from a study of local authority museum services in Scotland, England and Wales to test this framework. A series of case studies revealed that partnerships have been driven by a number of factors including policy, power, funding and people. Partnerships could gain services credibility, but trust and interdependence were compromised by conflictual and unequal relationships. Partnerships were often short term, lacked ongoing maintenance plans and limited by their type of funding. The article proposes that further analysis of the level of individual agency at ground level be considered when thinking about partnerships in the cultural sector

If Westminster delivers, Scotland will have one of the world’s most powerful devolved parliaments

First paragraph: It seemed like a poisoned chalice when Lord Smith of Kelvin was handed the task of chairing a cross-party commission to advise on devolving further powers to Scotland afterSeptember’s referendum. There waswidespread concernthat the tight timetable would mitigate heavily against citizens being meaningfully involved, leading to a wholly political process that did not reflect the values and aspirations of the Scottish electorate. Access this article on The Conversation website: https://theconversation.com/if-westminster-delivers-scotland-will-have-one-of-the-worlds-most-powerful-devolved-parliaments-3477

Gender equality and the governance of long-term care policy: new comparative models and paradigms

There is a long-established link between care policies and gender equality outcomes, and much modelling of welfare state typologies look at care provision as a distinguishing feature. However, to date, little research has been done which has systematically and critically examined those links by examining the policies and the way they operate, how and why they affect gender equality, and the governance of care policies in a comparative way. This paper draws on evidence from a recently completed comparative study looking at long-term care and gender equality. A CQA (Comparative Qualitative Analysis) approach was used to identify case studies, and further analysis carried out which focussed on: overall, how the policies and the way they operated to achieve gender equality; the governance and design of policies that led to good gender equality outcomes; the level of policy making; the role of the state, the family, the community and the nonstatutory civic sector in designing and delivering effective policies; and how context specific the ideas, actors and institutions supporting the policies were. Instead of using existing welfare typologies that were not driven by gender equality as the defining outcome variable, the author takes an inductive approach to policy analysis to compare policy outcomes according to gender equity outcomes. She devises two new models of long-term care policy: the Universal Model and the Partnership Model, both of which lead to improved gender equality in different ways. This paper concludes by noting the need to move beyond existing welfare state typologies in examining gender equality outcomes, which will result in new models as depicted here

The Right to Care? Social citizenship and care poverty in developed welfare states

Purpose There are clear theoretical, policy and practice tensions in conceptualising social or long-term care as a ‘right’: an enforceable choice. The purpose of this article is to address the following questions: Do disabled and older citizens have the right to long-term care? What do these rights look like under different care regimes? Do citizens have the right or duty to *provide* long-term care? We know that both formal and informal care across all welfare contexts is mainly provided by women and that this has serious implications for gender equality. Approach In this article, the author takes a conceptual approach to examining the comparative evidence from developed welfare states with formal long-term care provision, and the different models of care, to challenge feminist care theory from the perspective of those living in care poverty (i.e. with insufficient access to long-term care and support to meet their citizenship rights). Findings Drawing on her own comparative research on models of long-term and ‘personalised’ care, the author finds that different models of state provision and different models of personalised care provide differential citizenship outcomes for carers and those needing care. The findings indicate that well-governed personalised long-term care provides the best outcomes in terms of balancing potentially conflicting citizenship claims and addressing care poverty. Originality The author develops new approaches to care theory based on citizenship and care poverty that have not been published elsewhere, drawing on models that she developed herself.Output Status: Forthcoming/Available Onlin