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Working with other civil society groups

This section draws on case studies and discussions with people working on gender budgeting projects to highlight some key issues and lessons learned.

 

“Don’t just parachute in then leave”

WBG member

The Women’s Budget Group was set up to bring together academics and women’s organisations to talk about the impact of the budget on women. Civil society organisations have always played a key role in the Women’s Budget Group. We have worked on a series of local and national projects in partnership with civil society organisations in order to carry out research and build the capacity of individuals and groups to influence policy at a local level.

This section draws on case studies selected from some of these projects, and discussions with people working on gender budgeting projects in other countries to highlight some of the key issues and lessons learned.

Civil society involvement is important if gender budgeting is to be more than just an academic exercise. Civil society groups can:

  • Research – by providing evidence of the impact of economic policy. This can include highlighting unexpected impacts, and showing how a change in one area can impact on what might seem like a completely unrelated area – for example cuts to public transport budgets preventing women accessing healthcare services.
  • Hold decision-makers to account – through carrying out local research, analysing local budgets and putting pressure on local or national decision-makers.
  • Promote research findings to policy-makers and the wider public through campaigning and advocacy work.

However, there can be barriers to civil society participation in gender budgeting work. These include:

  • Analysis, as well as the policy-making process, may be inaccessible, overly complex or difficult to understand.
  • Civil society, particularly small grassroots organisations, may be overstretched and lack the time and resources to take part in gender budgeting projects.
  • Organisations may have other priorities and not see gender budgeting as relevant to their work.
  • National organisations may lack local contacts or understanding of the local context.

“We’ve done workshops with grassroots organisations on how to analyse the budget. And every time they get a good reception. But the question is always, ‘this is amazing, but when am I going to have the time to implement it?”

WBG member

Partnering on research

In researching ‘Intersecting Inequalities’, a report on the impact of public spending cuts on black and minority ethnic (BME) women, WBG worked with both national and local civil society organisations. At a national level our main partner was the Runnymede Trust, a race equality think tank. At a local level we worked with two organisations, RECLAIM in Manchester in the north of England and Coventry Women’s Voices from the West Midlands. Members of both groups carried out interviews and focus groups with women experiencing austerity. This meant that our statistical data, which showed that women were losing more benefits and services than men, and BME women were losing most of all, was reinforced with evidence from civil society organisations of what this meant for women’s lives.

In Manchester, three young BME women who had worked with RECLAIM were trained as peer interviewers. They carried out in-depth interviews with young working-class women and narrated a short video about the findings of the research. These young women were invited to the House of Commons to speak about their findings, and their experience of carrying out the research at the launch of the report.

One of the peer researchers on the project wrote about the experience:

“Within my community I can see the realities of austerity cuts and felt a responsibility to take part in this project and voice these collectively shared experiences. I have felt empowered to contribute raw evidence of the lasting impacts that austerity is having on the personal lives of young BME women. Despite the narrative in the interview sometimes feeling bleak and distressing to hear, I did find that speaking on and sharing our realities had offered a cathartic release and that by the end of the interview there was a sense of solidarity amongst us young women that was being propelled through this work”

Peer researcher

The work with RECLAIM was made possible because of the relationship between WBG members at the University of Manchester and RECLAIM that had been developed over previous research projects. WBG included funding for the researchers’ time and travel expenses for the peer researchers to travel to London for the report launch as part of the project budget.

“[The key to] working with grassroots groups is …finding partners who already have …relationships. If there is already a network set up in advance, or people with the connections you need, partner with them. Or you need the resources to build up the relationships over time. Otherwise if you parachute in, do something and leave not much happens afterwards”

WBG member

Building relationships

In 2016/17 WBG organised a number of workshops around the country to build the capacity of local women to speak confidently about economic issues and develop relationships with decision-makers. These workshops took place in Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester and London and included participation from local women’s organisations and were held in local women-friendly/women-only venues.

The first of these workshops was held in Bristol, where two WBG committee members have worked locally for many years in various women’s organisations and represent WBG on the Economic Subgroup of the Mayor of Bristol’s Women’s Commission.

The workshop was jointly organised with Bristol Women’s Voice (an umbrella organisation representing women’s organisations and individual women in Bristol). The workshop focused on actions that could be taken to ensure that the economic development monies invested via the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone would deliver benefits to women, particularly low-income women residing in the residential areas near the Temple Quarter. The workshop was well-attended by women and equality organisations and by the CEO of the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership.

Following the workshop several attendees worked with the LEP on their equality impact assessment. Work in Bristol is continuing with a participatory project involving WBG co-ordinated by Bristol Women’s Voice.

The workshop in Bristol led to on-going action locally because it built on a long-standing relationship between WBG members and activists in Bristol and capitalised on existing work on economic development in the area. The WBG has found that projects of this type are most successful where we work with a pre-existing group, otherwise the work that goes into organising a workshop may not lead to lasting change.

“We concluded that conducting a training workshop and producing a toolkit has limited impact without an on-going local organization that is funded to continue to use the knowledge gained. Setting up local organisations is beyond the capacity of WBG, so we must partner with existing local organisations to build longer term strategies, including identifying elected representatives and people working in local government (including trade unionists) who are champions of gender equality, and working with them”

WBG member

 

Working to build capacity for local campaigning

The Women’s Budget Group ran a two-day campaigning skills workshop in partnership with Platform 51 (an organisation working with young women, now known as the Young Women’s Trust).

The women who attended the workshop were all interested in campaigning, but did not have shared goals. So, the workshop started by using a mapping exercise to help the women think through the issues that were most important to them. A range of issues were highlighted by the women including:

  • Unemployment and the difficulty finding paid work.
  • Crime and anti-social behaviour.
  • Education for their children.
  • Lack of support for mental health problems.
  • Lack of facilities for young people in the area.
  • Public transport which was expensive and didn’t go where women needed to go.
  • Heavy traffic.
  • Problems faced by disabled children in accessing services.
  • Wanting to support local groups and projects which they or their children attended.

Once the women had thought about their own issues, they shared their main priorities with the group. The whole group then looked at the long list of issues to find the ones that were shared by several group members. From this discussion they agreed to work on funding for affordable activities for children and young people locally, with a particular focus on the needs of disabled young people. They felt that this issue caused a lot of other problems that affected them, including crime, bullying, and family tensions as children were forced to stay in-doors all the time.

Between the first and second one-day workshop, participants carried out a local survey to find out the views of other women in their area. On the second day WBG trainers explained how to find out about local council officials and elected councillors, and helped the group frame their messages.

This workshop was successful because it focused on the priorities of the participants, rather than trying to impose a set of priorities onto them. This meant that participants were motivated to come back for a second day to talk about how to turn those priorities into ideas for a local campaign. From the experience of these workshops WBG produced ‘Making Your Voice Heard’, a toolkit for local campaigning.

Translating national research into local action

In 2004 WBG member Professor Sylvia Walby, funded by the government’s Women and Equality Unit, carried out research into the costs of domestic violence in terms of public services (health, criminal justice and so on), lost economic output and the human and emotional cost. This work was then updated in 2009.

The 2004 report found that the total cost of domestic violence was over £2bn a year, over £3bn in services over £2.6bn in lost economic output as a result of violence and a human and emotional cost of over £17bn.

This work has been widely used to support calls for greater public investment in tackling domestic violence, both by local and national government, and by women’s organisations providing domestic violence and abuse services.

“The people who most wanted it was the NGOs, they wanted it for their local services, so I did a lot of work working with local services, taking the costings and persuading them to work it out locally – if their city is 1% of the population they therefore have 1% of the costs, really simple. So both nationally and locally NGOs picked it up and used it to argue for services.”

Sylvia Walby

 

 

Creating accessible materials for local campaigning

Many of the materials produced by WBG are aimed at politicians and other policy-makers. By their nature they are often technical and not always accessible for a wider public audience. In order to address this problem WBG has started to produce more accessible versions of some of our materials including a briefing pack explaining feminist economics to women’s organisations.

Front cover of The Women’s Budget Group’s What is Feminist Economics resource
https://wbg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/WBG-What-is-Feminsist-Economics-PDF-compressed.pdf

Selection of infographics made for the #ge2017forwomen campaign
https://ge2017forwomen.uk

Communicate in everyday language and avoid technical policy language. Start by finding out about the concerns of civil society organisations and their client groups, find ways to make national data relevant at a local level, which can help make it useful for local organisations.

 

 

 

Lessons for working with civil society groups

Partnerships

Find the right partners and build relationships with them. As an organisation that mainly works at the policy level WBG can be far more effective in partnership with organisations working with women at the grassroots level. These relationships take time to build, but this means that projects such as a one-day training workshop have an impact beyond the day itself.

Tap into existing networks

Many local areas will have existing networks of civil society organisations and campaigners who work on economic policy nationally and locally. Taking time to find out about these networks and getting to know the key actors can help access several groups at the same time, find out what campaigns and relationships already exist, prevent replication and amplify the results of the project.

Recognise different forms of expertise

Civil society organisations, particularly those working at the grassroots level, can bring knowledge and expertise of the impact of policy on women’s lives. Involve civil society organisations in the design of projects so they are relevant from the outset.

Recognise barriers to participation

Members of grassroots organisations may face many barriers to participation including limited time because of paid work and unpaid care, lack of money for travel expenses and a lack of knowledge of how to influence local decision-makers. Build funding into budgets for travel and other expenses and organise meetings at a time that suits participants. Recognise that some groups may need extra time and support to build knowledge, capacity and confidence to engage in particularly technical areas of policy-making and build that into the project.

Follow up

Make sure the goals of working with civil society organisations are clear and that their engagement is meaningful. Likewise, if your aim is to train organisations or individuals, consider how these skills will be used beyond the training and include time to follow up with participants.

Next in the series

Lessons learned

These pages share several important factors that lead to changes in government policy or law.