Gender and The Reality of Regeneration: A tale of two cities

8/7/2019 Gender and The Reality of Regeneration: A tale of two cities

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a tale of tw o cities

Thursday 11 March 2004, NEC, Birmingham

Gender and the reality of regeneration:

Conferencereport

Organised by

Oxfam UK PovertyProgramme and

Regional Action

West Midlands


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This report was written by Nikki van der Gaag, with assistance from

Sue Smith, Jo Rowlands and Sharon Palmer.

More copies are available from the Oxfam UK Poverty Programme,

or Regional Action West Midlands.

You can download a copy of this report from

www.oxfamgb.org/ ukpp/ totc or www.rawm.net

For more information about ordering hard copies, contact:

Oxfam UK Poverty Programme

274 Banbury RoadOxford OX2 7DZ

Tel: 01865 313184

Email: [email protected]

Conference photos by Dave Griffiths


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page 3

Contents

Foreword 4

Acknowledgements 5

About the organisers 6

1. Introduction 7

2. Regeneration: the context 8

3. W hy is gender important in regeneration? 10

4. W hy is gender invisible in regeneration? 13

5.Men have gender too 15

6. Building capacity, generating change 17

7. Data driven the importance of tools and statistics 23

8. Power matters getting women onto decision-making bodies 27

9. Vision, stamina and chocolate getting strategic about gender 30

10. Ways forward 35

Postscript 39

Resources and organisations working on gender and regeneration 40

A tale of two cities: conference programme 45

Index of case studies

Building on success East Manchester Beacon Women's Network 18

Women rock! Preston Road Womens Centre, Hull 20

Raising community spirit Friends of Jason Group, Cae Mawr, Wales 21

Tools for change West Midlands Gender and Equalities Programme 23

Gender and Community Engagement Manchester (GEM) Project 24

A story with heart: Black Country Women's Development Network 27

Strength and potential Sheffield Women's Forum 28

Women's vision, women's version: South Yorkshire Women's Development Trust 30

Going live in Greater Govan, Scotland 31

Thinking gender first: gender mainstreaming in Essex 33


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FOREW ORD

A tale of two cities: gender and the reality of regeneration was an inspirational

national event jointly organised by Regional Action West Midlands and Oxfams

UK Poverty Programme. It brought to the fore the need to look behind and beyondthe banner headlines of regeneration to see how it affects women and men

differently.

Regeneration is not limited to economic activity. It embraces and is integral to

issues of poverty, social inclusion, equality and participation at all levels. The

conference highlighted these issues and those relating to quality of life at very local

levels through project-based workshop presenters and facilitators.

A gender impact assessment framework used by decision makers, funders and

delivery bodies, within regeneration policy, strategies and initiatives, is essential to

improving the delivery of regeneration programmes across the nine regions ofEngland and the Elected Assemblies of Scotland and Wales.

With the assistance of their funders, Regional Action West Midlands and Oxfams

UK Poverty Programme have been able to test and refine approaches to gender

impact assessments. This is an important document and I would recommend it to all

decision makers and regeneration practitioners.

Katherine Rake, Director, Fawcett Society


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Acknow ledgements

Oxfam and RAWM would like to thank the many individuals and

organisations who have contributed to the success of the Tale of Two

Cities conference. This includes our speakers Chris Booth (Sheffield

Hallam University) Katherine Rake (Fawcett Society), Jane Slowey(Birmingham Voluntary Services Council), Audrey Bronstein (Oxfam

UK Poverty Programme), Chris Bonnard (RAWM) and Carolina de

Oteyza (Community Pride Initiative).

We would also like to thank our workshop leaders Tricia Zipfel

(Neighbourhood Renewal Unit), Alun Burge (Communities Directorate,

Welsh Assembly Government), and Sukhvinder Stubbs (Barrow

Cadbury Trust).

Equally important are the women who took part from the pilot groups

of both Oxfams ReGender project and the West Midlands Gender

and Equalities Programme. These are: Friends of Jason Group at Cae

Mawr, the Beacon Womens Network, the Manchester GEM project,

the Black Country Womens Development Network, Birmingham

Voluntary Service Council, the Govan Social Inclusion Partnership and

Rose Anne Dempster from Glasgow, and the women from Sheffield

and South Yorkshire the Womens Development Trust, Sheffield City

Council, and South Yorkshire Objective 1 Management Team.

We would also like to thank the steering group of the West Midlands

Gender and Equalities Programme, and the National Advocacy

Group of the ReGender project for their help and advice, as well asthe staff at Oxfam and RAWM whose efforts made the event possible.

A final thank you to Elle Operations who did such a professional job

of organising the conference, and also to our funders the Barrow

Cadbury Trust, the English Regions Network Fund, and the West

Midlands Strategic Engagement Fund.


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About the organisers

Oxfam UKs Poverty Programme was created in 1996 in response to the growth in

poverty and inequality in the UK. Its work is guided by the same principles as

Oxfams work in other countries: it develops ways of working which enable people

living in poverty to work out their own solutions to their problems and to challengethe policies and practices that are responsible for creating and maintaining

poverty.

Oxfams ReGender project is a two-year gender and regeneration project that

began in October 2002. It supports and encourages the equal participation of

women and men in regeneration schemes in the UK by:

Working with grassroots women to hold local regeneration bodies to account

and ensure that gender needs are being met.

Influencing key regeneration decision makers at national, regional and local

government level to commit resources to meeting the different needs of the

poorest men and women.

Influencing government to include women at senior levels and men at community

levels of regeneration programmes.

ReGender is supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust.

Regional Action West Midlands is the regional strategic network for the voluntary

and community sector in the West Midlands, and works to promote and maximisethe contribution of these sectors in improving the quality of life for disadvantaged

communities in the region.

The West Midlands Gender and Equalities Programme was set up to influence

policy and decision makers and encourage them to promote positive action to

address gender differences within regeneration programmes.

Its key objectives are:

Strengthening their commitment to an inclusive approach to regeneration which

incorporates a gender dimension.

Disseminating research which has highlighted the absence of women fromregeneration initiatives.

Identifying and disseminating good practice where it does exist.

Promoting positive action to address gender differences within regeneration.

The project is supported by the English Regions Network.


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1. Introduction

The ideas in this report come from the speakers, case studies and

testimonies of community-level women at the first ever national

conference on gender and regeneration in the UK. It was held in

Birmingham in March 2004 and organised by Oxfams UK PovertyProgramme and Regional Action West Midlands (RAWM).

There were almost 120 participants, ranging from women in

community groups to women and men with senior positions in

academia, non-governmental organisations and government. All of

them are working in regeneration, and all were agreed on one thing:

that gender lies at the heart of regeneration, and that unless the

different needs of men and women are taken into account,

regeneration will not work.

The conference aimed to demonstrate the evidence that when gender

analysis and gender impact assessment are used, and when women

have got to grips with the jargon and the structures of regeneration,

the result is better value regeneration programmes that address

poverty and exclusion more effectively.

As Chris Booth from Sheffield Hallam University put it: All the big

regeneration issues transport, education, housing, health, the

environment have important gender considerations.

When gender is taken on board in regeneration, both men and

women feel empowered, leading to real changes for communities and

those who live in them. Better-tailored and targeted programmes can

help reduce poverty and unemployment, increase educational

attainment and improve health and quality of life. This report is about

those changes and how people from the grassroots to those in

power have helped to make them happen. Audrey Bronstein, of

Oxfam UKs Poverty Programme noted that: Without power and

influence people in poverty have little chance of changing their lives.

A gender perspective

'Gender is different from sex. Sex refers to biological difference

between men and women, gender is the social and cultural

difference between men and women that we all learn from

society, families, and our culture.' Cae Mawr group, Llandudno

'A gender perspective produces policies or projects based on

accurate knowledge of the different situations, resources and

responsibilities of women's and men's everyday lives. At a

deeper level it also encompasses a commitment to change; an

understanding that greater gender equality can only be

advanced by challenging gender stereotypes, and creating

non-traditional opportunities.' Cinnamon Bennett, Gender

Manager for the Objective 1 Programme in South Yorkshire.


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2. Regeneration: the context

It is fantastic that we have got this far; it is a shame that it has

taken so long!Chris Bonnard, RAWM

Regeneration has many forms and facets. Its been around as aconcept for over 20 years, and is now delivered by a range of

different bodies, at different levels national, regional and local

across the UK. And, over that time, it has changed its emphasis and

its focus and become linked with other fashionable concepts such as

social inclusion, community cohesion and, most recently, civil

renewal.

While in the early 1990s the focus was on physical regeneration,

such as housing, today there is a recognition that regeneration needs

to be people-centred, and that it needs to involve people from the

local community. It has a major social aspect as well and has come tobe understood as a term that describes activity, usually targeted on

specific geographical areas, which aims to tackle the seemingly

intractable problem of physical, economic and social decline by

revitalising poor physical infrastructure, reducing unemployment,

improving local services and, more recently, building strong

communities.

Over recent years, devolution has led to a shift in emphasis away

from central government when it comes to planning and funding

regeneration, particularly in the area of economic regeneration.Indeed, by 2005-6, the nine English Regional Development Agencies

will control some 2 billion of public money. Most recently, the

Learning and Skills Councils are also developing a much more

significant regional presence. The fact that significant amounts of

public money are now being determined and spent at a regional

level only serves to strengthen the argument of those who are looking

for a more democratic and accountable level of regional government.

This includes listening to the voices of women and men in the

community.

Jargon buster

'I used to be really intimidated by all the jargon in

regeneration but now I am happy to ask people to explain.

If I don't understand, other people won't either. They call me

Little Miss Clarifier!' Sue Ralph, Black Country Women's

Network

The Community Empowerment Fund provides 60 million over

2001-06 to set up Community Empowerment Networks (CENs)in the 88 Neighbourhood Renewal Fund districts (selected on a

basis of deprivation) in England.

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Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) are non-statutory, multi-agency bodies,

which match local authority boundaries, and aim to bring together at a local

level the different parts of the public, private, community and voluntary sectors

in England.

Communities First is the main regeneration programme in Wales, similar to

LSPs in England. The partnerships have to be made up of a 1/ 3 privatesector, 1/ 3 public sector and 1/ 3 community sector.

New Deal for Communities (NDC) is an English regeneration project with a

clear community focus which aims to help with employment, training and

education; and to create and build better homes.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) has responsibility for urban

planning and community-based regeneration. This is delivered by the

Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (NRU) that now has the most substantial

regeneration streams based within it.

Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) are under the Department of Tradeand Industry (DTI) and their role reflects the DTI's brief on economic and

employment. They have responsibility for regional economic development.

Social Inclusion Partnerships (SIPs), manage local regeneration initiatives in

the most deprived areas of Scotland. Community Planning Partnerships are

due to replace SIPs in 2004 and establish across the whole of Scotland.


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3. Why is gender important in

regeneration?

If women are not there [at decision making levels], womens needs

will not be addressed, womens priorities will be overlooked! GEM

Project, Manchester

Women still face discrimination at home, in the workplace, in the

community, and on decision-making bodies, despite the fact that they

are often the most active in their own communities. And men and

boys, particularly in deprived communities, may face a lack of

educational attainment, violence, unemployment and changing roles

as the nature of work also changes. For gender is not just about

women; it is also about men. In regeneration, issues relating to

masculinity and mens roles in a changed labour market have to be

addressed if interventions are to be successful.

Chris Booth, from Sheffield Hallam University, noted that:

regeneration can significantly impact on peoples lives in

communities that have severe economic, social and environmental

problems. It can make peoples lives better but it can also make

them worse. If gender is not taken into account in regeneration

programmes, it results in:

Unequal benefits

Unequal outcomes of programmes

Unequal access to resources

Unequal representation of men and women women participate at

community level, while men make the decisions.

When gender is taken into account, it leads to:

Accurate diagnosis of needs based on the reality of women and

mens lives.

Effective tailoring and targeting of resources to meet the diverse

and complex needs in communities and neighbourhoods.

Interventions that reflect gender differences avoid reinforcing

structural inequalities.

Reaching the whole community women are a critical link.

Katherine Rake, Director of the Fawcett Society, painted a vision of

the future if gender were included in regeneration:

First, there would be real changes in the lives of men and women.

Second, women would be fully engaged as decision makers. This

is not just about numbers, but about women having a proper voice

and an impact on policies. A big question emerges here: is it acompromise to engage with policy makers on their own terms or is

it possible to change the nature of those terms? Third, it is

important to understand the complexity and diversity of womens

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and mens lives, and the complexity of the services they need transport,

housing, childcare. Fourth, there is now a sense of frustration with the pace of

change. If gender issues were fully incorporated, change would happen much

faster. It would not just mean a change in public lives but in private lives as well.

But it is important not to make regeneration just another burden, another thing to

do. We need to change mens behaviour in the private sphere and womens in

the public sphere. The next stage in this will be mens participation in unpaidwork.

And finally, if gender were included in regeneration there would be proper

funding involving women shouldnt be a way of getting regeneration on the

cheap.

Big resources and big money are tied up regeneration. Its potential to impact on

poverty and social exclusion is high particularly so when it comes to gender.

Women, regeneration and decision making

Women are disproportionately affected by those issues that regeneration

aims to tackle poverty, disadvantage and discrimination. That means that

gender should lie at the heart of regeneration strategies. And yet, while

women are the driving forces behind a lot of community activity, they are still

too often absent from decision-making.

So if women are already there at the community level often doing, rather

than deciding, its true then the emphasis on community-driven solutions

should provide an opportunity to nurture new styles of leadership and, by

working where women are, to tackle the lack of gender balance in decision

making.

New institutions provide new opportunities. For example, there are some

positive signs emerging from the devolution process. The positive steps taken

in Scotland and Wales to increase womens representation are paying off

women form 39 per cent of the Scottish Parliament and 50 per cent of the

Welsh Assembly.

There is a real responsibility for those who work at the policy level to make

sure that the efforts of those women make a difference beyond the

communities in which they work.

There is much more to do within the England regions. For example, here in

the West Midlands, only three of the Regional Development Agencys 14

members are women. However, some systematic work is in its early stages to

increase the number of women who apply for and secure public

appointments. There are signs of change in the West Midlands Regional

Assembly too, although its largest group of members, drawn from local

authorities across the region, continues to be overwhelmingly male.

There is a lot to play for, but also a lot to win.

Jane Slowey, Chief Executive, Birmingham Voluntary Service Council.


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Gender imbalances

'The European Union stipulates that the representation of either gender in

decision making processes at the EU, national and international level

should not fall below 40 per cent.' European Parliament Resolution on

Balanced Participation 2001

In the UK:

18% of MPs are women

23% of local councillors are women

6% of high court judges are women

In the public sector in 2003, women held 23% of top management posts

In the private sector, 2% of directors on the boards of companies were

women

Only 30% of minori ty ethnic women are managers or professionals

compared to 40% of black men, although 52% of black women havefurther and higher education qualifications compared to 28% of white

women and 36% of black men

In Manchester, in local meetings, 57% are female, 43% male; in

intermediate meetings, 25% are female, 75% male, and in city-wide

meetings, 100% are male.

Source: Gender and Community Engagement in Manchester, Heidi Safia

Mirza (www.sourceuk.net/ articles/ F00353.html)

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4. Why is gender invisible in

regeneration?

There needs to be political will from central government to

mainstream gender in policy making and other initiatives. It is a

gender thing not a woman thing.Cath Kane, Women Connect

If so many people are agreed that regeneration work cannot happen

without gender being taken into account at all levels, why has this not

been happening?

First, the equalities focus of legislation and government efforts has been

mainly on disability and race. The Race Relations Amendment Act, for

example, is beginning to make a difference on race issues. There is

currently no such legislative push on gender equality. There is a generallack of government requirements to tackle gender issues in regeneration.

Second, there has been a failure to set gender-specific targets and

outputs targets for the number of women on decision-making bodies,

for example.

Third, there are too few women and too few people from Black and

Minority Ethnic (BME) groups in senior decision-making positions.

There is only tokenistic involvement of women and other marginalised

groups in regeneration projects, and when they are involved, it is

often in the soft areas of regeneration; in community development

and relationships, while infrastructural issues such as roads, bridges,schools, are done by men.

Fourth, there is a lack of disaggregated statistics by sex, a lack of

monitoring and a lack of evidence of good practice. Women as a

group are systematically excluded from regeneration documentation

and statistics. W ithout such statistics there is no data to examine or

monitor and it makes good practice difficult. So gender issues remain

problematised lone parents, teenage pregnancy, lack of

educational attainment.1

Practical problems2

There are also a number of practical problems for women when they

want to get involved in regeneration:

1. Childcare women with children stated that lack of childcare often

prevented them from attending courses or accessing services.

2. Confidence lack of confidence was a primary reason why

women said they did not become involved in community activities.

1 For example, Gender Profile of South Yorkshire's Labour Market 2000 (seeresources section)

2 Ideas from Preston Road Women's Centre, Hull, and Chris Booth, SheffieldHallam University.


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3. Cost having a limited budget means that women have to prioritise how their

money is spent. Social activities or courses are not perceived as a necessity.

4. Information if information is not well distributed and easily accessible, women are

unaware of the opportunities available to them.

5. Timing it is important that activities take school hours into account. In addition

many women stated that they would not be happy to go out at night alone, and

that evening childcare was a problem. They would therefore prefer activities in

daylight hours.

6. Time womens commitment to their family/ community/ work means they often

have little time to stretch.

7. In addition, for many of the above reasons, it is not always easy for women to

get to meetings. Once they do get there, they face:

The formality of meetings not understanding the rules of engagement eg

speaking through the chair, tabling papers.

Not being listened to or taken seriously because they are women.

Lack of child care or other care facilities. The male ethos of some meetings.

Lack of confidence to operate in what is seen to be a more public domain.

Barriers relating to women from different ethnic backgrounds.

Language barriers regeneration has lots of jargon!

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5. Men have gender too

A few years ago, we realised that a large group of decision

makers thought that gender just means women and there was

a noticeable glazed eyes effect... But when we outlined that a

gender analysis was also about looking at the roles of men...theybegan to take an interest.

Audrey Bronstein, Oxfam UK Poverty Programme.

Gender is often assumed to be just about women, but tackling gender

inequality also means involving men. In regeneration, the changing

nature of work has meant huge changes for men, particularly those

from poor communities.

In South Yorkshire, for example, male unemployment is almost four

per cent higher than in the rest of the country.3 The South Yorkshire

Objective 1 programme has a strand of its Gender Measure focusedexclusively on men, and funding has been ring-fenced to support

projects to assist men back into education, training and employment.

Objective 1 has involved groups and organisations that are not the

usual regeneration funding partners, such as football clubs, NHS

Health Trusts, local radio stations, the YMCA, but which had

developed successful methods and structures for working with men.

At a conference on men and regeneration held by South Yorkshire

Objective 1 programme, three main issues emerged:

1. Funding bodies need to recognise that re-engaging men in thelabour market requires long-term intervention.

2. Projects re-engaging men need to develop a holistic approach

which starts with each mans personal situation and educational

level and provides an environment in which multiple support

agencies can provide assistance. Central to this work is the need

to build mens self esteem and confidence.

3. There need to be more men and men who are gender aware

working in the regeneration field at the grass roots.

4. In the area of schools and parenting support services, there is aneed for activities to challenge the stereotypes attached to fathers

as the breadwinner and non carer. These assumptions result in

teachers and associated professionals unintentionally excluding

men from involvement in their childrens development as well as

serving to perpetuate the traditional gender role to the children.

5. In relation to employers, notions of the school leaver as the ideal

recruit mean that the advantages of employing older men are

overlooked.

3 Source: Gender Profile of South Yorkshire's Labour Market 2000 (see resourcessection)


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6. How can those men who have ceased to think of employment as an option in

their lives be attracted back into an educational context? They need to be

offered activities which interest them eg sport, technology or construction and

DIY. And these programmes need to be accurately marketed one man noted

that men were failing to pick up his organisations leaflets because they offered

support, something that a macho culture compelled men to shun. As soon as

the wording was changed to information, the situation reversed.

Gender equity and men Ox fam UK Poverty Programme

Projects examining and addressing mens participation in community level activities

are few and far between. There are few proven methods to follow. The use of

gender audits, gender policy proofing and gender appraisal are relatively new

techniques in the UK. Oxfams UK Poverty Programme is one of only a few UK

initiatives that have trialled these techniques and included within them a focus on

men. It has recently established a Gender Equity and Men project to look at gender

issues for men in tackling poverty and inequality in the UK and around the world.

In the UK, Oxfam has worked with the Friends of Jason (FoJ) group in Cae Mawr

in Wales, which has been looking at gender issues in the community. FoJ realised

that there were not enough men active at grassroots level and not enough local

women at decision-making level. Ursula from FoJ asked: As women who work

long and hard in the community to get community messages through to decision

makers, we need to ask: Why?

From there, FoJ asked why men were not accessing the services available in the

area, despite the fact that the changes in traditional family life meant more house

husbands, more men at home with their children, more men doing the school runs,more single fathers. They noted that more service providers need to take account

of family lives and the different ways in which men and women live their lives.

They need to base their services on the gender roles and needs of the community.

At the moment we are talking to Communities First about setting up a fathers club

in our area. In the future we plan to work on a local gender needs analysis, which

will help us to identify mens needs on our estate.

FoJ believes that if men were given confidence at this level, that would give them

back respect and confidence to try and change the way they live, which would

ultimately change community life and create new opportunities for us all. This

would be the first step towards getting men back into employment.

The FoJ message on men and regeneration is: Involve men at the community level.

Find out what barriers they have to face as men in the community. Include

educational courses that will appeal and benefit both men and women... and of

course something that they want as men to be involved in.

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6. Building capacity, generating

change

To make gender mainstreaming4 possible we need to keep

empowering women; giving them training and giving them

self-confidence.Carolina de Oteyza, Community Pride Initiative

One of the building blocks for effective delivery and action in gender

and regeneration is to ensure that community groups have the

necessary knowledge, skills and expertise to implement change. This

section looks at three examples of groups which have managed to

make those changes East Manchester Beacon Womens Network,

Friends of Jason group in Cae Mawr, Wales, and Preston Road

Womens Centre in Hull. They all show how women from deprived

areas have come together to deal with the issues that they see as

important in their communities. They have not only galvanised others

including local authorities and decision makers into action, but in

the process of effecting change, have learned new skills and grown in

confidence themselves.

To prepare for the Tale of Two Cities national conference, the

ReGender project organised a learning workshop for the

community level women involved in both ReGender and its

sister Gender and Equalities project from Regional Action

West Midlands. This took place in Manchester in February, a

month before the conference. We knew that having un-pressured

time and a safe space in which to practise speaking out and

rehearsing the issues was an essential prerequisite to

participation in a major national conference at which high-level

decision makers would be present.

This proved to be a key component in the success of the Tale of

Two Cities conference. The experience of ReGender tells us that

ordinary people speaking about their day to day experience is

often the most successful way to reach and convince nationaldecision makers. Good preparation was therefore essential. The

workshop enabled them to meet women from other parts of the

country, and realise that the situations they faced were the

same. This in itself gave them confidence and security. It gave

them a safe space in which to practise making presentations to

a sympathetic and supportive audience. It gave them practice at

speaking in public, and preparing and delivering what they had

to say. All of this is the essence of empowerment and essential

to active participation in the partnerships on which regeneration

programmes are built.

Sue Smith and Jo Rowlands, Oxfam UK Poverty Programme

4 For definition see page 33


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Building on success East Manchester Bea con W omens

N etw ork

In the late 1970s and 1980s most of East Manchester, along with many other

Northern industrial towns, began its journey into decline, and steadily deteriorated

over the following years. In 1999, it was one of the first areas to receive money

from the New Deal for Communities (NDC).

Under the NDC, at first people were a little disillusioned by what seemed to be lots

of talking and no action. There seemed to be no real platform for women to have a

say and be heard. So women from the voluntary and local sector decided to come

together, network and air their voices. Through this, the Beacon Womens

Network was formed at a gathering for women in East Manchester during

International Womens Week in 2003. Pauline Gourley, from Beacon, said: We

realised there were many common issues shared between us women, such as

teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, crime and safety. By looking at our lives,

we discovered the inequalities we faced in our communities and our lives. We also

realised that not all these issues were being addressed by the NDC.In July 2003 we were introduced to Seema Shah, who works for the Oxfam

ReGender project. At first we were mainly unaware of the differences, or even the

actual meaning of gender and saw it as being a feminist issue. As we learned

more we realised this is not the case. We did an introductory workshop and looked

further into understanding the need for gender to be considered and recognised by

those who have the power and the influence in regeneration. We wanted to raise

the awareness of those who make the decisions and implement policies and

procedures. Over the course of several months we began regular workshop

sessions. We began to build up our confidence, skills and the tools to approach the

NDC with our key concerns. Some of the workshops we did were:

Pow er a nd influence We looked at the various NDC officers in the area and

decided who had the most power and influence.

Push and pull What helps push local women into getting involved in their

neighbourhood? For instance, wanting to ensure a better standard of housing.

W hat helps push them away from getting involved? For instance, poor

educational skills; the fear of feeling ridiculed or inadequate.

Budgets We imagined we had a sum of money (250,000) and prioritised

what we would like to see it spent on in our area. We also looked at how it

might need to be spent differently for men and women so that they both feel thepositive impact of this money.

Rainbow visioning ex ercise We looked at what we, a group of women,

would want to change in one years time in East Manchester regeneration so

that women are more involved and benefit more from it.

Some of the main issues raised through the rainbow visioning exercise were:

More women to have a say in schools

Training and employment to suit womens needs

More involvement of local women in groups and structures

Lack of space for focused discussion between women Lack of women community role models

No launderette provision in area

Lack of consistent local transport services in area.page 18


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Transport

Christine Connaughton, also from Beacon, continued: We decided to focus on one

particular issue and see if we could at least get the powers that be to consider

the necessity for gender inclusion in their policies and plans.

Why transport? Out of all the issues that came up time and time again, transport

was a regular. It affects women in our area in a number of ways: Fewer women than men have access to cars and therefore rely heavily upon

public transport to get about locally.

There is no direct transport service to new amenities in area little inter-estate

public transport. Most of the bus routes are city centre routes. Imagine.... going

off to work, but failing to collect children from school; never being on time due

to lack of local bus routes.

Restricted or no access for women and children to regeneration facilities, such

as Sports City, health centres, new community facilities and even Asda

Wal-Mart. A large proportion of the local people will also not have access to thenew tramline.

Infrequency of buses means that it is hard for women to juggle their daily chores

from getting to work, to doing shopping to escorting children.

Lack of local bus services acts as a barrier for womens involvement in the local

community. It also acts as a barrier to attend training and or employment

opportunities easily. It creates territorialism and divides areas. The community

finds it hard to network and work together.

People are more reliant on taxis after doing their large household shopping, but

can ill-afford the costs. This causes money concerns. Most people cannot afford

to use taxis regularly.

There are not enough low-level buses to allow easy access for prams/

wheelchairs and shopping. This would help the elderly too.

Successes

In order to tackle some of these issues, the Beacon Womens Network designed a

simple questionnaire, which they took to a local residents meeting. This had a

domino effect and created more discussion on transport locally. As a result,

transport became a community issue rather than just the Beacon WomensNetworks issue. Said Pauline Gourley: It boosted our confidence to see how such

a small group of women could create such feedback and awareness on an issue.

The Network then held a Residents Forum meeting on transport, after which the

local paper echoed their call for a Transport Survey in the area.

As a result of all this, the NDC now have awareness of the local transport

concerns, and the Health and Well Being N etwork has also begun to look at

transport issues at their meetings.

ChallengesWe now want to build on our successes and try and deal with the challenges we

are facing, continued Christine. We need to work more closely with the NDC and

seek their support to help us with pursuing relevant organisations within the city that


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make decisions about the East Manchester public transport provision. We need to

convince the NDC to undertake a larger-scale East Manchester transport

questionnaire. The questionnaire needs to be designed so that it picks up on the

different transport needs of both women and men.

We have recently learned that the Manchester Local Strategic Partnership (LSP)

looks at city-wide transport issues through a thematic transport pool. We need to

make contact with them and get them to back us.

We need to continue raising awareness locally about why and how transport

needs to improve in the area. Although we have made NDC aware that transport

is a real issue in the area, there is more work to do to ensure it goes beyond just

the Health and Well Being Network.

Our initial survey was just a taster and as a small group of women, we do not

have the resources to take on a larger-scale survey of transport needs in the area.

The challenge is to ensure that we continue to build on the initial domino effect that

was created so that transport does not just become another issue that was raised

and forgotten when something else to campaign about came along.

Women rock! Preston Road Women's Centre, Hull

Hull has the highest number of teenage pregnancies in England. On the

Preston Road estate women face domestic violence and 75 per cent of

residents lack qualifications. Preston Road is one of Hull's eight development

and employment impact areas.

A group of local women on the estate got together and decided they wanted

to change things. The initiative has been driven by local women who live onthe estate and know the area. This has been very important. It was difficult at

first; women found it hard to get permission from their husbands to come

yes, it was a question of whether many of the women were allowed to come

to a meeting. And some came even though they had been told not to go. We

managed to get government funding probably through sheer cussedness!

In just two years our womens centre which is painted in suffragette colours,

purple and green has domestic violence and teenage pregnancy projects,

a drop-in centre, free classes for women with courses ranging from DIY to

self-defence, free childcare. It has eight staff and half a dozen volunteers.

We are about to become an independent company, which will give us more

control over what we want to do, with a service level agreement with the

New Deal for Communities which used to be in charge.

It has not been easy, but now it rocks!

Lisa Hilder, Jade Holwell, Angi Daley, Lisa Lee and Kerryann Strong

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Raising community spirit Friends of Jason Group,

Cae M aw r, Wa les

Cae Mawr is a housing association estate in North Wales. The first tenants moved

in on 5th November 1993. The estate soon had a bad reputation for anti-social

behaviour. Sue Collins from Friends of Jason Group noted that: because of this, the

estate was neglected, our children branded as vandals, parents as unfit and ourlocal housing association stopped repairing faults and listening to our complaints.

Everyone was in low spirits. In 1998, my son was a survivor in a horrific drowning

incident in which his friend Jason died. This brought our community closer together,

and we were determined to do something positive. Our youths got together a

football team in memory of their friend, hence the name FoJ, Friends of Jason.

Mums organised a fun day to raise money for a bench in memory of Jason, and

the Cae Mawr residents association was formed. We held regular meetings and

sorted out a lot of housing and welfare problems on our estate, gave everyone in

our community a hope of a better a future. Community spirit was raised.

As things progressed locally at grassroots level, the estate started to get better.In 2000, the local college, in partnership with other agencies, brought community-

based learning projects into the area and our learning began. In early 2002,

Communities First, the Welsh regeneration programme, came into the area and

asked if some of the group could be the Communities First tenant representatives.

By the end of 2002, FoJ secured a small community flat from the housing

association. They began running activities for children, youth and adults.

Angie Stephenson from FoJ continued:

We, as adults, have successfully completed lots of community-based courses from

this flat. The courses have given us the confidence to take our work further. As agroup we feel passionate about how many of the service providers we come into

contact with do not acknowledge the grassroots perspective. This inspired us to

develop a workshop aimed at service providers to build their capacity to work with

community groups and community level people. We have piloted it with community

practitioners and have been asked to present it again at the First Step in

Community Development Learning in N orth Wales. We hope to be able to roll out

this training further within Conway Council and regeneration.

Through our work, we were introduced to Oxfams ReGender project in the

summer of 2003. Our first thought was: This is about womens lib and burning

bras. But we quickly realised that it was about getting our voices heard. We

recognised that at community level we were gender unaware. We also noticed that

at decision-making level in Llandudno, gender was little or not considered. This

prompted us to find out why.

We worked with Oxfams ReGender project and took part in workshops to

understand why gender matters in regeneration and how we can get our voices

heard and be involved in decision making. We were introduced to tools, which

helped us to understand:

W hat gender roles and needs exist in our community

W hat gender analysis is

W hy gender statistics can be important

Action planning according to gender needs


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W ho is involved in local partnerships and decision making on how regeneration

money is spent

How to lobby on having our needs met by regeneration

W hat pushes women to be involved in regeneration and what pulls them away

from it

Regeneration jargon.

We can do what we do now because we have gained confidence. We just want to

put back into the community what we have got out of it. We want more people to

get involved...

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7. Data driven the importance of

tools and statistics

You cant develop policy without disaggregated statistics because

good policy is evidence-based.

Shelagh Prosser, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

In order to work on gender issues, baseline information broken

down by sex is essential, or it is really difficult to know where to

begin with any analysis on regeneration projects. There is

statistical data available for example on the Census 2001

(www.statistics.gov.uk/ census2001) and Office of National Statistics

(ON S) (http:/ / www.statistics.gov.uk/ ) websites, but it is quite limited.

Free CDs are also available from the ONS, but not many people

know about them, and they contain so much information it is hard to

see the wood for the trees. Even if people do have the data to hand,they may not recognise it or be able to use it. So using the data is as

important as acquiring it. And in order to use it, two factors are key

drivers are required from the top, and information is needed from the

grassroots.

In this section, Regional Action West Midlands (RAWM) and the GEM

project in Manchester explain their approaches to collecting data.

Tools for change West Midlands Gender and

Equa lities programm eRegional Action West Midlands (RAWM) in partnership with the

Gender and Equalities Programme steering group have been testing

and refining a Gender Impact Assessment Toolkit (GIAT) developed in

the late 1990s. The toolkit, designed for large-scale policymaking

regeneration scenarios, was developed on the understanding that the

planning for, and strategy development of, a regeneration

programme requires an understanding of the environment in relation

to gender issues. This needs to include baseline indicators statistics

about mens lives and womens lives. These indicators (collectivelyknown as a gender profile) aim to give an objective measurement of

the situation and provide a check (impact assessment) as to whether a

programme is likely to make the situation better or worse.

Birmingham Voluntary Service Council (BVSC), working with

Birmingham Settlement (see below), set about developing a research

structure that would become an integral part of the GIAT, but would

also be a stand-alone capacity building activity.

The research structure has four key areas:

(i) Knowing and understanding the questions to be asked(ii) Understanding what the data tells you once it has been collected

(iii) Sources for the relevant data

(iv) Developing a profile from the collected data.


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Birmingham Settlement is a capacity building and service-delivery organisation based in

the West Midlands. It is a large multi-sited organisation, but the GIAT was used with just

one project, the Wyrley Birch estate. Gender issues are very important, especially in a

multi-deprivation environment such as Wyrley Birch. For this reason the project worker

and the board of Birmingham Settlement agreed to develop and test the applicability of

research as part of the GIAT. In testing the approach, the need to tie the concepts down

to the practical realities of acting in communities was quickly realised, for example, notlooking at employment, but breaking down the indicators by age, ethnicity, and within

gender groups. Findings also included the need to compile specific indicators to gain

useful data. Within the workshop, a discussion was held about accessing data (Who

owns data? Who can access it?). The key issue was peoples ability and willingness to

engage with data or statistics. There are two factors influencing an individuals ability to

scrutinise data and hold decision makers to account: the willingness of the individual to

engage with numbers; and putting in place concrete skills building for numbers and

statistics. It was suggested that funding was required for an intermediate organisation to

support or give statistical support to community groups.

Gail Walters, Birmingham Voluntary Service Council

Gender and Community Engagement Manchester (GEM)

Project

We want to be there because we want to contribute to others and make a

change. We have good ideas, we have a lot to say!

Womens voices from the GEM project

Women and men differ in their capacity, authority and availability to participate indecision-making processes and structures. There is an imbalance in the involvement

and influence of men and women in community engagement activities. For

example, 73 per cent of local councillors are men.

In order to promote gender equality, it is important to understand the different

opportunities, motivations and barriers women and men face that might give rise to

gender inequalities. It is also important to promote gender awareness at different

levels of involvement and in different decision-making processes.

In response to this situation, Manchester Womens Network, along with other

organisations in the area, has designed and is delivering the GEM project. Its overall

aim is to carry out a gender analysis of existing community engagement processes with

a view to developing information strategy and practice that will promote gender

equality in community engagement in Manchester. GEM aims:

To understand the gender dynamics of community engagement

To raise awareness of gender issues among participants in community engagement

structures, from grassroots groups to city-wide policy makers.

To develop materials and frameworks (toolkits) for gender-awareness training

suitable for community groups and voluntary and statutory organisations.

page 24


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page 25

GEM's partners

W halley Range Forum, W ythenshawe Voices, Old Moat Family Forum,

Crime and Community Safety Pool, East Manchester Community Network,

Community Pride Initiative, Community N etwork for Manchester, Women's

Electronic Village Hall, Oxfam UK Poverty Programme, Local Strategic

Partnership Steering Group, Manchester Metropolitan University CommunityAudit and Evaluation Centre, Manchester University Students' Union.

GEM is looking at 16 structures across three levels of decision-making: local,

intermediate and city wide. The project is being carried out as a participatory

process, involving learning and awareness-raising for all involved. Data is gathered

through a mixture of direct discussions and workshops (with mixed groups,

men-only and women-only, black men and women, Asian women, working class

men, young people, old people, lesbians and gay men) as well as questionnaires

and analysis of secondary data.

For each of the structures, GEM has collected information on the stated purpose,

activities and engagement remit of the structure; background on the area covered

(such as boundaries and demographic statistics), and one years worth of meeting

minutes. From workshops and communities GEM collected barriers and motivations

to participation, the importance of participation, the gender impact and effects of

under-representation, and possible strategies and recommendations. GEM have

produced a range of tables, graphs and statistics, which give a rich picture of the

nature of gendered participation, forming the basis of a strategy for the Local

Strategic Partnership. Here are two examples.

Women seen but not heard

This pie chart compares the presence of women attending the New Deal Crime

Task Group in the area, with the number of times they spoke at the meetings. It is

clear that women are the majority of those who attend, but lack the confidence to

make their voices heard.

Meetings withgender balance

attendanceBut...

Male dominated

participation

Attendance by Gender

Participation by Gender

N ew Deal Crime Task Group


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Black and M inority Ethnic w omen the least audible

This chart gives a breakdown by ethnic grouping of participants at a local strategy

group, and then a breakdown by gender. It demonstrates that that although 21 per

cent of participants were from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups, far fewer

women than men attended from those groups, compared to the white British

participants and therefore the level of womens participation depends on their

ethnicity.

Noreen Khan, Vikki Canham, Hannah Berry, Caroline De Oteyza

page 26

In structures withgood Black andMinority Ethnic

backgroundrepresentation

gender inequalityamongst Blackand Minority

Ethnic attendees0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Attendance by Ethnic Background

Ethnic Background by Gender

CN4M Strategy Group


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page 27

8 . Pow er ma tters getting w omen

onto decision-making bodies

Women need to understand the language of regeneration and

power, but those in power must understand the language of the

community.Dee Edwards, Black Country Womens Development Network

There are few women on decision-making bodies about regeneration.

And yet it seems clear that increasing the proportion of women would

make a difference to regeneration schemes. The Black Country Womens

Development Network and Sheffield Womens Forum are working to

change this situation; to achieve a recognition that power needs to be

shared between men and women and that this will mean change.

A story w ith heart: Black Country Womens

Development Netw ork

The Black Country Womens Network was founded in 2001. It

consists of womens organisations in the voluntary and community

sector across Sandwell, Dudley, Wolverhampton and Walsall. It

provides information, training and support to enable womens groups

to develop and work collectively. It aims to be innovative and risk-

taking in its approach and ways of working and to be an

organisation that listens and responds to womens voices to ensure

that it reflects their ideas and views. It hopes to challenge womenand womens groups to think and act in a collective way on a long-

term basis. Dee Edwards noted: We try to get women to work at a

strategic level.

Sue Ralph is from Women in Sandwell (W INS), part of the network.

She belongs to the Johns Lane Community Group. She said: when

we started out the committee decided to put the only three men in the

top positions. All the women agreed. They thought otherwise they

wouldnt be heard. But nothing got done and now women are back

on the committee and we are able to do the talking. For example,there is a street in our area known as mugging lane. It was poorly lit

and dangerous. So we got better lighting. The same thing happened

with the issue that children had nowhere to go, no park or playing

field. So we are going to lease the basement room of the church. It

needs a lot of work but we have plenty of volunteers and a grant

from Sure Start.

I have learned so much that I call myself a guinea pig. I have gained

such a wealth of knowledge and experience. I have been asked to be

an observer on the Community Empowerment Network (which is

mainly men). I want to pass what I have learned on to the community.Having a disability doesnt mean anything to me any more as long as

I can help the community. They want to be heard. I want to be heard.

This is my heart.


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Sue Walton, from Sandwell EBP, also felt that becoming involved in the Black

Country Womens Network increased my confidence and my knowledge base I

can be more assertive and can challenge people now. It had an impact on my

family and on my community I had left school with no qualifications and took my

GCSEs at the same time as my daughter! I gained an A in English and went on to

take the A level Im waiting for the results. My son is now at university and my

husband is taking a professional qualification.

I want to go on making a difference!

Dee Edwards (Black Country Womens Development Network); Faiza Durrani

(Humdard, supporting Asian Women); Sue Walton (Sandwell EBP); Sue Ralph

(Johns Lane Residents Group); Mary Smith (Sandwells Womens Forum).

Tick box es and token w omen

There is a danger that once gender becomes an issue, token women will beinvited onto committees so that boxes can be ticked. This raises important

issues about consultation and democracy. Just because something is local

doesn't mean it is automatically democratic.

Ursula from Cae Mawr noted: What constitutes asking the community? I

remember once being dragged off the street for a consultation something

about extending people's gardens. The architect who was there already knew

what he wanted and I found four other people who had also been dragged

off the street.

It sometimes feels as though women are being invited onto committees andinto meetings because someone somewhere needs to tick a box saying

Women. In this case you feel it is difficult to use the power you gain from

being on that committee because you feel you are having to do it the mans

way.

Strength and potential Sheffield Womens Forum

The Sheffield Womens Forum was launched in Sept 1999, as part of the European

Unions Objective 1 funding. Until then, said Margaret Goodlad: Womens issuesin Sheffield had mainly gone unseen. The women in Sheffield needed to have a

voice, a powerful voice, almost like their own union. Sheffield Womens Forum now

covers over 100 organisations with their own networks to disseminate information.

This indicates the potential, strength and need for women.

The Forum was originally led and supported by Sheffield City Council but became

a multi-agency forum for anyone working on womens issues in Sheffield eg

statutory organisations, voluntary organisations, individuals, trusts etc. Its aims are:

To make womens issues, interests and concerns visible in developments in the

city To ensure women are involved in regeneration issues and new funding initiatives

To influence decision-making processes affecting womens lives.

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The Forum meets on the first of every month and takes anything that members want

to put on the agenda. It has held two conferences one on information technology

and one called Womens visions, womens version. It also presented key issues on

women living in poverty to Sheffield First for Inclusion Partnership Board (LSP).

The Forum is an example of the kind of joined-up thinking that helps to move things

forward. It works closely with Sheffield City Council, and since the Forum was set

up, a range of other organisations for women have also been created in Sheffield,

including the South Yorkshire Womens Development Trust (see section 9 of this

report), and Women in Front training and mentoring for women. This joined-up

approach involving women from the grassroots up to Objective 1 management

level, has been a critical factor in the success of gender initiatives in Sheffield and

South Yorkshire.

Margaret Goodlad (Children Mean Business), Kate Flannery (Sheffield City Council)

Gender a nd the representation of w omen in the WestMidlands

Only three of the Regional Development Agencys 14 members are women.

However, some systematic work is in its early stages, to increase the number

of women who apply for and secure Public Appointments. And while the West

Midlands Regional Assembly continues to be overwhelmingly male, there are

signs of change here too. Interestingly, there are a reasonable number of

women among the Other Stakeholders Group the three representatives on

the Assemblys Board are all women. So far there have been two female Vice

Chairs one from the Other Stakeholders Group and one from the business

group.

Jane Slowey, Chief Executive, Birmingham Voluntary Service Council


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9. Vision, stamina and chocolate

getting strategic about gender

We must be more organised. We need a structure to broaden out

involvement and to build a strong lobbying organisation. We cant

rely on individuals they are only as strong as the networksbehind them.

Participant at Womens vision, womens version conference,

Sheffield

You need vision. And stamina. And chocolate! Cinnamon Bennett,

Gender Manager, South Yorkshire Objective 1 Programme

Where gender has been most successfully integrated into

regeneration projects, it is because local organisations have forged

links with funders, local authorities and other groups andorganisations to drive their vision forward. Here, three such alliances,

in South Yorkshire, Glasgow and Essex, explain the secrets of their

success.

Womens vision, w omens version: South

York shire Womens Development Trust

By 2000, in Sheffield, there were five womens organisations working

with people from marginalised groups in the city. There were

questions of sustainability. Groups had to turn women away; thefuture was uncertain.

Then Objective 1 status was given to South Yorkshire there was

700m from EU and matched funding from public money. This was a

huge opportunity. Gender mainstreaming was a requirement for

Objective 1 and social inclusion was also written in. The door was

opening...

In February 2001 the Sheffield Womens Forum organised a conference,

Womens vision, womens version, and were delighted when 160

women turned up. This came up with the idea of forming a funding trust,to pull down the funding effectively. A consultant came in to find out how

to create a legal entity, and to look at what organisations might want to

participate. The South Yorkshire Womens Development Trust was

established and it soon began to work in partnership with Objective 1.

Isadora Aiken, manager of the Trust, noted that when the Trust first

started there was no Board, nothing, there wasnt even a desk! But the

pilot for the Trust in 2002 was very successful, and we got further

funding to roll it out across South Yorkshire.

Using the Objective 1 infrastructure, the Trust took a dual approach,

looking at positive action and gender mainstreaming. It came up with

a project that looked at tackling gender imbalance in the labour

market. This involved:

Getting women and men into non-traditional employment.page 30


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page 31

Supporting employers to increase employment opportunities by promoting

work-life balance practices.

More women in senior decision-making roles in organisations and public life.

Training and education for men who have reduced employment prospects due

to changes in the economic base.

The Trust fought hard to get positive action to make sure that the experience ofworking with women at grassroots level wasnt lost when making decisions about

how to spend the new funding. It developed womens learning partnerships,

supporting and enabling women to think and engage in a very diverse range of

credited and non-accredited training, conferences and seminars. It has also

commissioned research into women in non-traditional trades, the needs of disabled

women and the gaps for women in public life. A positive action pot was ring-

fenced, and a post created to promote funding availability to applicants. Different

groups of women put their case to say Fund Us!

Isadora Aiken says that the Trust today is: a strong team of passionate women

who really care about the area. There are 22 member organisations, seventraining organisations and 700 women have been trained. Were getting women

into construction, and we have women training women. We have women working

with women in the community on their own community buildings. We do everything

we can to get women out of the house. Its amazing how people grow when

theyve got support, its a wonderful feeling!

The key messages from the Trust are:

Womens involvement is vital to the success of economic regeneration.

Women are the poorest group in South Yorkshires communities and the

Objective 1 programme will not achieve its targets without addressing their

needs.

The womens voluntary sector in South Yorkshire has the experience of building

the infrastructure of everyday lives, proving that activities which are realistic and

taken into account the limitations face by time, transport, money and womens

responsibilities for others.

The Objective 1 programme has committed resources and provided gender

know-how to inspire and develop the contribution of individual women and

organisations.

Going live in Greater Govan, Scotland

Regeneration didnt mean anything to them [the women being recruited to the

project], it was like hearing that Marks and Spencer was coming to the area

youll only go in if you can afford it.ReGender group member, Glasgow

Greater Govan is a very diverse area of inner city Glasgow. There are 28,000

people, lots of ethnic minorities and refugees, and people coming in and out all the

time. It is also an area of high deprivation and poverty. There are few opportunitiesfor young people and there was no womens group.

In 1999 Greater Govan was designated as a Social Inclusion Partnership, or SIP,

with the aim of tackling some of these problems and making the area a better


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place to live. The SIP already had a number of programme aims relating to gender

and regeneration:

Promoting a better understanding of how to deliver regeneration, using a gender

analysis to promote gender equality.

Promoting these lessons so that they informed and supported approaches to

regeneration in Govan, elsewhere in Glasgow and throughout Scotland.

Grassroots and institutional capacity built to raise awareness, increase

understanding, improve processes and approaches and take action.

At a meeting in December 2001, the Community Forum, which included 40 local

people, looked at poverty and discrimination. Parveen Khan from the Govan Social

Inclusion Project said: Everyone felt they had been discriminated against in one

way or another. But poverty wasnt something people identified as an issue,

because its something theyve always lived with.

The SIP then started work with ReGender, part of Oxfams UK Poverty Programme.

The project with the SIP aimed to support and train a group of grassroots women in

Greater Govan so that they could:

Be skilled in using tools to carry out a gender analysis of local regeneration

initiatives.

Monitor the impact of regeneration programmes on marginalised women.

Influence regeneration practice in meeting the needs of women effectively.

Motivation

Parveen Khan added: One of the difficulties was motivating a group of local

women to take part in the project. Some women had already been involved in theSIP and had become disillusioned, so this was not easy. The problem of recruiting

women is perhaps indicative of just how difficult it is for women to become

involved in such groups. Two women had to drop out due to personal difficulties;

one cannot attend meetings as she has to work odd hours due to being unable to

access childcare in the area, and another had dropped out of previous community

activity as she felt lost in the jargon at meetings and as a result had lost

confidence.

But a core group of six has now been recruited and several training sessions have

been held introducing the concepts of gender and regeneration, and looking atwhat it means for Greater Govan women and the role of Govan SIP.

At first it was: Whats all this about feminism, burning your bra? but gradually the

women gained a greater understanding of jargon, gender diversity and

regeneration initiatives. By the third session women started saying: Why arent

there any men here? Why is this all about women? They thought local men should

undertake the same process, to compare findings and explode some stereotypical

gender myths.

Change has to be driven forward both at grassroots and strategic levels says

Parveen. We have to build those links and communicate. We still have got a longway to go, but we know now that we have started something. And it is having an

influence elsewhere. All the other SIPs look to us because were doing pilots and

also were seen as a good model. Were hoping to develop policy and practice

guides that we hope others will pick up.page 32


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Thinking gender first: gender mainstreaming in Essex

South Essex Rape and Incest Crisis Centre (SERICC) commissioned Sheffield Hallam

University to carry out a gender mainstreaming project that was funded by the

Home Office. The key aims of the project were:

1. To clarify policy aims and constraints on service development affecting gender

mainstreaming in selected services.2. To gain an understanding of local agency strategies, missions and values in

each of these areas.

3. To assess and measure the impact of the services delivered in each area on

women and on men, and on specified groups of women.

4. To support local agencies in developing a gender mainstreaming strategy and a

forward action plan to achieve improved outcomes for women, especially any

women not well served by current provision.

Gender ma instreaming: ever yone's issueGender mainstreaming involves the incorporation of gender considerations

into all polices, practices and decision making, so that at every stage of

development and implementation, an analysis is made of the effects on

women and men, and appropriate action is taken. Addressing gender means

recognising that inequalities between women and men involve unfairness and

stereotyping that damages everyone. Gender mainstreaming is everyone's

issue, where everyone gains.

Chris Booth from Sheffield Hallam said: we were aiming to make the links

between sexual violence and gender inequality. We wanted to get into the health

authority, get into the police, turn things upside down, mainstream gender into

service delivery. We wanted to understand local service providers; to see what

makes them tick.

The project focused on three policy areas: crime and disorder, mental health and

regeneration. We worked in those three areas with Thurrock Council, the health

trust and voluntary organisations. We tried to get an in into all these

organisations; we held focus group workshops, tried to get them to think about

gender. Then we did telephone interviews with the heads of service. After that we

had a look at national policy documents to see what frameworks were providedand how they were interpreted at the local level. Then we had a look at sex-

disaggregated data. We couldnt get hold of very much data, but we got some...

We got people together and presented everything back at an action-planning

workshop. We developed a policy framework and guidelines, and a series of

recommendations for all the organisations.


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Crime matters in Thurrock

More than four in five victims of domestic violence are women

Reported rapes have increased rapidly in recent years while conviction

rates have plummeted

Mens and womens patterns of offending behaviours differ in important

ways, as do both their fear of crime and their contact with the police.

Important national developments in this area include the Home Office

Crime Reduction Programme, the Violence Against Women Initiative, and

the establishment of working groups focusing on these issues at the

Womens National Commission.

Project reflections

There were a number of reflections from the work of the project, as Chris Booth

noted: first, we were surprised at the lack of awareness and knowledge on gender

in key agencies. More than surprised, in fact I have rarely been in a situation

where people know so little about gender. It was as though we were speaking a

different language.

The project was also problematic because it was led by the voluntary sector, led

by a small womens organisation, rather than by the local authority. This made it

difficult for Thurrock to take it on and things took longer than expected. Other

problems were that the Local Authority and agencies had difficulty in relating

gender mainstreaming to the work of SERICC around domestic and sexual violence

and abuse. The lack of government guidance on gender in two of the service-delivery areas also hindered progress.

Perhaps most importantly, the project demonstrated the importance of gender-

disaggregated data. Getting such data was really difficult. It just didnt seem to

exist. This is now SERRICs mission in life!

A cultural shift is beginning to take place, but it only emerged after the project was

over. For example, gender mainstreaming has been supported by the importance

of equality in the Comprehensive Performance Assessment for Local Authorities.

And the Department of Health in its mental health strategy places significance on

gender and has cited SERRICs work on gender mainstreaming as an example ofgood practice in the field.

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10 . Wa ys forw ard

Regeneration can never be a quick fix. Tackling long-term decline

requires sustained investment over many years.

Alan Burge, Communities First, Wales

As a community group, we ask you to please consider gender in

all your regeneration policies and decision making. This will help

to make sure that the whole communitys needs are being met by

regeneration.

Cae Mawr Friends of Jason Group

In order for regeneration to be successful, gender needs to be

addressed at all levels, from policymakers to the grassroots. And this

is not a quick fix. It will take time some programmes are looking at

10 to 20 years. But it can be done. This section gives both practical

and strategic ideas for how to take gender forward in regeneration

work, with ideas from both the grassroots and from decision-makers.

Community groups are clear about the ways forward. Lisa Crowther

from Friends of Jason Group in Cae Mawr noted some basic

principles that need to be thought through before a project is even

drawn up:

1. Dont throw money into projects for any area unless you have

considered all the facts, built a picture of the local community and

understood the communitys profile. This means understanding how

men and women live their everyday lives (from their employment tohousehold responsibility to community activity patterns).

2. Dont assume, as assumptions cause prejudice. People have to live

with your decisions.

3. For every decision, there is impact good or bad. Keep this in

mind when decisions are made, as the impact is felt by real life

women and men.

4. Work closely with community groups like us, and not against us,

so that the right decisions are made for each area.

The practical steps

There are a range of areas where steps can be taken to put gender

into regeneration strategies. These are drawn from suggestions made

at the conference. They involve a rethinking of priorities, a

reassessment of power and an identification of the gender gaps in

regeneration work. The areas include: targets, training and tools,

data and statistics, information, funding and support. There are also

strategic steps in relation to forging networks and partnerships,

changing behaviour and attitudes, customising services, and theinclusion of men in this work.


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1. Targets

There need to be targets for a fair gender balance (50:50) on Community

Empowerment Networks (CENs), Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) and other

decision making bodies by a set date. These include the creation of floor targets to

measure progress. These targets also need to be monitored.

2. LegislationIt is important not to have equalities in separate silos things are changing on the

race front because of the Race Relations Amendment Act. The Act made a real

difference, and a similar requirement for a public duty on gender would be a key

requirement. Conditionality on gender in funding would also help for example,

Objective 1 funding requires clawback of money in case of non-compliance.

3. Training and tools

Gender and diversity need to be integrated into all existing training programmes:

Identify the need for specific gender and diversity training to ensure compliance

with new legislative and other requirements.

Capacity building of individuals and organisations is a major issue. People can

get number-blind when they see statistics.

Women need to be provided with training on the complex layers of regeneration

schemes and the right support in order for them to participate effectively in the

regeneration process.

Womens participation in training needs to be reviewed and there should be

more positive action training initiatives.

Devolved administrations in England, Wales and Scotland are more open to

outside influences. Get to know the individuals who run management trainingand get gender on the agenda.

Training on gender also needs to be provided for decision makers.

In addition, appropriate tools need to be developed, not only for the training,

but also for gender audits and gender impact assessments.5

4. Statistics and disaggregated data

Ensure statistical data is available in sex-disaggregated form. This will enable the

following to be assessed:

W hat gaps exist in developing and delivering services to men and women? W hat are the positive and negative impacts of services on different groups of

women and men?

How do mens needs and womens needs differ?

There needs to be guidance on sex-disaggregated data, analysis and

interpretation. And learning how to use the data once it is gathered is as important

as having it in the first place. More work is needed on access to, and awareness

of, information and data. More detailed local research is needed, including an

understanding of the gender and diversity aspects of local area profiles6.

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5 For an example see Gender Proofing Handbook(see resources section)6 For an example see Gender profile of South Yorkshire's Labour Market 2000 (see resources

section)


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5. Information

Women must use their new knowledge to influence everything they do like a

chain reaction, this knowledge impacts on their individual lives and their work in

the community.

Regeneration officers must equip local women with clear and simple information in

order for them to become involved. W ithout a clear understanding of how

regeneration schemes work, local people cannot get actively involved. Equality and

diversity know-how, capacity and awareness also need to be developed.

There is already a lot of information out there, but it needs to be well maintained,

well resourced and permanent. Strategies for good practice also need to be shared

and disseminated.

6. Funding and support

More money needs to be available for specific gender and governance training to

up-skill women and equip them for participation in strategic arenas. (To include the

costs of childcare/ care, transport, interpreters and mentoring support systems).

More funding needs to be given to middle order infrastructural organisations to

train smaller organisations in using data and scrutinising decision makers.

Annual budgets for local authorities need to be gender-analysed.

Funding and support needs to be available for women who are active at

grassroots level so that they too can sit around tables and be involved in making

decisions about the regeneration issues that they have direct experience of or

are involved in tackling at community level. This can be as simple as developing

a jargon dictionary for each meeting. Or it may mean providing training

opportunities on understanding regeneration structures and simple information

on where money is spent.

7. Forums and partnerships

The best strategies are about making local, regional and national links in order

achieve the greatest impact in gender and regeneration. Networks, forums or

partnerships that focus on gender issues and come together to share practice and

develop expertise have proved successful. Ideas for this have included:

Establishing a local or regional womens forum so that women can have their

say in key regeneration issues.

Womens forums, which can also be used as in-depth focus groups to help

identify and research key issues which impact on women within regeneration.

Multi-agency partnerships of womens organisations can also be established to

help progress work.

Women need to be enabled to participate in city partnerships.

8. Changing behaviour and attitudes

Changing attitudes is complicated and takes time. But there are areas where work

can make a difference.

Jargon Regeneration has a huge amount of jargon and a large number of

acronyms. This is off-putting for many people and those working in regeneration

need to be aware of this.

The media There needs to be a lot of work on images of men and women.

Schools Work on stereotypes and gender issues can be built into citizenship,

personal and social education and other programmes.


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9. Involving men

Involve men at the community level. Find out what barriers they have to face as

men in the community. Some ideas for local areas might include educational

courses that will appeal and benefit both men and women... and of course

something that men want to be involved in.

10. ServicesMore customised services are needed a uniform approach has clearly not met

peoples needs. For examp

Gender and The Reality of Regeneration: A tale of two cities

Documents