|2nd Round Approved DPs|

Genderwise Scotland DP

Objectives
The DP operates Scotland wide and aims to combat gender poverty and disadvantage through engendering policy and piloting innovative interventions to promote vertical and horizontal desegregation in the labour market and demonstrate the economic advantages of good equal opportunities strategies. Close contact will be maintained with main policy areas of the Scottish Governmentand other organisations that influence the policy agenda with a view to mainstreaming the outputs from the Genderwise work programme.

The principal areas of interest of the DP are:

• Gender mainstreaming within the main regeneration agencies involved in the community planning process.
• Policies and organisational cultures relating to care in the workplace, with a particular focus upon older women workers (aged 50 and over).
• The effects of care responsibilities of (mainly) women on their subsequent career paths.
• Enhancing the career opportunities (vertical desegregation) of care workers for the elderly (mainly women) through innovative training and delivery techniques using a Virtual College Identifying and
• overcoming the barriers faced by disadvantaged women with children who wish to enter further and higher education

 The University of Glasgow Gender Action Project (GAP) supported academic and research female staff in their career progression. The project identified career breaks for maternity leave and subsequent childcare as key area in effecting women’s careers.
The University of Glasgow will fully finance the Gender Action Project (GAP) on completion of our action 3 commitments. The University has recently set up an Equality and Diversity Unit with three full time members of staff. This Unit will implement all equalities legislation within the organisation, including gender. As the University looks towards delivering best practice for staff and service users, the EDU will implement many of the outputs developed during GAP. These will include;

• Continuing and expanding the Women’s network
• Maintain the GAP website
• Developing the maternity mentoring
• Influencing for policy changes as suggested in the GAP Report

The Senior Studies Institute at the University of Strathclyde piloted the Advancing Women’s Employability project aiming to change views on employment potential of women aged 50+ and help employers understand the business case for improving gender equality.

The mainstreaming approach adopted was in line with wider DP discussions and directed as appropriate by the lead partner.  It involved identifying key stakeholders who potentially could be interested in the AWE concept to build and expand on the activity piloted through Equal.

Organisations, predominantly in the public sector were target with various meetings taking place with local council’s through out the West of Scotland, local enterprise agencies and local regeneration agencies.

As a result of this activity, a variation of the AWE concept has been devised and successfully adopted by Glasgow Works who have commissioned the Senior Studies Institute 50+ Employability to deliver a pilot programme aimed at older adults aged 50+ currently in receipt of Incapacity Benefit in Glasgow.  Many of the lessons learned from the AWE project have been taken into consideration for this pilot and the training programme delivered will include many of the elements covered in AWE as well as introducing fresh ideas and new concepts.

Engender worked with women from diverse backgrounds to build their capacity to influence and participate in local authority decision making. This work will continue as part of Engender’s work funded by the Scottish Government and Oxfam. We will be focusing on develop a Gender and Equality Mentoring programme with local authorities and public bodies focused on poverty and regeneration. This will run along side the women’s capacity building work and aims to establish opportunities for women to influence and engage in participatory monitoring of public service indicators on poverty and gender.
The project developed an Embedding Equalities training course and run it with managers from West Lothian council that looks at mainstreaming equalities into all planning; and a Prove it! course that will provide insight and skills in monitoring and evidencing public bodies’ progress towards equality.
Some women from the project have moved into organisations and projects as employees to continue the work by supporting communities to engage in local political/planning processes. They will continue to refer to the Lobby Guide which has been updated following the elections. Discussions are being help with the gypsy traveller education unit at Edinburgh University on ways to further develop the approach.

Business Case - The argument on whether a business case for gender equality measures can be made is continually evolving and opening up new areas for discussion. However, in terms of the two sectors examined in detail by the project: Further Education and the Care Sector, each showed that how the sector was funded resulted in reduced opportunities for using the business case argument. In the care sector, the dependence of even the private sector care homes on government funding meant that the upskilling of the largely female labour force which those interviewed recognised as needed, would not shift profit margins as amounts received for the provision of care were externally fixed. Furthermore, while women were also present in significant numbers at managerial levels, the fundamentals of the funding regimes and the ability of the beneficiaries of care to pay, severely restricted the room for manoeuvre of these managers. This means that the organizational changes that can result from employing women and which then make a difference to profitability cannot be made. On this basis, the project is producing executive summaries for each sector than will then be sent out to the participants was well as a final report detailing the findings for each sector. It is also intending to organize a seminar where these findings will be presented. What it shows is that a business case is contingent upon various factors some of which are internal to the organization but others are external. In addition, the Research Officer, Kiril Sharapov is now working on a project that looks at employment opportunities for women in the building trades.

CreditCare - The research elements of this project contributed to the Glasgow Caledonian Nursing, Midwifery and Community Health Research Centre’s theme of developing and supporting Communities of Practice, using technology for groups which would not be viable otherwise because of issues of time, location and confidentiality, ie supporting groups disadvantaged by their context and availability or access to support. Carer experiences were collated into ‘vignettes’, which have been taken up in the Text2Learn project. In this way, beneficiary experiences are directly contributing to health workers’ education.

• Generating greater awareness of the issues for student parents in the Scottish Wider Access Programme and disseminating the Lone Parent helpline number through shared publicity.
• Increasing awareness of issues for parents in the NUS resulting in their production of a Parent's Charter based on the work of the project.
• Making Further Education Colleges more aware of the ways in which they can help student parents through distribution of the family Friendly Colleges Good Practice Guide.
• Production of research materials on the issues faced by student parents which One Parent Families Scotland will continue to use in future policy work.

Making Regeneration Better - This project successfully worked with Dundee and Inverclyde to engender its policies. Work has concluded in these two areas. Learning fed into the South Lanarkshire Council Regeneration project which is being continued to be funded (see section 2) as well as being mainstreamed into Oxfam’s future work with local government agencies.

Text to Learn:

Project Background
This innovative project sought to work with the independent Care Home industry to pioneer an accredited a pilot programme of learning at S/NVQ equivalent levels 3 & 4.

The project developed innovative approaches to providing training and skill development opportunities for the mainly female workers in lower level occupations within this SME sector, enabling them to participate in lifelong learning with the aim of assisting them to develop alternative ways to break through the ‘glass ceiling’, and exploit career development opportunities denied them due to personal commitments such as child care responsibilities or caring for other family members.

Our training solution piloted innovative, alternative to S/NVQ learning / training, delivered through a blended eLearning model capitalising on a flexible approach using combinations of mobile learning (mLearning) technologies, eLearning and situated learning.

Project Outputs
Three HE Level I modules were developed and accredited through University quality assurance processes. These modules which benchmark on the SCQF framework as equivalent to an educational level between NVQ Level 3-4. Other tangible and important outputs for project participants included access to wider learning, digital literacy skill development, confidence building and personal / professional horizon scanning.

Mainstreaming Activities
Academic Sector Messages - The three modules developed through the Text 2 Learn project are current and are available to applicants via the University Catalogue. In total completion of the three modules would credit learners with 50 CATS points. (HNC = 130CATS points at HE Level I).

One of the key challenges of such a project is the acceptance within the HE / FE sectors of access routes for non-traditional applicants to learning routes. In this case the project learners were of low prior educational attainment and would not normally have been accepted directly into Higher Education programmes before completing access programmes or achieving minimum entry requirements.

Wider mainstreaming of the project outputs sought to build on the interface between Further Education and Higher Education to share the key messages for educational support and delivery learnt through the project. Project leader is now a member of the FE / HE elearning Special Interest Group (supported by the eLearning Alliance) and is seeking to share through this group the mainstreaming messages of the project.

Care Home Industry Messages -The landscape of this sector is ever changing and in addition to responding to the regulatory requirements it also reacts quickly to business planning imperatives. Whilst this creates for business a dynamic market, it can create an unstable relationship with outside relationships. In the case of Text 2 Learn one of our initial partners was subject to take-over resulting in total change of senior management who we had been negotiating. Our attention move to disseminating the project outputs to local care home managers encouraging them to diversify and seek alternative, smart approaches to staff education / training and development. Many one-to-one meetings have taken place and continue to occur with Care Home managers and education co-ordinators.

Regulator Messages - Mainstreaming meetings have taken place with sector regulators (Sector Skills Councils [Skills for Health & Scottish Social Services Council) and information exchange has occurred between project team and The Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care). Further exchanges will continue where possible and appropriate.

Lead Partner:              Glasgow Caledonian University
Person to Contact:       Sheryl Harvey
Telephone:                  0141 331 8889
Email:                         Sheryl.Harvey@gcal.ac.uk
Website:                     www.genderwise.co.uk