Making Politics Accessible to All Women - Scotland’s Women Stand

As we prepare our next Scotland’s Women Stand event for 2023, we reflect on when we ran the event in 2019. This blog is from our archive, where our CEO Hannah Stevens shared some of the work she and our team did to ensure that Scotland’s Women Stand was the most inclusive political event for women it could be.

By Hannah Stevens

If we're serious about making our politics represent the communities that we live in, then we need people with a rich variety of lived experiences sitting at the decision making table. At The Parliament Project we are committed to encouraging women to stand for elected office across all spheres of government in Scotland and England. When we talk about women, we aren’t talking about one homogenous group: we are talking about a rich variety of women with intersecting identities and lived experiences. Currently only 33% of our politicians in the UK are women, whilst women make up 51% of our population. The poor representation of disabled women, working class women, LGBTQ+ women, deaf women and women of colour reflects the reality of our communities even less. We want our political landscape to represent that broad diversity of our population in all its glorious forms.

A special shout out to Inclusion Scotland & YWCA Scotland - Glasgow Centre staff who provided crucial advice in identifying specific support requirements for the women accessing their work.

On 7th September 2019 we organised Scotland’s Women Stand, hosted by the Scottish Parliament, with funding support from the Scottish Government. It was our opportunity to bring together women from across Scotland and inspire and encourage them to consider their political futures. It was vital, for it to be a meaningful coming together, that we removed any barriers that women might face in joining us on the day.

Women participating in our workshops tell us about the barriers that they face in getting involved in local politics. Barriers are real, and we need to take real strides to overcome them.

In order to engage a rich variety of women in Scotland’s Women Stand, we had to commit funds and time to support women to overcome those barriers. We used a wide range of resources and planning methods to ensure a genuinely diverse and rich representation of women from ALL walks of life.

Barriers access to information about the event geographical location transport costs caring responsibilities communications access and physical access on the day itself.

So what steps did we take to remove barriers to participation for Scotland’s Women Stand? We…

Organised two onsite creches for children of different ages. We also provided caring grants to women who required support for adults with caring needs or those who wanted to leave their children with childcare providers at home.

Designed the event with a wide variety of content relevant to women of all life experiences, no matter where they were on their political journey. Our afternoon programme offered a choice of 16 workshops, enabling everyone to find something inspiring and relevant.
Ensured accessible communications access on the day itself. We wanted to ensure that BSL (British Sign Language) users were fully invited to participate so we created a BSL video to promote the event, included a BSL workshop in workshop programme and provided BSL interpretation throughout the day. For deaf women who weren’t BSL users, we coordinated a stenographer to type every word of the debating chamber session on a screen, and personal electronic notetakers to accompany women with hearing difficulties to their workshops.
Provided PAs (Personal Assistants) to support any woman in the event who might need support; this included supporting women with physical disabilities to move around the building and being a sight guide for others.

Kept tickets to the event completely free of charge.
Reserved 50% of tickets for organisations working with under-represented communities. We reached out to nearly 300 organisations to invite women from their communities to participate in the day, ensuring that women with a full range of lived experiences had tickets reserved if they wanted to join us. This was an ongoing activity that required a real investment of time, but an incredibly important one.
Worked to ensure women in highland, island and rural communities could take part. The Parliament live streamed the morning’s chamber session through Facebook, enabling anyone, anywhere to watch. We developed partnerships with local councils in highland and island areas who hosted regional hub events, bringing together local women in their council buildings to watch the livestream of the morning session and then join The Parliament Project’s Exploring Your Political Pathway workshop. The women from these hubs were able to participate in real time and submit questions digitally during the Q&A session.
Coordinated buses bringing women from across Glasgow and provided accommodation for some women travelling from further afield so that transport costs weren’t a barrier to attendance.

A lot of resources were invested to ensure all of these access needs were met and supported – as they well should be! We prioritised that on day one of the project inception, the day that we developed the budget. Alongside hospitality, marketing materials and project management, we prioritised access and all of the glorious forms it takes. We allocated 15% of the whole event budget to ensuring that the funds were available to support the needs that women have to ensure their full and equal access to the event.

In Scotland, some expenses for disabled political candidates can be funded through the Access to Elected Office Fund delivered by Inclusion Scotland. The fund provides financial support to pay for the additional impairment related costs that disabled

This process wasn't straightforward but it was possible. I've learnt a huge amount through this experience by listening to different communities and their needs. I’m still really interested to hear from other individuals or organisations working in access and diversity in the political space about how they are promoting best practices to ensure as many barriers are removed to ensure the full participation of women in our political processes. We didn’t get it all right and there is still so much more to learn.

In writing this blog and sharing our learnings, I hope to open a conversation about how political parties and organisations working in this space can strive to ensure that the candidates going for selection in all spheres of government in each corner of the United Kingdom represent the rich diversity of our society. These reasonable adjustments and commitments to accessibility must become the norm and must be prioritised in funding work around democratic participation and candidate selection. We will continue our work to ensure that ALL women have the opportunity to participate in politics if they have the will.

Some women who attended the Stornoway hub have since set up the first Stornoway community council in 16 years - comprised entirely of women.

It was clear to all those in attendance on the day that we were part of a group of women that did represent a broad variety of lived experience and the day felt all the richer for it. Women in attendance of the day, in the short two months since the event, have been standing across Scotland - for community councils, in council by-elections and for Westminster candidate selection. It has made us hopeful and excited for the possibility – something that politics hasn’t felt in recent years. If we all keep working towards this goal, perhaps one day we will see a truly representative democracy.

For more information, please email us: community@elect-her.org.uk