Same issues, different needs. How can we make sure that poverty prevention sees barriers and bias through a female lens?
A network of professionals dug into the barriers and biases that can keep women in poverty and out of work at a Quids in! Pro webinar held to mark International Women’s Day.
The event, on 9 March, was called A New Lens on Poverty and covered issues including housing inequality, rural poverty, barriers to employment, and of course bias.
Clean Slate, home to Quids in! Pro, was well placed to host an event like this. Nearly nine in 10 of our staff are female (87.5 per cent) and 70 per cent work part-time. Most work flexibly, predominantly from home.
And it looks like these demographics may be mirrored among the readers of our Quids in! products, based on early analysis of a cost-of-living survey we ran in winter. Nearly three quarters of responses (73.2 per cent) came from women and nearly 80 per cent were parents.
As part of her presentation, Women & Poverty: A Frontline Support Perspective, Clean Slate’s head of programmes Emma Kernahan shared her own observations after 20 years in support work.
If my experience is anything to go by it’s the women who are going to be making that change
Emma Kernahan, head of programmes at Clean Slate Training & Employment
She highlighted some of the issues that can impact women (and mothers) disproportionately, including things like financial and domestic abuse, employment and longer waiting times for larger social homes.
And when twinned with what she called a ‘shame cocktail’ of judgement of women and their choices, we can end up with policy that’s just not helping women to get on in life.
“We cannot change the job sector, I don’t think we’re going to get every company to be working flexible hours, four-day weeks, and with better recruitment methods,” she said.
“But with what we do and how we hire people, that’s within our sphere of influence. We have to start making that change now and if my experience is anything to go by it’s the women who are going to be making that change. They’re the ones who are out there making the change in their communities at the moment and we should be trying to use their skills rather than trying to ‘do’ support to them.”
Inclusion and cohesion specialist, and founder of BCohCo Katie Donovan-Adekanmbi, works with organisations in the private, public and third sectors to help them address bias and root out practices that may be entrenched but damaging. She’s seen a 700 per cent rise in demand for her service since 2020.
The peer said, ‘If I can’t pronounce their name, they’re going in the No pile. Now this was for a job, but how does that manifest in applications for money, for benefits?
Katie Donovan-Adekanmbi, BCohCo
Her work focuses on the need to acknowledge intersections and how the barriers a person faces vary depending on their background.
Recruitment, she said, is “riddled” with bias and mentioned an encounter she’d had with a woman who was interested to learn what Donovan-Adekanmbi did for a living.
“She was a woman of colour and she was a mother,” she said. “And she was shortlisting [candidates for a job] with a peer. The peer said, ‘If I can’t pronounce their name, they’re going in the No pile’.
“Now this was shortlisting for a job but how does that manifest in applications for money, for benefits? This is where bias permeates the decision-making process. That’s how it happens.”
Of course, these issues and others were discussed more widely on IWD. At Scotland’s Housing Festival, held in Glasgow and organised by the Chartered Institute of Housing, Dr Angela O’Hagan of Glasgow Caledonian University spoke to delegates about the cost-of-living crisis and women’s role as ‘shock absorbers’.
O’Hagan researches gender and public policy, and gender budgeting. Women’s homelessness, she said, is often more hidden than that of men; yet women are more likely to be living in poverty and likely to spend a larger percentage of their income on housing.
She called too for a change in language – rather than a cost-of-living crisis, she said what we’re experiencing is actually a cost-of-living scandal.
Image: Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels
