£600,000 a year? How state-funded feminism has let Scottish women down

The casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that For Women Scotland (FWS) is the nation’s official feminist organisation, with the job of “working to dismantle structural sexism to increase women’s social, political and economic equality, and enable women's rights”.

After all, FWS’s three co-directors have been splashed across every newspaper in the land this week following their historic victory in the Supreme Court, where the country’s most eminent legal minds ruled that the legal definition of women relies on biological sex.

Trina Budge, Marion Calder and Susan Smith, with the support of an exuberant, yet disciplined army of women across Scotland, may have secured one of the most important legal wins in the history of British feminism – Wednesday’s decision affects the whole of the UK – but here’s the rub.

Susan Smith, left, and Marion Calder, directors of campaign group For Women Scotland cheer after the Supreme Court ruled "the terms 'woman' and 'sex' in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex" (Picture: Dan Kitwood) | Getty Images

As important as Dagenham

These three women are not highly paid, third-sector policy advisors. Trina is a farmer’s wife, Marion has a senior administrative role in the NHS, and Susan is a former financial adviser. But for the past eight years, in between their professional and family duties, they have become experts in equalities law, raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for a series of court actions, and, along with that army of women, developed one of the most successful grassroots campaigns in recent political history.

They are as important as the women who led the 1968 sewing machinists' strike at Ford’s Dagenham plant which resulted in significant legal reforms, including the Equal Pay Act of 1970. Arguably, they and the other women’s groups that have emerged in recent years – such as Women Won’t Wheesht, the Women’s Rights Network Scotland and the Scottish Feminist Network – are as significant as the Scottish Suffragettes, whose green, white and purple ribbons they have adopted.

There is, however, lurking in the background, one organisation that receives upwards of £600,000 a year of government funding to be Scotland’s national “feminist policy and advocacy” organisation. Engender has, according to its website, 11 staff with an annual salary bill of £380,000.

Last year, it spent £85,000 on legal and professional fees alone. It has nine women on its board of directors, each with an impressive CV. Established 30 years ago by some of Scotland’s most notable feminists at the time to influence government policy, its stated objectives were and remain “to advance women’s equality by seeking to increase women’s power and influence” and to support women to “campaign for change and engage in the policy making process”.

Engender ‘disappointed’

That same casual observer who thought For Women Scotland was the nation’s official feminist body might also have assumed that Engender would be delighted by FWS’s historic victory. They would be wrong, because in a mealy-mouthed statement issued in the wake of the Supreme Court’s judgment, Engender stated that they were “disappointed that this ruling appears to take a regressive view of the protections provided by the Equality Act”.

Their concern is not with women like nurse Sandie Peggie, who is currently enduring an employment tribunal because she did not want to share an intimate space with a biologically male doctor who now identifies as a woman.

Instead, Engender argue that as “intersectional feminists”, their focus is on what the ruling means for trans people’s rights. “We urge government and public bodies to uphold protections against discrimination and harassment for a group that is facing such misrepresentation and marginalisation in our culture,” they said.

Intersectional feminism is a term coined in 1989 by an American academic, Kimberle Crenshaw, who highlighted the unique challenges faced by black women due to the ‘intersection’ of racism and sexism. In other words, inequality often has more than one cause.

A working-class woman or one with a disability may struggle more in her working and everyday life than an able-bodied, middle-class woman: therefore, policies need to be tailored to suit every woman’s reality.

A biological fact

However, the one thing we all share is our biology, and while women’s bodies should not define us, we are different from men, a biological fact that the patriarchy has exploited for centuries. But in recent years, some feminist organisations, including Engender, have embraced men who identify as women in their definition of intersectional feminism.

Indeed, at times, it has seemed that the demands of trans women were a priority. In 2017, Engender – along with other state-funded women’s groups including Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Women’s Aid, and Zero Tolerance – issued a strong statement welcoming Nicola Sturgeon’s plans for self-ID. “We do not regard trans equality and women’s equality to contradict or be in competition with each other,” they said.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday pointed out in clear language exactly where the demands of trans people contradicted women’s sex-based rights. The Scottish Government is now scrambling to understand the impact of the ruling on its self-ID policies which have seen male rapists housed in female prisons and schools actively promote the notion that human beings can change their biological sex at will.

Sisters are doing it for themselves

Everything changed on Wednesday morning. As Naomi Cunningham, the barrister representing Sandie Peggie in her case against NHS Fife, said: “It is now clear that in any situation in which it is lawful to operate a single-sex or separate-sex service for women, it is not merely lawful but compulsory to exclude all men.”

And yet Scotland’s official feminist organisation continues to put trans-identified men front and centre – to the detriment, many will argue, of women and girls.

For Women Scotland will be the first to say that there remain many battles for women. The list is as long as it is depressing, from pension inequality to the motherhood penalty; from the influence of extreme porn on young people to the persistent scourge of male violence.

The last decade has shown that women can no longer depend on state-funded ‘feminist’ organisations like Engender to stand up for their rights. The sisters will just have to continue doing it for themselves.