Challenge Fund Awardees: The Fawcett Society and Women’s Budget Group
It’s been six months since we announced the awardees of our Challenge Fund, and Rosa’s most recent grantees have been hitting the headlines.
‘Cutting Women Out’ – a campaign by The Fawcett Society and Women’s Budget Group – has combined detailed economic analysis, local mobilisation and innovative campaigning to highlight the impact the cuts are having on women and girls.
After launching the report, Single Mothers: Singled Out, (in partnership with the Institute of Fiscal Studies) into how public spending cuts are going to hit single mothers hardest, Fawcett and WBG have continued to monitor and log external analysis and research on the cuts.
Both have also separately generated reports and events looking at the impact of the cuts on women. With the grant, the WBG have also provided workshops aimed to identify and improve the skills of local women’s groups regarding the public sector equality duty and introduce tools for gender budget analysis and show how these can underpin and strengthen challenges to spending decisions. A toolkit based on the workshops and the follow-up activities is now under development.
Fawcett’s publication of ‘Life Raft for Women’s Equality’: a report which sets out key economic policy recommendations focussed on preventing the widening of inequality was accompanied with Day of Protest in London and ‘Don’t turn back time tea parties’ across the UK to gather public support.
Day of Action held in November and saw 2500 people take to the streets of London with the call ‘Don’t turn back time on women’s equality’. A march from Embankment to Whitehall was followed by a rally addressed by representatives of UK Uncut, UNISON, Southall Black Sisters, the Women’s Resource Centre and Abortion Rights among others.
Activists across the UK echoed the London protest by staging ‘Don’t turn back time tea parties’. Dressed in 1950s costumes, they promoted the warning that women’s financial equality will regress 60 years as a result of cuts and welfare reforms. Events were held in thirteen locations across the UK.